Chapter 17 Cole
“How was your date?” Enzo asked after he and Carson helped me hoist the tree into the house and upstairs on the main floor.
Instead of answering, I walked over to the kitchen to pour myself a cup of coffee. Was I avoiding the question? Absolutely. One hundred percent, yes.
Because it had been a simple date. A wonderful day.
And that alone had made it magical in its simplicity.
It had been almost normal. Tree hunting and cutting, ice-skating, car rides full of quiet joy.
Those were the kind of dates families had.
Those were the kinds of dates Sandra and I never got to have with Ella.
It had been the kind of date everyone dreamed of when they had a child, and yet it was Ella’s first.
No wonder my sweet girl had clung onto Samir for dear life and took to him so easily. Samir was great with her and treated her like a person, not an accessory. Not like a teddy bear.
So how could I not have gotten lost in seeing my daughter bond with him? Today hadn’t been about romance, or dating, or finding out our differences and similarities. Today had been a simple family outing.
The problem was, we weren’t a family.
“Hello? Earth to Cole!” Enzo waved his hand in front of my face, and I took a sip of my coffee before I turned to him.
“What?”
“I asked you a question, doofus,” he said.
“I know. And I was ignoring you,” I replied.
Enzo looked at Carson and rolled his eyes.
“Talk to your brother before I smack him silly,” he said.
Carson chuckled and put a box marked “Xmas Stuff” down in front of the tree.
“Cole is an adult. If he doesn’t want to share about his date, he doesn’t have to,” he said.
I smiled at Enzo in response.
“Don’t go all smug now. And you, brute! You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I’m not taking sides here. I’m Switzerland,” Carson said.
Enzo scoffed. “You weren’t being Switzerland last night when I was saying he’s going to screw it up.”
I gasped.
“You talk about me in bed? Ew. Stop that immediately,” I said and curled up on the couch with my mug.
“Make us.” Enzo pouted.
I grimaced and shook my head.
“What? And walk in on you docking or some shit? No thanks. What you do in the privacy of your own bedroom is your prerogative. If talking about me to get it up is working, go for it, though I expected better from my older brother. But I guess it’s no surprise a creep fell for another creep.”
Now it was both of them who gasped and glared at me.
“Shut up, Cole. Don’t be weird,” Carson said. “Never say that again.”
Enzo chuckled and squeezed his partner’s shoulder.
“Don’t pay him any mind. He’s rusty on being human. He’ll get the hang of it.”
I chose to ignore that comment and watched as Carson opened the box, and Enzo took out Christmas balls and lights, setting them on the floor.
“Where is my little girl? Why isn’t she here? She should be helping us decorate,” Enzo said with a sad face.
“Your little girl is wiped from a full-on day of ice-skating. You can wait until she wakes up though.”
Enzo sighed.
“Fine. I’m hungry anyway. Should I order something from the Grill?”
Carson nodded and gave his order, and since I hadn’t eaten anything since before we left for the farm, I added a steak sandwich to their order.
After placing the order, Enzo made another pot of coffee, and Carson sat down on the armchair opposite me. Naturally, Enzo sat on his lap with his own cup, which he shared with my brother.
“So? Go on. How was the date? Stop being a grump and tell us.”
I was going to torture them a little longer, but I relented if for no other reason than to process what had happened today and how I felt about it.
“Aww, that’s so sweet,” Enzo said after I finished. “I wish I could have seen that. Samir teaching Ella to skate. She must have been so happy.”
I smiled.
“She was. She didn’t want to leave.”
“Well, then we’ll have to take her back,” Enzo said.
“I already promised her I would.”
“And what about Samir?”
“What about him?” I asked Enzo.
“Are you going to keep seeing him?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Do I have a choice?”
Enzo rolled his eyes, and Carson hid a smirk behind the coffee cup.
“Would you, if you did?”
I sat back and took a beat.
Samir was wonderful. I may not know him well yet, but the part I had gotten to know was great. Addictive. Intoxicating.
But that was part of the danger of dating him.
“I… you know… I didn’t think of Sandra once this morning,” I said, and my chest tightened with guilt.
“Is that bad?” Carson asked.
“How can you ask that? Of course it is. I forgot the mother of my child. That’s horrible.”
Enzo frowned.
“Oh, sweetheart. You didn’t forget about her.
You’re finally learning to live with the fact that she’s gone.
Those are two different things. It’s not like you stopped caring about her or want to wipe her from your memory.
It’s just that you’re starting to live past your grief.
You’re allowed to be happy with someone else or in yourself without constantly being guilt-ridden that she’s not here with you. ”
I looked at my coffee and swallowed, biting the inside of my cheek and trying to process what Enzo said.
I knew he had a point. I knew he was right about it, but it still felt wrong somehow. Like it wasn’t right to move on. Like it was dishonoring her in some way.
“Sandra will always be in your heart,” Carson added. “Hell, she will always be a part of Ella too. I mean, the more she grows, the more of a spitting image of her mom she’s becoming.”
“Exactly,” Enzo said. “There’s nothing wrong with living your life. It’s part of the process. I mean, do you prefer the Cole from a couple of weeks ago who had forgotten how to breathe, let alone spend some quality time with his daughter?”
I shook my head.
“But I’m not spending time with her, am I? I’m spending my days off going out with Samir.”
“It’s called living your life, honey. How many ways can we say it before you understand it?”
I sighed and got up.
I didn’t know how to feel about all that. About what they were saying. I didn’t know how to feel about Samir and how his presence made my heart leap.
I didn’t know what to think of anything going on in my life at the moment.
Or, to be more accurate, I did. It felt like everything was moving too fast, like I’d gone from dead to alive in a matter of days, and I started enjoying myself after such a long time of burying my emotions into work.
It felt like I was moving on and becoming a different person. A person that hadn’t been through hell in the past three years. And I didn’t know if I liked that.
And yet the thought of seeing Samir again, or spending time with him, with or without Ella, made my heart race and my breath catch.
What the hell is wrong with me?