Chapter 21 Something He Can Feel
Something He Can Feel
Jamie
“Can I ask you something?”
Jamie opened his eyes to the sound of Eve’s voice. “Ask me anything.”
She started with a deep, tense sigh. Then: “What’s it like for you? Being a parent.”
Jamie chuckled uneasily, the question feeling far too heavy for the lightness of the moment.
He inhaled as he considered his answer, the ambrosial scent of Eve’s downy curls filling his nose.
Soft, citrusy, and woodsy. For this, among other reasons, he loved that she liked to cuddle after sex; another surprise in a long list of things he didn’t quite understand about her. Including this question.
“I don’t know how to describe it,” he said, absently running his thumb along her upper back. “It’s terrifying. It’s exhilarating. It can be annoying. But at the end of the day, trite as it might sound, it’s made me a better man.”
“Annoying?” she repeated, raising her chin to stare at him.
“Maybe that’s the wrong word. It’s just, I don’t know what I’m doing half the time.
Sometimes I think I got lost in the last eight years.
” He stopped short when she looked down, and he wondered if some part of her identified with that feeling.
“I just mean, I’ve spent a lot of time being Jack’s dad.
At some point, I stopped letting myself have my own identity. ”
Eve looked up again, her exquisitely arched eyebrows furrowed. “Wow.”
“What?”
“I hear of women feeling that way. Vanishing into motherhood. I’m not sure I’ve heard that from a dad’s perspective.”
“I’m not complaining about it,” he was quick to add. “I just—”
“No, I know.” She nodded and affectionately ran her knuckle along his jaw. “I appreciate the honesty.”
He had never said that out loud before, not even to Lucy, even though he imagined she had some similar feelings.
But he appreciated the question, and especially coming from Eve, who had never once initiated a conversation in the realm of Jack.
She often cut them off at the pass. He wondered if that meant she was opening herself up to the possibility of hearing more about him. Maybe even meeting him one day.
More than likely, he was getting ahead of himself. Eve would be back in New York sooner than later, so the idea of this being more than what it was was pure delusion. More than likely.
“I know it’s probably impolite to ask this, especially of a woman, but…do you ever think about having kids?”
“No.” Her answer was even drier than her usual deadpan.
Jamie peered at her as if he could see into her brain if he tried hard enough. “Do you just not like kids?”
Eve let out what he could only describe as a chortle. “Would that be a deal-breaker?”
“It would depend on the deal.”
She chuckled again, resting her face against his chest. “I guess that’s true.”
“In your mind, what is this, Eve?”
“I honestly don’t know.” Before the words were out of her mouth, she’d slipped out of his arms and rolled across the bed to grab her water glass.
Jamie watched, his eyes drawn to her muscles as she stretched and contorted along the mattress, her deep complexion a shade of blue in the dark room.
She seemed more comfortable with nudity now, but the veneer had remained in place, and so he was still waiting to see her naked.
Eve left the bed altogether, off to brush her teeth and tie up her hair.
When she returned, she claimed her usual spot in bed, their postcoital cuddle finished, he supposed.
He rolled onto his side to gaze at her, studying the side of her face as he ruminated over asking the question that had set up shop in his mind since that night Leo Coletti’s name flashed across her iPhone.
It was a simple question. Is your ex really your ex? But it was loaded with the weight of distrust and insecurity. Did she care if he didn’t trust her? Probably not. But it was boorish to ask. And still…
“Is your ex really your ex?”
“Yes,” Eve said, reaching out to touch his face. “I wouldn’t do that to you.” She studied him right back, and Jamie wondered if she recognized the vulnerability that sat in his eyes. “Lucy really did a number on you, huh?”
Jamie scoffed at the mention of her name. He gazed at Eve, the warmth of her hand on his cheek making him feel protected. “Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
“Little over a year ago, I was coming home with Jack early one morning,” he said.
He assumed she would withdraw again at the mention of Jack’s name, but she only nodded, encouraging him to continue.
“We’d been up here for the weekend, and he didn’t feel well, so I thought I’d get an early start on the road,” he explained.
“We got back to the house before sunrise, and there was a strange car sitting in our driveway, so I gave Lucy a call to make sure everything was all right.” He rolled his eyes at the thought now.
“I knew what it was, probably even before that moment, but I still walked in that house…I don’t know, thinking wishfully, I guess.
“I walk in with Jack fast asleep in my arms,” he went on, “and Lucy and this guy are knocked out on the couch. On our couch.” He expelled a soft breath. “I took Jack to his room and just laid down with him. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Jamie…”
“The thing that really got me, though…when she finally realized what happened, that I’d come home and caught her, she got mad at me .
I was over it, but she wanted to fight. Told me to ask myself whether I really even loved her.
” He smirked at the ridiculous notion, cynicism taking hold of his thoughts.
“She really tried to convince me that I was in the wrong. And for a while, I wondered if she was right.” He gazed at Eve. “So yeah, she did a number on me.”
Eve shook her head against her pillow. “How could anyone cheat on you?”
“Who knows why people do what they do.”
He went on to tell Eve of his mother doing the same to his father.
How he’d caught her with their neighbor and kept the secret for months because he’d been too afraid to break his dad’s heart.
How he hated her for that, not just then, but still, and he was trying not to, for his own sake. How he often failed at that mission.
“I always ask myself how I ended up with someone just like my mother.” He exhaled deeply as Eve continued to rub her thumb along his cheek, listening. “And just like Lucy, my mom resented me for knowing.”
“Shout-out to gaslighting,” Eve said.
“I hate how much the two of them have molded who I am,” he said. “But I spent twenty years getting over my mom, and only about a year moving on from Lucy, so…progress?”
Eve’s gaze faltered, and she took that opportunity to turn away, lying on her back to stare at the angled ceiling.
“Do you trust me?” she eventually asked.
Jamie continued to watch her. “Do you want me to?”
“I don’t know.” She thoughtfully rubbed her lower lip as she confessed, “I can’t decide whether to want nothing from you, or absolutely everything.”
Jamie kept his eyes only on her. He watched as a tear slipped out of her eye, following its path down the side of her face until it seeped into her pillow. Then another tear followed. And another after that. And in that moment, it felt like he was finally seeing her naked.
“I trust you,” he whispered. “I just don’t wanna fall in love with someone who’s taken.”
“Please don’t fall in love with me.” She turned to him, her dark eyes both searching and pleading.
Jamie was starting to think it was already too late. What was supposed to be a summer situationship had turned into something far more significant. “If I were a smarter man, I wouldn’t.”
Eve smiled. “Just keep in mind what you said about the other two women in your life.”
“Maybe the third time’s the charm.”
“Maybe it’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
“Until you leave me, at least,” Jamie said. He hated that she was there only for the summer, Labor Day marking the unofficial end of the season. But he was trying to keep her imminent departure in mind, despite his heart wanting to ignore the facts.
“Not you trying to get rid of me after you just begged me to let you in.”
“I begged you,” he said, chuckling. “Okay.”
Eve gazed at him. “I’m not ready to fall in love,” she said. “But I’m not ready to leave you either.”
Jamie could feel his heart start to beat faster at her admission, his face growing warm with that familiar concoction of excitement and relief.
Anyone with sense would’ve just let this go.
But Jamie had yet to discover anything sensible about love, like, or in between.
“Don’t you have to?” he asked, forcing himself back down to earth.
“What about Stella? The Public Theater?”
“I’ll still have a draft for Stella.” She didn’t sound confident, but rather like she was rationalizing. But Jamie didn’t know enough about the theater industry to push back in any meaningful way. Especially when all he wanted was for her to stay in Tennessee forever.
“So you’re gonna stick around?” he asked.
Eve nodded, her flirtatious expression irresistible. “Yeah.”
“Until when?”
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “But I wanna stay in the fantasy a little longer.”