Chapter 21
Jonas
Dusk is approaching as I walk around Emma’s house to meet her at the chicken coop a few hours after her family cookout. I wasn’t sure she’d let me come over, but she agreed to see me once Bash was in bed.
I spot her before she sees me. She’s bent over, petting the tall, skinny, white chicken with the funny, light feathers and a chicken diaper on her butt. I can’t tell if the bird’s eyes are under the head feathers or mixed in with them, but it can clearly see, and it wants inside the pen.
“Silly girl,” Emma says. “You just ate inside.”
Eight or ten thick brown and red chickens with normal feathers, normal heads, and no diapers peck the ground inside the coop area. I think I spot watermelon rind. Definitely chicken feed pellets.
Emma’s dress is gone, replaced with baggy black sweatpants that hang low on her hips when she stands. Her pink crop top cuts off just above her belly button, and her small breasts sway freely underneath.
“Do the chickens get treats every night?” I ask.
“Every single night,” she confirms.
She straightens and looks at me, and every nerve that’s been bouncing off the walls since I took the hint that the cookout was over settles.
“How’s the little guy feeling?” I ask.
“Feverish but bullheaded,” she replies. There’s still caution in her voice, but it’s noticeably less than it was a few days ago. “He threw up three more times after we got home, but he’s pretty well-trained with a bucket.”
“Did I cook the burgers wrong?”
She shakes her head. “Stomach bug is going around daycare.”
I had no idea something as tiny as a kid who barely stands above my knee could terrify me in so many ways.
It’s a massive relief to know I didn’t accidentally give him food poisoning.
I tilt my head toward the porch swing.
She nods.
We sit. I fold my hands in my lap despite wanting to drape one over the back of the swing.
She folds her hands in her lap too and pushes with one foot, making the swing sway the tiniest amount.
“Lot more comfortable to sit on than sleep on,” I comment.
“I’d assume so.”
“Slept on worse though.”
“I’d question that, but in the number of nights I’ve known you, you’ve spent a high percentage of them not in a bed.”
I smile.
She does too, though it’s a nervous smile.
“You’ve been puked on before,” she says.
“First time I met Begonia’s sister and her kids. Two of the three got me. Hayes still pulls out pictures of the carnage if I get too full of myself. By his standards. Which are stupidly high.”
“How high are we talking?”
“Sometimes I breathe too full of myself for him.”
“He sounds like a good brother.”
“He is.”
“I like standards that high.”
“Good.”
I can feel her watching me, but my eyes are on her white chicken. It’s hopping over on its single leg, and I think my loafers might be in danger.
Nothing compared to my heart though.
“Bash is—” I swallow. Perfect? Hilarious? Adorable? Everything I ever hoped my kid would be at his age?
“He is,” she agrees softly.
Like I don’t have to finish.
She just knows he’s beyond normal human English words.
“Yolko Ono, do not peck that,” she orders.
The chicken clucks at her, and my shoe lives to see another minute.
This shoe.
My other shoes are dead and buried. The clothes too. No regrets.
“Thank you for your patience with him today,” Emma adds.
“I was the stranger. He had a lot of people he knew better.”
“They’re all family to him.”
“Nice that he knows the triplets apart enough to call them on their pretend-to-be-each-other game.”
She squeezes her eyes shut and suppresses a smile.
“Lucky kid,” I muse. “He knows he’s loved.”
“He’s very loved. He—thank you.”
I lift a brow at her.
“He’s the very best thing in my life, and I wouldn’t have him without you, so…thank you. I haven’t said that yet.”
“My contribution was, ah, small.”
“But critical.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“Yes, I do. Yolko Ono , I said no .”
“Bad dick-dick,” a small voice drifts down from an open window of the house.
“Sing ‘America’s Sweetheart,’ Bash,” Emma says softly, jolting me back in time a few years as I realize she’s talking about an old Bro Code song that I haven’t heard in forever.
There’s a long pause, but then he does as told.
With the words all wrong. The melody very off. Pitch off too.
Pretty horribly, actually.
Even for a kid young enough that you’d expect him to be off-key and off-melody.
And it’s the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.
The song fades to a stop about halfway through.
But the soft smile on Emma’s face lingers longer while she stares up at his window.
Birds chirp. Chickens cluck. Something rustles in the forest behind us, the breeze almost chilly against my skin as deeper shadows fall across the yard.
Emma keeps gently pushing the swing.
Her one-legged chicken keeps hopping toward my shoe.
“Mama, nigh-nigh,” a little voice whispers.
“Night-night, Bash,” she replies softly.
I’ve set foot on all seven continents. Starred in movies my whole life. Gotten critical acclaim for my more recent projects. Met the world’s objectively most beautiful people. Eaten at the best restaurants money can buy. Stayed in the plushest resorts on the planet.
And all of those places have never given me the kind of peace I feel here.
The kind of peace I feel when I’m just me , hanging out with Hayes and Begonia or Keisha and Millie and simply being part of a family with no expectations and a safety that comes with knowing they’d forgive any of your fuck-ups.
Even with the overwhelming longing to be a bigger part of my son’s life. To be a part of Emma’s life.
To fit in as one of the family she introduced me to today.
To have my friend back.
I still have that peace despite everything that’s up in the air.
“You changed my life,” I tell her. “I haven’t thanked you for that either.”
She glances at me and pulls her legs up to her chest, letting the swing sway on its own.
“In Fiji,” I clarify. “When you told me to quit being a chicken shit. I needed to hear that.”
“That’s what friends were for.”
Were . “I’d like to be your friend again.”
“I’m not the same woman I was in Fiji.”
“I can see that.”
“I might not be the friend you need anymore.”
I smile.
“Sabrina says you like me.”
That shouldn’t make me smile bigger, but it does. “She’s very astute.”
“I like my life the way it is, Jonas.”
And there goes my smile. “I know.”
“ Bash likes his life the way it is.”
“Maybe most of the time. But I noticed he didn’t get his?—”
She lunges for me and smothers my mouth with her hand before I can finish with ice cream . “I swear on my brother’s criminal record, if you say those words out loud, I’ll give him very specific instructions about what I expect to happen on your camping trip.”
She smells like peaches and baby shampoo, and her hand is soft and smooth and warm. My pulse ratchets up. My cock stirs.
I don’t know if she realizes she’s wrapped one arm around my shoulder, but I don’t want to move.
Also, I lied.
I don’t want to be her friend.
I want to be much, much more than that.
I wanted it in Fiji, but I knew I hadn’t finished working through everything that happened with Peyton, and Emma had just barely started processing what jilting her fiancé meant for her life.
But now?
Now, I’ve made peace with my ex-wife and Emma’s a single mom. Strong. Fierce in a quiet way. Embracing the life she has.
Happy .
Except for me showing up.
I can be something she’s happy about. We were friends. If I’d made an effort to reach out, we could’ve been more.
Which is one more reason I kept my distance.
I didn’t want to be her rebound, and I didn’t want her to think she was mine.
I inhale the scent of her hand once more. “Okay,” I whisper.
She freezes. Gonna go out on a limb here and guess my breath tickling her palm just reminded her she’s touching me.
And sure enough, now she’s jerking back to her side of the swing. I hold it steady with one foot while she gets settled against the arm rest.
“He hears things in his sleep,” she whispers.
“I guessed as much. Apologies. It won’t happen again.”
“Thank you.”
Before Bash welcomed me to fatherhood in his special way, I watched her laughing with her friends.
Listened to them reminisce. Squeal over ideas for her besties’ babies and their baby shower, which they’re apparently both opposed to.
Picked up on the fact that both women were there in the delivery room with her when Bash was born.
Experienced simultaneous extreme relief and extreme jealousy in a way I never could’ve fathomed two weeks ago.
She wasn’t alone.
She hasn’t been alone.
She doesn’t need me.
Bash doesn’t need me.
Theo has Bash’s college fund—or his explore life with reckless abandon when you graduate high school fund , as Theo called it—already fully funded.
Grey hinted at regular communication with his own lawyers, which I took as confirmation that they won’t let Emma fight Razzle Dazzle lawyers on her own if I turn into a dick.
The triplets asked when they could start building Bash his own playset.
Zen made sure Emma didn’t run out of drinks.
And I noticed they gave her the lemon kombucha too.
Score .
But it’ll take a lot more than guessing her favorite drink flavors to get past her walls.
“I’m permanently off relationships with men,” she says stiffly.
“Your friends don’t hide things from you anymore.”
She goes even stiffer. “Irrelevant.”
Very relevant.
They’d tell her if I was doing something shitty. Or even something normal for me that could put her normal in jeopardy.
So I go slow.
I can go slow.
I nod to the house. “Will he be up in the middle of the night too?”
“Probably. I’m mildly surprised he hasn’t puked again yet.”
“You need anything?”
She shakes her head.
I don’t know if it’s an I have everything I need head shake, or a there are other people I can call if I need things head shake.
“Thank you for letting me come over and check on you.”
She nods.
And then she makes a noise that I heard Bash make a split second before I got that very distinct welcome to fatherhood this afternoon.
“Emma?”
She doesn’t answer.
She’s too busy running for the back door, hand clapped over her mouth.