Sometimes he takes a few minutes to answer my questions, which is a nice break on my arms. He might be just a kid, and I’m in pretty good shape. But anyone would have spaghetti arms after throwing around 40-50 pounds for 30 minutes.
“Definitely Black Panther,” he replies.
Interesting. Most people say Thor, Iron Man, or Captain America.
“How come?” I ask, lifting his little body out of the water and holding him over my head, preparing to throw him into the water.
“Because he’s fast and smart and rich and I love his costume.”
I nod, ready to chuck him across, when he adds, “And he was my dad’s favorite.”
I falter for a second.
I’ve only known Annie and Jones for a few days, and have only spent a few hours with them total. But this is the first time I’ve heard anything about Jones’ dad.
Well, apart from Annie mentioning that he’s dead when she was sobbing at my front door. But who knows if the guy she was talking about is Jones’ dad.
I launch Jones across the pool, and he comes up the same as always. Choking a little on the water, but laughing.
My mom was a single mom for part of my childhood, so I have great respect for parents who do it. But it has to be draining, and I wonder how Annie does it on her own with the added exhaustion of another pregnancy.
I glance over at the house and see her moving around in my kitchen, making something for the three of us for dinner. It wasn’t my plan to invite them over. It was just an accident. I saw her kid ready to explode with excitement on their porch and I couldn’t help it.
I mean, what good is having a pool if no one uses it?
Jess might not see it the same way I do. And that’s the real issue. As much as our chat last week made it seem like she’s upset that I cancelled Second Sunday, I think the real problem is that it was for another woman.
It doesn’t matter that Annie is so pregnant she looks ready to pop any day. It doesn’t matter that Jess is my girlfriend and I’ve never cheated, ever, and never would. All she’ll hear is that I’m having dinner, again, with a single woman and her son.
I sigh.
I just want to help a little bit. It seems like life has been giving her the shit end of the stick recently. I don’t know why I feel the need to try and alleviate some of the burden. I don’t feel obligated or anything, but I figure if I have the time and resources, why not do something?
Like the situation at The Garage today. She doesn’t need to know I’m the owner unless it comes up. But it felt good to help out and do that payment plan. I could see her on the security feed in my office, and the breath of relief she took when Alex told her she could pay in installments made me break out into a smile.
During the first 6 years of my life, when it was just my mom taking care of my baby sister Callie and I, she really struggled. She was a hard fucking worker, and if she had never met Gary, the three of us would have been just fine.
But she did meet my step-dad, Gary, and everything changed. There’s no use denying that additional hands make lighter work. My mom went from being a single mom with two kids and no support, to having Gary’s help and his whole family’s help too. Grandparents and aunts and cousins. It turned our little island of a family into a village. It changed everything.
If I have the opportunity to start building up Annie’s village, even just by one, I’m happy to do it. Because no one should have to face the challenges this life throws at you on their own.
I’m sure I can get Jess on board. It will probably help if I introduce them when she comes out this weekend. Maybe they’ll like each other and be friends. That happens, right?
I continue launching Jones into the pool until I hear Annie shout out through the kitchen window that dinner’s ready. She comes out the sliding door and sets some plates and cups on the patio table, then goes back inside to get the rest, waddling slowly as she goes.
I take a few minutes to dry myself and Jones off, then we head over to the table and take a seat where Annie is dishing out some pasta and garlic bread.
“I’m an absolute monster of a cook,” she prefaces as she scoops some pasta into a bowl for me. “But, I did take one of those cooking class when we lived near Chicago where they teach you to make a dish.”
She places the bowl onto a larger plate that has two pieces of bread on it and hands it over, then starts scooping food for Jones.
“If you like this, know that it’s the only thing I can cook. If you don’t, you’ve been officially warned.”
I laugh.
“So I shouldn’t expect a three course meal any time soon, then?” I ask, stabbing my fork into the pesto pasta.
She shakes her head almost violently. “Nope. I’m a one-dish-wonder.”
“Mooooooom. It’s green.” Jones’ face is morphed into disgust, and his whine is loud. Unfortunately, so is my resulting laughter.
“Dude, do you know how many delicious things are green?” I ask, setting my fork down and giving him my full attention. When Jones looks at me skeptically, I start counting things off on my fingers.
“There’s green jello, and grapes, and guacamole, and key lime pie. Basically everything mint is green. And spinach dip – so good!”
He glances at his bowl, then back at me.
“How about this,” I say, leaning back in my chair and crossing my arms. “You eat that whole bowl, and you can come over swimming every night until Halloween as long as you don’t have other things to do with your mom. How’s that sound?”
I don’t know why I’m offering this. Fuck, I should have asked Annie before saying something so off-the-wall. But I hadn’t thought it all the way through before it was popping out of my mouth.
Seems to be a pattern recently.
I glance at Annie, who has her face resting in her hands and is slowly shaking her head.
Oops.
“Really?” Jones’ excitement has him grabbing his fork.
When I look back at Annie, I see her peeking at me through her fingers. She doesn’t look mad, which is good. But I can’t figure out whether she likes this idea or not.
“Really,” I say back, deciding to accept whatever wrath comes my way.
And Jones starts attacking his food with gusto.
“Disesrullygood,” he says.
“Don’t talk with food in your mouth,” Annie corrects him.
“Sorremom,” he mumbles, completely missing the point as additional noodles are shoveled into a mouth that can’t possibly be big enough to fit everything.
“Dude, you’re gonna choke!” I say, laughing and putting my hand on the little one that holds his fork. “It’s not a race. Slow down, okay?”
He nods a little and seems to hear what I say, so I shake my head a little, still wanting to laugh, and then glance back at Annie.
I watch her train her focus on her own bowl, and I know I’ve probably stepped too far over the line. Jones isn’t my kid. I can’t just make a proclamation that he can come over and play in my pool everyday.
“Hey, Annie, I…”
“Thank you, Cole,” she says, interrupting me. She finally makes eye contact and I see a little bit of glassiness in her eyes. I thought she was mad, but this looks like a completely different emotion.
She just holds my gaze for a minute, before breaking eye contact and returning her mother’s watchfulness back to Jones.
And then Annie does something absolutely beautiful. She starts laughing this absolutely ridiculous belly laugh that has her hands resting on her stomach as if she’s going to pee her pants any second.
I look back at Jones and see he has pesto sauce all over his face and hands, and then I realize he shifted to shoveling food into his mouth with his fingers instead of his fork.
I follow Annie’s lead and just let myself laugh. Jones just keeps eating like someone who hasn’t had food in months.
“Your kid is a mess, Annie,” I say as my laughter subsides.
She lets ou
t a contented sigh and gives me a small grin, just a little tilting of her lips as her sweet laughter comes to a close. “We’re both a mess. But if you never have to deal with a bit of chaos, you never know the joy of what comes after.”
She looks back at her son, the love she has for him so vibrant and alive in her eyes that it actually makes me feel warm inside. And I let myself wonder for a moment when the last time was that anything in her life felt like something other than chaos.
We keep eating in a comfortable silence for a while longer, and just as we’re finishing up, my phone rings.
I bite out a curse when I see Jess’ name, apologize for cursing in front of Jones, then head inside to talk.
“Hey Jess,” I say, walking into the living room. I’m just about to plop onto my couch when I stop myself, remembering my damp swim trunks. Instead I lean against the windowsill and look out at Annie and Jones at the patio table. Annie is grabbing a paper towel and squatting awkwardly in front of Jones, trying to clean up his face.
“Hi babe! How was your day?”
“Good,” I clear my throat. “It was a good day. Productive. I’m just wrapping up dinner. Annie and her son are about to take off.”
“Oh.”
Then silence.
“Don’t you find it odd that she doesn’t have anything else to do but spend time with you?”
I sigh.
“Jess, her kid wanted to swim in my pool, and she cooked dinner to say thank you for when I gave her food last week, okay? It’s not a big deal.”
“Really?” Her tone indicates she thinks otherwise.
I nod, even though I know she can’t see me.
“So let me ask you this. If my friend Tom – you remember Tom, right?”
I can’t stand Tom.
“Yeah,” I bite out through a clenched jaw.
“If I go out to dinner with Tom and his son, it won’t be a big deal?”
She likes to do this. As sweet as she can be, she also flips the switch pretty quickly, and tries to draw correlations between things that are nothing alike. We got into an argument once about what movie we were going to watch and it turned into a lecture about how unsafe my garage is because of how my tools are organized. Yeah, try to guess how that happened. I still don’t know.
“Jess, those are two completely different situations. Tom is interested in you and we both know it, since he keeps asking you to dinner even though you’re in a relationship. So it’s not a hypothetical that he would take you out. I am not asking Annie out to dinner. She’s my neighbor and new to the area and my guess is that life has been kind of shit to her recently. That’s all. She just needs friends, okay?”
“If you don’t understand why this is a problem,” Jess responds, her tone anything but pleasant, “then you and I have an issue.”
I groan.
“Come on, Jess. Don’t make this into something bigger than it is. I’ll introduce you when you come out tomorrow, okay? You’ll see there’s nothing to worry about.”
She lets out a sigh.
I feel like our conversations recently have been nothing but groans and sighs, and not the good kind. No matter what is going on, I inevitably do something that makes her upset.
“I gotta go,” she bites out, choosing to get off the phone instead of talk this out. Which works just fine with me, although I’m sure my mother, who fashions herself to be a relationship therapist even though she definitely isn’t, would have something to say about not hashing things out. “I’m gonna leave early and should be there around 2 tomorrow okay?”
We say our goodbyes, and I glance out the window, where Jones is finished eating and laughing at something Annie is saying.
When Jess sees these two, she’ll see the same thing I do. My pregnant neighbor and her sweet son.
Jess shouldn’t be worried. Objectively, I can understand why she is uncomfortable with me spending time with Annie. Yes, she’s single. And yes, she’s beautiful. Which was quite the little stunning realization when I found her standing at my door today.
When I saw her on Sunday, she looked a little bit homeless, like she hadn’t showered in a while, her hair in a knotted bun on her head with chunks falling out, stains on her clothes, and red, puffy eyes. I could tell she was an attractive woman, but my sexy radar wasn’t going off.
And then I pulled up on my motorcycle today, and at first, I wasn’t sure who was standing at my door. It was the basketball under her shirt that gave her away.
Annie has that clean-cut soccer mom look going on. Her thin, blonde hair is cut in chunky layers around her shoulders. Really white teeth and a big smile, albeit not entirely genuine. She has what I’m guessing is a fairly athletic build, but being a million days pregnant will have an affect on what that looks like, so who knows, really? If I had to bet my life on something, it would be that Annie would fit in at a country club or black tie event. Something fancy and upper-class. Apart from the fact she’s been kind of a crying disaster recently, she seems like someone who is typically really ‘put together.’
Annie may be beautiful, but she looks like she could be in a JC Penney’s catalog with a husband and two kids dressed in hiking gear and standing outside of a tent.
I go for girls more like Jess. She’s a little rough around the edges. Tattoos across a lot of her body, a bit of a goth thing going, nose ring, eyebrow ring, tongue ring – because, fuck yes – and color in her big curls that reach down to her ass.
She works at a bank, which is hilarious. I’ve seen her in the getup she wears to work. Her ever-changing stripes of hair color are hidden in a bun, all of her tattoos are covered by her outfit, and her piercings are all replaced with clear plastic.
I guess you could say she’s punk rock, and that’s typically what I’m attracted to. Bad ass, color, tats and piercings. Problem is, the bad ass typically comes with a bad attitude. Now, Jess is pretty mild, but I definitely get plenty of sass from her on a regular basis. I don’t mind playfulness, teasing, and a woman with plenty of opinions. I’m not some domineering prick who has to always be in charge.
But I guess when I say sass about Jess, what I really mean is that she’s a sasshole. She’s very in my face about a lot of shit, and as more time passes, the more I see it as frustrating instead of endearing.
Annie catches my eyes through the window and I give her a tight smile.
Jess has nothing to worry about, but who knows how she’ll react when she meets Annie.
When I return to the table outside, Jones has finished his dinner and Annie is wiping his face with another paper towel. Once she’s done, she slips his floaties back on and he races over to the pool, doing a massive belly flop, likely leaving a layer of pesto grease floating along the top of the water.
The kid has style.
“Sorry about that,” I say, taking a seat and setting my phone on the table. “It was my girlfriend, and she hates when I ignore her calls.”
I wince inwardly. The last thing I should be doing is whining about my girlfriend to another woman. That’s just not-being-a-dick-boyfriend-101.
But Annie doesn’t seem to notice.
“No worries. What’s her name?”
I smile. “Jess. Jessica. She lives in San Diego.”
“Oh, that sounds like it would suck.” Then her face drops. “No offense.” She lets out a laugh. “Sorry, foot in mouth. I just mean I did the long distance thing with Andrew when I was in high school and he went off to college, and I was just so completely miserable. I don’t know if I could ever live far apart from someone I’m in love with ever again.”
I nod, my unease at talking about Jess rising just slightly. There’s literally nothing inappropriate about our conversation. But… I don’t know. Maybe knowing Jess doesn’t like that Annie is here is making me feel like we shouldn’t be talking about her?
I also don’t really know how to respond, because for the first time, I’m realizing that Jess and I have been together for two years, and we’ve never said I love yo
u to each other. Are we in love? I guess. I mean, sure. Yes. Yes we’re in love. I’m sure we are. It’s been two years. We obviously care about each other. A lot. Isn’t that love?
“It’s not so bad,” I finally say on a shrug, pushing off the awkward feeling that continues to bubble around in my stomach and is starting to crawl up my chest. “We see each other most weekends, so…”
I let the sentence trail off.
“And she’ll be here this weekend, actually. You’ll get to meet her, if you’re around.”
Annie smiles.
“How did you meet? I’m assuming there’s a story if she lives in San Diego. Did she move away from here?” she asks, leaning back in her seat and taking a sip from her glass of water.
“Nah, she was driving through the area. Her car broke down.” I pause. “I guess you can say I rescued her.”
“So you’re a knight, then, rescuing damsels in distress?” she asks, a small smile on her face.
I laugh. “I’m definitely not a knight,” I reply with a firm shake of my head. “But I do try to help when I can.”
She gives a small nod, her eyes flicking back over to check on Jones, who is doing cannonballs into the pool.
“So she won you over pretty quickly then, huh?”
“Yeah, you could say that. It was a Sunday, which is normally my day off. But I had some time sensitive work to get done and her car broke down. The tow truck brought it to our shop even though we were closed.” I shrug, not wanting to dive too deep since I don’t want to share just yet that I own The Garage.
“Sounds like fate,” she says, softly. When I look over I see a warm smile on her face. See, if she was interested, if there was a reason I should be cautious about talking to her about this, she wouldn’t be all swoony about my relationship with someone else. Jess has nothing to worry about.
“Well it sounds like you two have something special. Any plans for one of you to relocate?”
Her question is innocent, her face relaxed. There is nothing malicious about what she said, and yet it stirs something bitter inside of me. Something that rings softly but surely of discontent. Which doesn’t make sense. I’m very comfortable in my relationship with Jess.
Like You Mean It Page 6