Chapter Thirty-Eight
JAKE
O ut of all the bad weeks ever to be had, this one was the longest ever. I thought I’d experienced days crawling by before, but I’d been wrong. This week moved so slowly that I could almost hear each second ticking by. I needed it to be over already.
Natalia had taken to showing up and making breakfast again. I stayed out of the kitchen until the very last possible minute, even though I longed to stand behind her at that stove and kiss her neck and distract her from meal preparation.
She was there with the girls when I got home every night, and as soon as I came in, she abruptly hugged them goodbye, grabbed her things, and left.
We barely said two words to each other all week, and I was slowly going out of my mind .
“Hey.” Griffin stood in the doorway of my office at work on Friday afternoon. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Yeah. What’s up?”
“What’s up with you?” he asked.
I shrugged. I hadn’t told my friends about the breakup yet. It was too hard to say the words out loud.
“You’ve been moping around here lately, barely talking to anyone.” He motioned at my chin. “Growing a beard. Did something happen?”
I took in a deep breath and let it out. “Natalia and I broke up.” My throat tightened up as I said the words. I wanted to cry.
“Oh, man.” He closed the door behind him and took a seat. “Are you okay?”
I let out a pained laugh. “I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I couldn’t care less if I shower or shave. Does that seem okay to you?”
“I’m kind of digging the beard, but please don’t stop showering,” he said.
“I know it was the right decision, but—”
His brow furrowed. “Wait, you broke up with her ?”
“I had to.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in the chair. “I gotta hear this.” He motioned for me to lay it on him.
“She wants kids,” I said.
He stared at me for a few beats. “And?”
“And I don’t want any more.”
“Why not?”
“What do you mean? I have three. I’m done having kids.”
“Why does three have to be it? You’re an awesome dad. Don’t you want to try for a son? ”
The thought of a son did touch a tender place deep in my heart, but I shook my head.
“If we had kids, I’d be retirement age or older by the time they graduated from high school. I’m tired just thinking about it. It’s a lot of time and life to invest in raising more children.”
Griffin stared at me seriously. “Do you love her?”
There was that aching in my heart again, and I nodded. “I do, man. I really do.”
“Then give her what she wants.”
My jaw dropped a little. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It is. You love her. And I know she loves you. It was obvious.”
A little smile crossed my face.
“If you love her, you’ll do anything to make her happy, you’ll give her anything to bring her joy in life. And if that means setting aside what you want—or think you want—you do it. Simple as that.”
“It doesn’t feel simple.”
“Because you’re making it harder than it needs to be.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Listen, when Lisa and I first got together, we were on completely different paths. She was a homebody. Her family was in Grand Rapids, and she wanted to live close to them. I loved to travel and had a whole different job waiting for me in Arizona. I wanted to move there and settle far away from the Michigan winters.”
I listened intently, longing for any shred of advice that would take my pain away.
“We broke up for a while because of it. I even moved down there and started the job.”
“You never told me that. ”
“Yeah, I thought I knew what I wanted, but it took me less than two weeks to realize I’d made the biggest mistake of my life. I was lost without her, and I’m lucky she took me back because she’s an incredible woman. She could’ve had any guy in the world, but she chose me. I wanted her to be happy, so I moved here. Sometimes, I think about living somewhere else and traveling more, but I wouldn’t want to do any of that without her. Can you honestly see yourself spending the rest of your life without Tally?”
“It’s been two weeks, and I’m so miserable without her.” I dropped my head into my hands. “But we’re talking about babies here. I don’t know what to do.”
“Why is the idea of more kids so hard for you, Jake?”
I let out a deep breath. “I already told you.”
He shook his head. “I think it’s about more than you being an old man when they’re teenagers. I think you’re scared history will repeat itself.”
It was as if he could read my mind. “What if this is too good to be true? It feels so right with her. But what if I mess things up and she leaves me like Kate did? I couldn’t bear that, and I don’t want to drag the girls and any kids I have with Natalia through divorce. We can’t go through that again. It’s too big a risk.”
He sat back again. “What you have with Tally is not what you had with Kate. I’ve seen the way you two are. And Kate and Tally are nothing alike. Kate’s a mess. Tally has her head on straight. You guys are great together.”
I grinned. “We are, aren’t we?”
“Yeah. So don’t give up on this because you’re afraid of something that will most likely never happen. ”
“I didn’t know we had a therapist in the office,” I teased.
He laughed. “They couldn’t afford me.”
“Thank you, Griff.”
“You’re welcome.” He reached over and patted my shoulder.
“I mean it. I didn’t realize how much I needed that advice. I thought I had this all figured out on my own. I’ve never been very good at asking for help.”
“Control freak,” he teased.
I shrugged.
“Look, I’m not telling you what to do, Jake, but it’s something to think about.”
“I will.”
“It makes sense, though. You love her. She loves you.” He looked me straight in the eye. “The greater the risk, the greater the reward, am I right?”
After my conversation with Griffin, I couldn’t get much work done. His words hung with me the rest of the day and steadily broke through the barriers I’d built in my mind until everything clicked. There was always going to be some level of risk in every part of life, in big decisions and small. It couldn’t be avoided or controlled. I thought about the beautiful reward of the life with Natalia I’d be giving up if I didn’t take the risk. I had true happiness within my reach, and I couldn’t let fear keep me from it.
As I was leaving the office, a text from Natalia popped up on my phone, letting me know that she was taking the girls to their grandparents at quarter to six on her way to the wedding rehearsal.
I replied, “OK,” even though I wanted to say so much more.
On my way home, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up a few things for the weekend before going to get the girls. While waiting in the checkout line, a little brunette boy around Piper’s age scurried up and hid behind my legs.
“Hello.” I looked down at him.
The boy said nothing, just peeked around my legs at a grey-haired gentleman coming our way. I was bad at judging ages, but he looked to be in his forties or fifties.
The man walked toward us, tilting his head as he approached, looking around me at the boy. “I see you.”
The boy laughed and ducked back behind my legs.
“Sorry,” the man said. “He likes to play hide-and-seek at the most inopportune times, and he’s obviously not afraid of strangers.”
“No problem,” I said.
He leaned around me and scooped the boy up to kicks and cries that soon turned into tickles and giggles and hugs, and it tugged at my heart.
“How old is he?” I asked.
“Just turned three.”
“My daughter’s three too. It’s a cute age.”
The man chuckled. “Most days.”
“I hear ya,” I said with a nod.
“Candy, Daddy.” The boy reached for a pack of Sour Patch Kids.
“What do we say?”
“Pweeeease.” The boy had that adorable toddler voice Piper had too.
The man put his son into the cart, grabbed the Sour Patch Kids, and pushed to a nearby aisle. As I watched them walk away, I got a vision of myself with a little boy with my dark hair and Natalia’s aqua-blue eyes. And I realized the thought didn’t scare me. I imagined teaching him to throw a baseball in the spring or slap a hockey puck on the frozen lake in the winter. I thought about tucking him into bed and reading to him and having someone to carry on the Mills name.
“Sir,” the cashier’s voice broke through my thoughts.
I moved forward to check out then headed out to my car, my mind on the future.
Natalia texted that the girls were dropped off and that she’d see me Monday, and I started to think about what I’d say to her the next time I saw her. Things were changing for me, and the thought of having a child with the woman I loved was suddenly something I couldn’t imagine denying her or myself.
When we got home, the girls went to the playroom, and I went to the living room and sat down on the couch with my phone. I scrolled through pictures of Natalia with the girls, one that I loved of the two of us snuggled up on the couch together with the fireplace lit, and one of us kissing, which made the butterflies that had been in hibernation this week come out and do a happy dance around my stomach.
“Daddy?” Ava’s little voice came from behind me.
Startled, I clicked the side button to shut off the phone screen and turned to see all three girls standing side by side staring at me. They looked a little creepy, like the twins from The Shining , minus the matching outfits .
“Tally told us she’s leaving,” Nora announced.
“She did?” She had said she wanted to be the one to tell them, but I hadn’t known when she’d break the news.
“We want to know why?” Her eyebrows squeezed together, and she pressed her lips into a firm line.
“Why is she leaving, Daddy?” Ava’s lower lip stuck out.
“What did she tell you?”
“That sometimes you have to change jobs when you don’t want to,” Nora answered. “But she didn’t tell us why.” The seriousness of Nora’s expressions always made her seem so much more grown-up than she was.
“I miss Tally,” Piper said.
“I know, Pipes.”
“Why aren’t you in love anymore?” Nora asked.
My heart skipped a beat, and my mouth fell open.
“What did you do, Daddy? Did you break her heart?”
“Wh-what are you talking about?” Her questions shocked me.
“You don’t hug each other anymore,” Ava said.
“And now she’s leaving,” Nora added. “Did she break up with you?”
I was flabbergasted. “You girls knew about me and Tally?”
Nora rolled her eyes. “We might be kids, but we aren’t dumb. It was obvious, Dad. You were all lovey around each other. And I knew you weren’t looking for something in her ear.”
That made me laugh, but then I turned serious with her. “Did that upset you? Me and Tally?”
She shook her head. “I want you to be in love again so Tally won’t leave and you won’t be a monster all the time.”
I motioned for the girls to come sit on the couch with me, and I put my arms around their shoulders.
“We had a disagreement about something.”
“What?” Nora asked.
“Grown-up stuff.”
“Can’t you fix it?”
“Yeah, say you’re sorry,” Ava said. “That’s what you always make us do.”
“I might be able to fix it.” I glanced at the clock. “But I’m not sure where she is right now.”
“She’s at that big hotel,” Nora said. “She told us that’s where the wedding is at.” I knew she was referring to the old historic Abbottsville Hotel.
“They might have gone somewhere else for the rehearsal dinner by now, though.”
Nora shook her head. “She said Jimmy from the diner is bringing them dinner there.”
“You’re such a good listener, Nora.”
“I know.” She lifted her chin proudly.
I looked at each of my daughters one at a time. “What do you say we go get our nanny back?”
My ears rang from how loud the girls’ screams of excitement were.
“I want french fries from Jimmy’s,” Ava said on our way out the door.
“Fwench fwies!” Piper cried.
“French …” Nora started to correct Piper then shrugged. “Oh, never mind.”
“I don’t know if Jimmy’s making fries for the rehearsal dinner, but if this goes how I hope, I’ll get you anything you want.”