37. Summer
CHAPTER 37
Summer
A week goes by fretfully but uneventfully. Jared can’t find anyone at work with a big enough grudge to mess with his kid and risk losing their job. Ryan has been combing through six months’ worth of clients and has found nothing of interest. It feels like whoever did this vanished in the wind.
The waiting is killing me. I’m on edge any time Emma is out of my sight or if I see someone unfamiliar around town or at work. So basically, I’m on edge all the time.
Today is Sunday, and while I’m exhausted from the lack of sleep, I keep finding small tasks around the house to keep busy, because if I stop and let myself think, I’ll spiral. Emma is playing in the backyard and I keep staring out the window at her while I fold Mt. Laundry on the couch.
The sound of the doorbell makes me jump out of my skin. I toss the shorts I was folding on top of the pile and go to the door. I put my eye to the peephole and breathe a sigh of relief when I see Jared standing there, leaning against the pillar.
I unlock the door and pull it open for him. I got back into the habit of locking my door all the time after the weird phone calls. “ Hey,” I say as I lead him into the living room, “I think Emma’s bag is mostly packed, but let me just double-check real quick. She’s in the backyard if you want to go say hi.” I hear him slide the back door open and step out, calling a greeting to her as I round the corner into Emma’s room.
I check through her bag making sure all of the essentials are there. We’ve done our best to make sure she has a base at both houses with all of her necessities, but she still likes to bring certain things back and forth like her stuffed unicorn that she’s had since her first birthday, some favored clothes, and whatever toy she’s currently obsessed with. I also make sure to tuck in a little note to her from me. Even though we talk every day she’s not here, I like leaving her something to find when she misses me.
I zip up her bag and heft it over my shoulder, turning off the light on the way out of her room. Emma and Jared are standing in the kitchen chatting while I set her bag by the front door. She’s chugging a glass of water, her cheeks rosy from the August heat. “Hey, Em, why don’t you go to the bathroom before we leave? We have to run a few errands before we get home,” Jared says to her, plucking the glass out of her hand.
She shrugs and says, “Okay!” She skips out of the room and down the hall towards the bathroom.
The door clicks shut and Jared turns to me while I enter the kitchen. “What’s up?” I ask, knowing this was just a tactic to get me alone for a second.
“I was thinking, what if you, me, and Ryan have dinner or something this week?” he asks in a rush. He's clearly nervous about this, but I admire the effort.
I narrow my eyes into slits, “Why would you want to do that?”
“Well, I’d say that at this point Ryan isn’t going anywhere.” He looks at me, “Right?”
“No, he’s not. I’m pretty stuck on him. ”
He nods and says, “That’s what I thought. Anyway, it’s safe to say he and I got off on the wrong foot,”
“Or fist,” I interrupt with a snicker.
He levels me with a look and chooses to be the bigger person, “Right. Anyway, the six-month relationship stipulation will be up soon, and I’d like to actually have a conversation with him before he formally meets my daughter.”
I can’t help the way my head tips back in shock. Even though he’s been better since our conversation a week ago, it's hard to reconcile this man with the one who was hurling insults my way only a month ago. The hot and cold attitude has dissipated a lot. It felt like once he shared his therapy appointments with me, he released a lot of the pressure off himself. Maybe I should be paying his therapist. “Okay,” I say slowly, waiting for the catch.
He’s right that the six-month stipulation is coming to an end soon, but I thought he’d drag it out until the last day. I clarify, “This isn’t like a ‘gotcha’ thing is it?”
He laughs through his nose, “No. I promise. I know I’ve been acting out since we split up, and I’m sorry about that. I think when I realized you were serious, it shocked me, and I didn’t know how to handle it. I really want to try to be better for Emma. Since you’re serious about this guy, I need to be cordial with him,” He shifts on his feet and scratches the back of his neck, “And, I want to apologize for how I treated you. The things I’ve said to you. It’s not okay. After Ryan decked me, I stewed on his words and he was right, which just made me more angry. I can’t disrespect you like that. You don’t deserve it, and none of the things I said about you were true. I’m just—I’m really sorry, okay?” He finally meets my eyes again, his sincerity softening them.
“Thank you for apologizing. If you keep showing an effort to be civil, we can definitely move forward. I’m not saying we all have to be best friends, but I’d like for us to be in the same room without hurling insults. ”
“Or fists?” A corner of his mouth kicks up in a rueful smile.
I laugh this time, “Yeah, or fists.”
“I’m trying to get over us and move forward. I want to be happy too.”
“I hope you find that, Jared. I really do.” A beat passes and then I look at him with wide eyes and say, “Oh shit, Emma.”
We both say, “Dammit,” and rush towards the bathroom. She’s been in there a suspiciously long time. Jared gets to the door first and yanks it open. We find Emma and her most favorite Barbie coated in hair gel and cosmetic glitter.
“I did a makeover,” she exclaims happily while gobs of clear hair gel slowly slide down the sides of her head.
“Emma,” Jared and I groan simultaneously. We quickly learned that unsupervised bathroom time lasting longer than a few minutes is always cause for concern. One time, she flushed Legos down the toilet. That was a fun call to the plumber. Another time she wrote on the mirror with a tinted chapstick and it took me several rounds of Windex and a whole roll of paper towels to clean it. This time, it's gobs of gel and glitter.
Jared sighs and says, “I’ll start the shower and you grab her new clothes?” I nod and go to get her a change of clothes.
I grab Emma a sun dress and underwear and head back to the bathroom to see Jared hosing her down with the shower head in his hand. Glitter coats the front of his soaked shirt and courses down Emma’s body in sparkly rivulets. I laugh at the absurdity of it all and cover my smile with a hand when Jared turns a glare on me.
I am always the one to laugh when Emma does something wild. It’s either laugh, cry, or scream, and laughing seemed like the most appealing option. I clap my other hand over my mouth and leave the room so Emma won’t see me laughing.
When I see Steph tonight, she is going to lose her mind when I tell her what Jared just suggested. I’m glad that I finally get a chance to see her before the school year craziness starts. She’s been doing prep work for the last couple weeks and hasn’t been able to get away. We’re hanging at her place this time since being alone at mine still gives me the heebie-jeebies. She might even call Jared herself to make sure he hasn’t been replaced with a body snatcher.