Chapter 1
Marissa
Maybe I’m coming down with whatever bug Dylan has. I smile to myself. He is so caring, sacrificing the little time he has with DJ by sleeping in the guest room to protect our baby’s health.
I don’t really look at myself in any of the mirrors.
I don’t want to see how much I resemble the girl in The Ring movie, especially with my hair so limp and unstyled.
I need to cut this mess off now that I no longer have the time to properly care for it.
I don’t care how much Dylan loves it. I do care, actually.
But it’s a real bother. Thank God for whoever invented claw clips.
There is this framed photo on the wall of the Gray Wolves MC clubhouse, of a young woman straddling a Harley while leaning back on the palms of her hands.
She’s wearing high-waisted, skin-tight faded jeans and a leather jacket.
The bike is parked at what appears to be a wooded picnic area.
The wind’s whipping her long black hair around her face so all you can see is her bright, wide smile.
Whenever I see it, I envy her. That’s what I thought hooking up with an MC member would be like.
I was still raw from my mother’s passing when I met Dylan, and it seemed like he and his lifestyle would whisk me away from all of it: the small apartments of my childhood, my fatherlessness, and all the complicated, unresolved feelings about my relationship with my mother.
Instead, I became a mother myself, and nothing was ever the same again.
This too shall pass has been my mantra every day since. Every sleepless night, every extra pound, every emotionally taxing day...
This. Too. Shall. Pass.
I repeat it to myself as I wait until the last possible minute to put my bra on. Pumping for daycare, DJ’s breastfeeding marathons during growth spurts, and all the hormonal changes have made my big, droopy breasts even saggier.
Braless, I’m bothered by their weight and pull whenever I bend over to pick things up or when I rush up the stairs. Some days, they feel like that metal toy that Principal Patterson had on his desk, with the little balls swinging and hitting each other for all eternity.
But that’s still preferable to the eight hours of bra pressure that clog my milk ducts every few weeks.
Dylan thinks I should stop breastfeeding soon. He says that once Junior starts eating solid foods, he shouldn’t be hanging on his momma so much.
What no one seems to realize is how safe and happy nursing makes my baby. He isn't even six months old yet. He still hasn’t learned to hide the needy parts of himself like I have. He needs that connection with me.
Six months is nothing in the grand scheme of things, I muse, as I throw the frozen meat and veggies into the slow cooker.
“A nice, hot stew to help Daddy get better”, I say out loud in a sing-songy voice, although I am alone in the kitchen. A silly habit born from narrating everything I do to DJ.
I worry about Dylan. His immune system has been crap lately.
Lunch is in the slowcooker! Love you!
I stare at the yellow Post-it note, wasting thirty seconds that I do not have. Do I add a heart? Are two exclamation marks too much? Is my desperation showing?
I decide to leave it as is. Well, it’s not much of a decision because I hear Junior fussing through the baby monitor, and I run upstairs to get him before he wakes Dylan up.
“Hey, baby,” I step into his line of sight, and he gives me a delighted one-toothed smile.
He’s adorable, my son. He’s got my blue eyes and my black hair, for now at least.
Rachel says her kids were all born with dark hair, but all three are blond now. I imagine DJ as an older boy, with a little girl next to him.
“Do you think you would like having a little brother or sister?” I ask DJ, my heart fluttering at the idea. “You know that Mommy has no siblings, and I can tell you, it’s pretty lonely living like that.”
“Let’s get you out of these PJs and into something nice for Ms. Samira, what do you say?”
At 6 a.m. sharp, the two of us are on our way to the Mom-mobile, which is what we call the Equinox Dylan got me as a push present. I smile at DJ, who’s buckled in his car seat next to me.
“So, listen, buddy, today when I pick you up from daycare, we need to go grocery shopping, alright? I know it’s not your favorite activity, but we need some fresh fruit and veggies, and Daddy’s yogurt is on sale this week, so we need to stock up.”
DJ gurgles, coos, and drools happily. I tell him about wanting to cut my hair, about the laundry that needs to be moved to the dryer in the afternoon, and before we know it, we’re at the daycare.
“I guess Mommy was super efficient this morning, huh? We have five minutes until they open.”
And like every morning, I unbuckle him from his seatbelt and hug him extra tight.
“You know I love you, right? And you know that I have to go to work, but I’ll be back before you know it.”
The guilt that was almost debilitating in those first days of separation is just a whisper now, but my steps are still heavy while I walk back to my car after saying goodbye to my boy.
Why am I like this? DJ doesn’t cry or seem too upset at drop-off. Am I projecting my own insecurities and codependence on him?
I know what my mother would say if she were alive. He needs to learn what the real world is like. No one is going to coddle you or hold your hand.
I turn the key in the ignition, but don’t start driving immediately. I look at the empty seat next to me.
I take several deep, deep breaths. The only time during my day when I have the luxury to reflect, to gather myself, to hear myself think, is while I’m driving to and from work. The route is so familiar that I let my mind wander over issues deeper than laundry.
What’s going on with Dylan? A voice inside my head whispers, and I have to admit to myself that I don’t know. We’ve grown apart since Junior’s birth, and part of it is that my focus has shifted completely to DJ.
Not that things are bad or toxic between us. We work opposing shifts, and life is hard with a baby when you don’t have family to help. It would be ridiculous to expect weekly date nights or weekends away together when you’re drowning in chores.
It’s just the season of life we’re in. This too shall pass, I tell myself as I park in front of the school, and I almost believe it.
*
“Something’s wrong with Dylan,” I tell Rachel a few weeks later, and I hate that my voice sounds like I’m about to cry.
She looks up from her knitting and gives me a long look over her glasses. I’m sitting on her couch with Junior asleep on it next to me as I furiously bounce my left leg up and down. I can tell by the way she glances at it that she wants nothing more than to grab it and stop it.
She sets down the scarf she’s working on. “Wrong how?”
“Lately, we see each other less than ever,” I say. “I mean, we’ve always worked opposite schedules, but he’d wake me up when he got home, or he’d sometimes wait for me to come home from work to at least kiss me goodbye.”
I try not to think about the quick, passionate sex that we’d usually end up having during those brief moments together. It would always leave us feeling reconnected and recharged.
It’s been more than a month since he touched me like that, and once I belatedly realized how long it’s been, it sent me into a whole different spiral of self-consciousness and, frankly, guilt.
“Nowadays, on workdays, I wake up and leave for work while he’s asleep, and when I get home, he’s already at work and doesn’t return until midnight at the earliest. Before DJ was born, I would wait up for him.
Then, to avoid having to work on two hours of sleep, I’d fallen into a pattern of sleeping from 4 pm until midnight, just so we could spend some time together.
But with DJ, that’s no longer an option, and it kind of hurts to see that once I stopped adapting to his schedule… ”
I don’t finish, and I don’t think I have to.
Rachel purses her lips. “What about the weekends?”
“On Sundays, we go to his mother’s. We all have lunch together and hang out for a while, and in the evenings, I usually catch up on cooking and chores.
So that just leaves Saturdays as a day for us to do something as a family, just the three of us.
However, over the last several Saturdays, Dylan has been away on club business or due to a work emergency…
I just don’t know how to find time for us that’s not there. ”
“The obvious solution is quitting that job of yours,” Rachel says. “Then you’ll have time.”
I’m slightly irritated that she’s using this conversation to reopen that old argument.
“Rach, I like working.”
She shoots me a look that tells me she remembers every tear I cried when I had to go back to work just eight weeks after Junior was born. I guiltily take his little hand in mine. Rachel notices the gesture, and I see her attitude deflate.
“I know that. I’m criticizing him, not you. He has all this money, and he never even offered to take care of you while DJ is so young.” She clears her throat, and not for the first time, I see how upset she is on my behalf.
The thing is, I’m not upset or unhappy. I know Rachel had left her job to stay at home when her children were young and had only recently started working as a full-time nurse again, but that was what worked for her and Truck.
Every family is different, and Dylan has been nothing but wonderful to us.