22. Depth Of Emotions
DEPTH OF EMOTIONS
“Ididn’t think he was going to fall asleep,” she said two hours later.
“Sorry. I didn’t think he’d get that wound up.”
They were sitting on the patio again, Micah in bed, the monitor next to them, and nothing but the sounds of the music coming through it.
“Everything winds him up, but now he’ll sleep. It’s worth it.”
“It tells me why you’re in such good shape. Why your ass is perfect. You’re doing nonstop squats around him, then picking him up while you do it.”
“I never thought of it that way.”
“Maybe it’s because you don’t see your body the way I do.”
“I see it,” she said. “It’s different than it was before I had a baby, but not in a bad way. I’m positive I’m in better shape. I tell myself I’ve got someone who relies on me more so I should be as healthy as possible.”
“It’s a good way to look at it.” He took a drink out of his bottle of water. “Jolene is going to catch on pretty quickly.”
“We figured as much. But I only have less than two weeks left now. She won’t see me much anymore. Sorry it will be you she’ll be working on.”
“I can handle her. I found it funny that you told her we lived by each other. It’s like now she’s confused.”
“I was pretty proud of myself keeping a straight face through it all. I asked if she knew we lived by each other, then casually dropped it that in a few weeks I wouldn’t see you much anymore. She didn’t seem to catch on.”
“Don’t be so sure. She’ll replay it in her mind. I guess the question is now that I’m here tonight, is it worth doing that?”
“No. Not that I didn’t think Micah would be fine with you.”
“But you were waiting for that last step.” His hand reached for hers. “Thanks for letting me spend time with him.”
“See. That. That right there. I should thank you and you’re saying it. Why?”
He was watching her face. The confusion mixed in with the depths of emotions. The verge of tears he wasn’t so sure the reason for.
“Why am I thanking you?” She nodded her head. “Because I know how hard this was for you. How hard it was to let me be a part of his life when no one else had been. And I know that deep down though we’ve said this was going to be simple, it’s turning into anything but.”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “It is. It’s scary. It’s not just me now. That’s a dynamic I haven’t had to deal with, even though I’ve tried.”
“I haven’t tried in years,” he admitted.
“The whole trust thing?”
“Yeah. I haven’t shared it with anyone before either.”
Her eyes were searching his. “Do you want to share it now? That’s your choice.”
He sighed. “I feel as if I should. That I don’t need to keep you guessing. I don’t know if you’ll open up more or not and that is your choice. As you said, there is more on the line. But my thinking is, if I give you this, maybe it will ease some of what could play in your mind about me.”
“I don’t want you to feel as if I’m forcing you to do that. Or say things you’re not ready for,” she argued. “Not that I don’t want to hear it, but I’m not sure what I’ll give in return.”
He’d have to accept that... for now.
“The thing is, I got a call when Jolene was in my office. I’d been texting with Brittany and then she called. She’s coming next week on vacation. She’s not staying with me. She’s vacationing here with Emme, her girlfriend, and hopes to spend some time with me. She wants to meet you.”
“Wow. You’re okay with me meeting your family?”
“I just met your son,” he said. “That’s bigger than meeting my sister.”
She got up from the chair next to him and sat on his lap.
“That you understand that means the world. But if that is the only reason you want to tell me about your past, because your sister might slip, then it’s not reason enough.
Not in my eyes. You have to want to say it because it can’t stay hidden inside anymore. ”
“It might just be time I let it all out,” he admitted.
She put her head against his chest. “Then I’d like to hear it.”
He ran his hand over her hair. “It’s not horrible.”
“I think it is. I think that emotionally it scarred you and has made you fearful of trying again. Trust me, if anyone understands that, it’s the woman on your lap wiggling around right now.”
He laughed, and the soft sound of it rumbled out of his chest.
She soothed him in a way he’d never felt before.
It was what made this the right time to say the rest.
“I started dating Alexa my junior year of college.”
“Wow, going back some time.”
“Yeah. We got along well. She was funny, energetic, but a little high maintenance. Not always with the way she looked, just life. She was afraid to drive, so she walked, I drove her, or she took public transit. She had crazy anxiety over things I could never understand.”
“I see that now with some of my students. I hate to say that their parents foster it, but I believe they do. It’s the whole everyone deserves a trophy thing. And if you push them to try harder, it’s like you’re picking on them rather than helping them hone their skills.”
“That sounds like Alexa. She was the youngest of five kids and was babied. I did the same thing. I didn’t realize it at the time, but growing up with how my father treated my mother, I said I’d never do that. I think I went so far in the other direction that she came to expect it from me.”
“Ouch. And if you stopped, she had problems with it?”
“Not really. I didn’t stop, but didn’t have a problem either.
I ended up doing a lot for her, but she gave it back too.
It wasn’t one-sided. Don’t think that. Fast forward, we graduated from college and she moved to Nashville with me.
I was working for a brewery there that was branching into liquors.
Just starting out. She went to school for communication but was almost terrified of working in that field. ”
“What? Why?”
“I think the fear of failure. I’m not sure. She was a server in a high-end club and brought in great money. Probably more money than she would have made working a desk job, even though she said it was temporary. She wanted the right job, not just any job.”
“I’ve got friends like that.”
“Yeah, well, a few months turned to a few years. It’s not that she wasn’t paying her way. We split everything. Neither of us had a problem with that, but I didn’t necessarily like her working nights. We didn’t see much of each other. She had this great degree, why not use it?”
“Was she still fearful or just lazy and content?”
“I think the last two. At this point, we’d been together five years. We were pushing twenty-six and I was seeing us settling down. There was no reason to continue living like college kids, nor acting like them. Time to buckle down and be an adult.”
“That is how I felt right after college,” she said, her hand moving around his thigh. “I had my fair share of fun, but I really wanted to start my life and career.”
“I was there too. I thought she was too. We didn’t fight often. I understood her and gave her space. She did the same. Talk about an easy relationship.”
Proof that easy wasn’t always the best.
“Then what happened?”
“One day she just said she wanted to be single. That she wasn’t ready to settle down.
Her parents liked me a lot. I was confused.
I thought maybe she had someone on the side, but she insisted she didn’t.
Her parents said they didn’t think so either.
They actually were pissed at her and blamed me for giving Alexa everything she wanted.
That I put her on a pedestal she didn’t deserve to be on. ”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I refuse to believe you’d do that.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I did. I treated her the same way she did me.
I gave her a lot of freedoms, but when I pushed her to grow up some, she’d find excuses and I’d back away.
I wasn’t her parent, I didn’t want to parent her, but I didn’t expect her to just say we were at different places in our lives. ”
“That’s what it was?”
“That’s what she said. I had no reason to not believe her. We didn’t even talk it over. She said she didn’t want to. She’d decided and was moving in with a friend. Someone I knew who was single also. I’d heard nothing of Alexa dating anyone for a good year.”
“You can’t hide that if someone was cheating.”
“Exactly. That’s where the trust issue came from.
She wasn’t honest with me. Not enough. She knew where I wanted to go with our lives.
I never made a secret of it and she never said once it wasn’t what she wanted or was planning on.
I’m not bending over backwards for anyone again.
I’m not letting them call all the shots or not talk about something because it’s not comfortable for them. I can’t do that.”
He couldn’t let a little bit of himself die in the process.
That was what a relationship like that entailed.
“I’ve never been that way,” she said. “I’ll tackle the hard things. Or I try to. You might not think it because you don’t know everything. But I’ve felt you and I have talked through a lot of things already.”
“We have. And as I said, being here right now with you is huge. Being part of Micah’s life is too. You couldn’t have done it if you didn’t feel the same way my mind was going. I wouldn’t have told you what I had right now, if I didn’t feel we might get to the same page. Or am I wrong?”
Did he just open up the biggest wound in his chest for no reason at all?
“You’re not wrong.” She grabbed his cheeks with her hands and laid her lips to his. “Not in the least. And that means I have to tell you something my parents don’t even know and it could change how you feel about me.”