Chapter 14 #2
“It’s okay,” he continued. “These things happen. You’re a dad first. I get that.”
Still, I could hear something in his voice—disappointment, maybe, or resignation, like he’d been expecting this to happen.
“I can try to find someone else,” I said desperately. “Maybe if I call—”
“Don’t,” he said quietly. “Don’t stress yourself out over this. We’ll just . . . find another time.”
The gentle understanding in his voice somehow made me feel worse than if he’d been angry. At least anger I could argue with. This quiet acceptance felt like giving up.
“Jeremiah—”
“I should probably focus on the road. It’s starting to open up a little, but I think I see cops and an ambulance ahead,” he said. “I’ll . . . let you get back to Debbie. Talk soon, okay?”
And before I could say anything else, before I could explain or apologize or beg for another chance, the line went dead.
I made it downstairs and slumped onto the couch, letting my head fall back against the cushions. The ceiling stared back at me, offering no solutions to the mess I’d just made of my love life.
Again.
From the living room floor, I could hear Debbie conducting an elaborate conversation with Sir Hornsworth about the proper temperature for dragon tea, completely oblivious to the fact that her daddy had just managed to screw up the best thing that had happened to him in years.
How long would Jeremiah wait?
How many canceled dates and interrupted dinners and babysitter emergencies would he put up with before he decided that dating a single father was more trouble than it was worth?
Most guys didn’t stick around for the complicated parts. Hell, a lot of gay guys didn’t even stick around when life was easy. Throw in parental duties, and the odds were definitely not in my favor.
Don’t get me wrong, they liked the idea of a man with a kid—thought it was sweet or endearing from a distance—but when it came to the reality of last-minute cancelations, split priorities, and the fact that a five-year-old would always, always come first, they found reasons to bow out gracefully.
I’d seen it before . . . more times than I cared to count. Enough times that I basically stopped trying to date, surrendering to my fate as a father who would end up fulfilled through the eyes—and dating life—of his daughter.
It hurt, if I was honest. As beautiful as being a dad was, there were so many things that also stung: the polite smiles that didn’t quite reach their eyes when I mentioned I couldn’t stay out late because of school nights, the way conversations shifted when they realized that “dating me” meant “dating us,” that any future they imagined would have to include dinosaur pajamas and bedtime stories and the occasional meltdown over the wrong color cup at breakfast.
The way I couldn’t always drop everything and show up when they were all hot and bothered—or how they might never feel comfortable getting naked when my little monster slept in the room down the hall.
Maybe that’s just how it was going to be.
Maybe I was destined to spend the next thirteen years watching Debbie grow up from the sidelines of my own life, always putting her needs first—which was right, which was what good fathers did—but never quite finding someone who understood what that meant, someone flexible enough to roll with the parental punches, someone who wouldn’t see Debbie as an obstacle to overcome but as part of the package, part of what made us .
. . us, someone who wouldn’t mind that bedtime stories came before romantic dinners, that soccer games trumped weekend getaways, that sometimes the most important conversation of the day happened with a five-year-old over chocolate chip pancakes.
By the time she was an adult, or at least old enough to stand on her own, I would’ve “aged out” of the optimal gay dating years.
Get a three in front of your age and you were aging.
A four put one foot in the ground. A five .
. . I shuddered . . . there wasn’t a checkbox online for a guy in his fifties, not one that attracted the men I was drawn to dating.
Maybe I’d grow old alone, watching Debbie build her life while mine stayed small and carefully contained. Maybe this was the price of choosing to be her father—trading my own chance at love for the privilege of being the most important person in her world.
While I loved being her dad more than anything in the world, that thought settled in my chest like a stone, heavy and cold and utterly depressing.
“Daddy?” Debbie’s voice cut through my spiral of self-pity. “Why do you look sad? Did Sir Hornsworth say something mean?”
I looked down at her concerned face, at the way she’d abandoned her tea party to check on me, and felt ashamed of my wallowing.
This was my choice.
She was my choice.
And she was worth every sacrifice, every canceled date, every moment of loneliness . . .
even if sometimes, late at night or on quiet Saturday afternoons, I wondered what it would be like to have someone to share it all with.