Chapter 14 #2
I don’t know. I guess I might like to have kids someday, if it feels anything like what I feel when Denice passes Nessa gently up to me and she settles in my arms, still snoozing happily, her little hands bunched up by her face where they poke out of her swaddle blanket.
A thought pops into my mind, one I ignore at first but then look at more closely: I’m not sure I would recognize myself if I looked in the mirror right now.
This isn’t me—the guy who might want kids someday, the guy who wonders about asking a woman out instead of just picking her up at a bar. The guy who’s getting itchy with the life he’s been living.
But it could be me. I feel that somewhere deep down, a place in myself I rarely visit because of what I might find there, truths I might have to deal with.
That place is the home of the little voice that whispers You’re better than this.
I tilt my face down to look at Nessa, settling on the couch next to Denice. She rests her head on my upper arm instead of moving out of the way, and because she looks a bit like a zombie, I don’t shake her off.
“Isn’t she cute?” Denice says sleepily.
“She really is,” I admit. “She’s perfect.”
“She eats fifty times a night.”
I grin down at the pink-faced infant in my arms. “Getting big and strong like your uncle.”
Denice scoffs at this. “So modest.”
“I’ve never been modest,” I point out, “and I’ve never claimed to be.”
“That’s true.” Denice lifts her head from my arm and shifts herself into an upright position, looking over at me sternly. Based on this expression, I know exactly what’s coming. “By the way,” she says, “tell me exactly what you’re doing with one of my best employees.”
Yep; I was right.
“I’m not doing anything,” I say. When Denice raises one skeptical brow at me, I add, “I’m not…yet.”
“Mm-hmm,” she says with a nod. “That’s what I thought. Listen up. Don’t mess with her. I will not have your hit-it-and-quit-it self affecting my relationship with—”
“Hey,” I cut in, and I’d be lying if I said that doesn’t hurt a little. “You make it sound like I sleep around with everyone I can find.”
“Fine,” Denice says, rolling her eyes. She pushes a few strands of hair impatiently from where they’ve fallen over her face. “I know you don’t. But I like Aurora, and she’s not a prize to be won or a game to play. Plus she’s already had bad luck with men.”
“It’s not bad luck,” I say with a snort. “It’s bad decision-making skills. She chooses that kind of man.”
Denice doesn’t respond to this.
“And I don’t need you to lecture me,” I go on. I guess I don’t blame Denice for having no faith in me, but it doesn’t feel great. “I know perfectly well what I’m doing. I just don’t—”
But I break off here, because I’m not sure what I’m trying to say. I don’t know how to ask a woman out? I don’t know if Aurora would ever go out with me anyway? I don’t want to be rejected, and the idea of not even trying holds its own appeal for that reason?
I could walk away—leave her life and remove her from mine, casually and easily, and I’d probably be fine. I’m not hooked on her.
But I don’t like that idea. And although I don’t hold much regret in general, I might regret that decision.
“Anyway.” I clear my throat and look down at Nessa, mostly so I don’t have to look at Denice and see her too-perceptive eyes on me. “I don’t have any concrete plans. I’m just feeling things out. She’s got a lot going on right now anyway. I’m not sure I’d want to add anything to her plate.”
As I say these words, Aurora’s situation swirls more fervently around my mind—her cowardly ex; Barf and Mindy walking around holding hands in front of her; and there’s something strangely depressing about the thought that Aurora ever trusted someone enough to cosign a loan with them, only to have that trust yanked out from under her feet like a rug.
“Just don’t be a jerk to her,” Denice says, and I roll my eyes.
“I know,” I say. “I won’t, all right?”
“Fine,” she says, holding up her hands defensively.
“Fine.” Then she jerks her chin in the direction of her kitchen table, where our dad is seated by himself, looking uncomfortable as he glances around.
“Go make conversation, would you? I don’t want to yell across the room or sit in one of those wooden chairs. ”
“Yeah,” I sigh heavily, because I owe Denice a million favors and then some—even if I also owe her a million frogs in her bed. “Fine.”
I stand up, Nessa still sleeping soundly in my arms, and then I make my way to the table.
“Hi,” I say to my dad, settling down in the chair next to him.
He startles, like he wasn’t expecting me to speak. “Hi.” His gaze falls on Nessa. “Tiny thing, isn’t she?”
“She is.”
“Neither of you were that small.”
I blink, my gaze turning to my father. “Were we not?”
“You were both bigger.”
“I’m surprised you remember.” I don’t say it to be rude, but it’s true. He wasn’t particularly present while I was growing up.
“Me too,” he says, and this surprises me even more. “But there you have it.” His gaze softens behind his glasses almost imperceptibly—has that ever happened before?—and he goes on, “Something special about a baby, I’ve gotta admit.”
He’s right, but I just say “I guess so.”
We fall into an uncomfortable silence, and I don’t search very hard for something else to say. He’s better over the phone than he is in person, as far as his ability to converse, and as far as our relationship goes, I’m probably the same.
“Everything still going well at work?” he says after thirty painful seconds of quiet.
“Yep,” I say, even though I know Shelly keeps him updated. “Going just fine.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask him what his plans are once Denice’s official replacement arrives, but for some reason the question stalls. Because what if I accidentally open a door I don’t want to walk through?
And although I could wait, think it through more, talk it over with Denice to get her thoughts, I discover suddenly that I don’t want to do those things. I don’t want to wait one second longer.
My future plans aren’t something to treat impulsively.
But I don’t think I’m being impulsive. I think I’m just coming to conclusions that I’ve been mulling over on a deeper level for a long time.
And no amount of talking to anyone would change this feeling—this need to start a different chapter of my life.
I wasn’t planning on having this conversation tonight, but I think it might burst violently out of me if I don’t open my mouth and release it.
So I take a deep breath and spit out the word that shouldn’t be so hard to say. “Dad.”
“Hm?” It’s a grunt, really, and his eyes don’t find me at all; they’re still hooked on Nessa in my arms. I can’t blame him, I guess. It is weird to see him like this—warm toward her in a way I don’t remember from my childhood.
“I’m going to look for a different job.”
This catches his attention. He looks up at me, but he doesn’t seem surprised.
Has he been waiting for me to get on with my life? Would he ever push me away from him if I never took a step in that direction? Or would he let me stay forever, close enough to be useful but too far to feel the things you hope to feel from a father?
I give a mental snort and shake my head at the twinge of melancholy. I’m being stupid and sentimental.
“Where?” my dad says, and I’m pulled out of my thoughts.
“I don’t know yet,” I admit. “And it will probably take a while. It’s been a long time since I worked in my field.”
Another grunt, and his eyes drop back to Nessa, who’s now snoring slightly—tiny little sounds that filter through her button nose. “I’ll find someone else to do what you’ve been doing if I need to,” my dad says.
I’m easily replaceable, apparently. But I push that idea away, because whether or not it’s true, there’s no use dwelling on it.
I might just need to stop waiting—waiting to hear what I want to hear from him.
So I give him a cordial nod and stand up, passing back through the kitchen and to where Denice is now asleep on the couch.
She’s in the exact same position as when I left her, but her eyes are closed, and she’s snoring just like her daughter is.
“Your snores are cuter,” I whisper to Nessa, my lips tugging into a smile as her tiny fingers twitch. “Let’s let your mommy rest for a bit, huh? Should we go chat with your daddy?”
She stirs faintly at this, which I take to mean yes.
Later, maybe, I’ll pick Denice’s brain on how to ask out a woman for real. I’m in no rush. I meant what I said about Aurora having a lot on her plate right now, what with her work for me and trying to get Tyler to pay half the balance and—
I halt in my tracks and straighten up so suddenly that Nessa stirs again. I relax so that she stays comfortable, but my mind doesn’t slow down; it continues to work through the thought that’s just come to me, until a rough plan begins to form.
And…it’s a good idea.
I wouldn’t be able to tell Aurora, of course. She would throw a fit. But she wouldn’t need to know.
I nod decisively. It will be too late when I get home to make that phone call, and I’ll need to figure out a way to get the phone number anyway.
Tomorrow, though? Tomorrow I’ll put this idea into action.