by Erin Wright
She was back to being a very short, amazing-smelling tree, thank God. It was safer that way.
“Then, she announced she was pregnant with Aiden, and I tried to be excited about it. I’m one of those rare guys who actually wants kids of my own. My marriage wasn’t working out the way I thought it would, but I could still raise a child to be good and kind and help others, like I do when I go out to a fire. Our second boy, on the other hand, was a complete oops – the product of a makeup session fueled by alcohol, and so condoms didn’t occur to us. I was even less thrilled with Frankie than I was with Aiden, but as soon as he arrived, squalling and face all red and fists balled up, I just fell in love with him. Newborn babies are some of the ugliest creatures on the planet—” Sugar let out a little chuckle at that, and Jaxson smiled as he continued, “—but you somehow love them even more because of that. Don’t ask. Parenthood makes no sense.”
She let out a full-throated laugh at that, and he pulled her up to him, wrapping his arms around her as she buried her face against his chest. The world felt so right in that moment, and he was about to destroy all of that, but he had to, and so he kept going, because he had to.
Because he must.
“But that night…the night…I’d arranged for another firefighter to cover the last of my shift, and arranged for a babysitter to come watch the boys. I was going to take Kendra out for a night on the town. Try to bring that spark back that’d gone missing years earlier.”
“You’re a firefighter,” Sugar murmured against his chest. “You’re supposed to be putting flames out, not lighting them.” Sugar said it so deadpan, it took Jaxson a moment to register what she’d said.
He let out a belly laugh and said dryly, “Well, if I was an arsonist, I’d have even more job security.”
“That’s true! Hmmm…don’t know what I was thinking.”
He snuggled her tighter against him as Hamlet rested by their side for a minute, his panting and Sugar’s breathing the only noise in the world at that moment.
“When I came home, the boys were sitting in front of the TV, watching some Disney channel show, and I asked them where Mom was. Aiden had a funny look on his face, but he told me up in our room and so I snuck up the stairs, trying to surprise her. When I saw them in bed together…well, let’s just say that the surprise part was accomplished. I couldn’t believe she’d been lying to me for months; that she was cheating on me; but most of all, that she’d do it with the kids in the house. She’d been telling the boys that she and the neighbor were planning a big secret party for me, so they shouldn’t tell me that the neighbor had been over at the house, or that’d ruin it all.
“It’d been a well-kept secret, all right, although I can’t say I exactly enjoyed the party.”
His bitter words drifted out into the dark of the night and he just stood there, running his hands up and down Sugar’s back as he stared unseeingly into the darkness. He felt her shiver, which yanked him out of his reverie. Wow, he was such a jackass; here he was, freezing her to death while he whined and complained about his ex.
He jerked back. “I’ll take you home now,” he said gruffly. The spell was broken. It no longer seemed like a good idea to finish the story. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking. He didn’t want to admit that he wasn’t a good guy after all. He liked to think of himself that way, but he knew the truth, even if he didn’t admit it to others, and certainly not to Sugar.
He quickly began walking back towards her apartment, away from her, away from the embarrassment of it all, until she grabbed his arm and pulled him to a stop. “I’m gonna make a guess,” she said quietly, “that you’ve never told anyone else this story. Am I right?”
He stared off into the distance above her head, unwilling – unable – to look her in the eye as he jerked his head once in acknowledgement of her comment. “No one.” The words were so soft, he could hardly hear them himself, but she understood them anyway.
“Then I’m honored that you’ve chosen to tell me. I’ve done some things that I’m not proud of. I’m not gonna judge you, I promise.”
Jaxson let out a snort of disbelief. If Sugar had done anything more awful than kill a spider, he’d eat his shorts.
She didn’t respond to his snort, but instead just stood there, her hand on his arm, waiting for him to speak.
He didn’t know Sugar well; it wasn’t like they’d been dating for years, or even at all, really. But somehow, his gut told him that she could outwait him – that if he didn’t start talking, they’d still be standing still as statues on the edge of the park come morning.
He stared out into the darkness, willing his lips and tongue and lungs to do what he never wanted to do – talk about that night.
“I was angry when I found them. That sounds so blasé – people get angry all the time. Yell a little. Stomp around some. It wasn’t like that. I was so mad, there was this film of red that covered the world. I could hardly see straight. I was operating purely on instinct. I picked Ivan up, who was a little larger than me, and tossed him out of the bed. He flew across the room and hit the wall, knocking a hole in the drywall. I hadn’t even meant to throw him that hard. I was just trying to get him out of the way. I wanted to reach my wife. I wanted to hit her. To hurt her as much as she’d hurt me.
“A tiny part of my brain heard the neighbor on the phone, calling 911, but it didn’t register. Looking back, there’s this filmy haze over everything, like trying to remember a dream when you wake up the next day. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t think, I only wanted to hurt.”
He pulled Sugar into his arms again, needing her warm, slim, calming presence against him, to help him make it through this. She slipped into his arms as if she were meant to live there, as if she’d always been there, and leaned her cheek against his chest. Hamlet settled down at their feet, curling up around them, sharing the warmth. A small part of Jaxson knew that they should go indoors to finish this conversation, but he instinctively rebelled against that thought. If they were inside, then he’d be looking at Sugar as he talked, and then…
He wouldn’t talk at all. He knew it. There was no question in his mind about that fact.
This had to be done before he could wimp out.
“I’m crawling across the bed to get to my wife, to punch her or strangle her or something, I don’t know, I didn’t really have a plan in mind, and then…” He let out a shuddering sigh. “I heard my boys. They’d overheard the ruckus and had come running upstairs to see what was going on. It was quite the sight, I’m sure. The naked neighbor, slumped up against the wall, pleading with dispatch to hurry. My equally naked wife, clutching the sheets up tight, screaming at me – I still don’t know what she was saying. I just saw her mouth move.
“And then me. There I am, about to murder their mom.”
He let out a guttural laugh of pain and anger and hatred and surprise, but no humor.
There was nothing funny about this story.
“My boys saved me. They saved me from jail time, from the damn electric chair. If they hadn’t shown up just then, Aiden shouting for me to stop, Frankie crying…I can’t think about it. I just can’t.
“The cops finally arrived but I was lucky, because the only person I’d even touched was the neighbor, and my wife – who was still in shock at the time – told him that under the circumstances, he probably shouldn’t press charges. So nothing really happened, except it all got back to my chief at the fire station. I got pulled in and given a stern talking to about the proper behavior of firefighters. Part of being a public servant is that even private disputes aren’t private. If I pulled another stunt like that, they’d start the proceedings to get me fired.
“Meanwhile, my wife quickly got over her shock and used that whole scene during the divorce proceedings to paint me as a violent man who couldn’t be trusted; that I might harm or even kill one of my boys if left alone with them. She also emphasized how I was called out a lot, and how active the Boise Fire Department was. Basically, I w
asn’t a fit parent. The fact that she was screwing the neighbor, who was a drunk, while the kids were downstairs, and then asking them to lie about it to me…that didn’t seem to matter much.
“Finally, the judge told me that I needed to get a more stable job that would take me away from the kids less often, and that I needed to take anger management classes. I signed up for the classes that day, and started looking for a new job that night. I wasn’t about to screw around with this. These are my boys. I love them more than life itself. I wouldn’t harm a hair on their head for all the money in the world, and Kendra knows that. But that doesn’t play well in court for her, so she conveniently forgets it every time we step into the courtroom. If she had her way, she’d get a check in the mail each month, and I’d never see Aiden and Frankie again.
“So I’m not going to let her have her way. I won’t give them up. Not ever.”
The conviction in his voice rang out strong and true. He may sometimes wonder if he really was the good guy that he liked to think of himself as being, but he never questioned being a good father, or how much he loved his boys. That was beyond reproach. Beyond doubt.
“All of that to say,” he said with a small laugh, “that the idea of someone cheating is…a rough topic for me. There’s a lot of things that I’d be just fine with, or at least calm about, but cheating ain’t one of ‘em.”
Sugar mumbled something against his chest that he didn’t quite catch. “Come again?” he said.
She pulled back with an exasperated sigh. “For a guy who only wants to be friends with benefits, you sure are possessive,” she informed him. “That is, unless you’ve changed your mind?”
The words hung between them in the crystal cold air.
Chapter 15
Sugar
She stared up at him, her gaze steely-eyed even as her heart raced. She couldn’t believe she’d actually had the balls to say that out loud to him. She hadn’t meant to – it’d just slipped out, and then he’d wanted her to repeat it and she’d actually had the guts to say it twice.
Which was probably more surprising to her than it was to him. Jaxson didn’t know that she’d gotten this far in life by being the most agreeable person in the room; by never causing waves, no matter the situation. The fact that she was trying to change this about herself didn’t mean that the change was easy; only that she realized that she needed to try.
Although why she started with this particular topic was a mystery, even to her. As she stared up into his face, worrying her bottom lip as she waited for a response, she began to question her life choices. She shouldn’t have said anything. It was a dumb comment to make. Why, he probably—
“Oohh!” she half shouted, getting dragged sideways by Hamlet. He’d apparently decided that he was done waiting for them to be ready to go home, and was going to take them there himself, whether or not they wanted to go. She stumbled for a few feet, finally regaining her footing and pulling her Dane to a stop. “You goofball,” she said affectionately, patting his massive head. He wagged his tail, tongue lolling out of his mouth happily. “You could warn a girl before you take off walking, you know.”
They started off, together this time, down the street towards her apartment and warmth and light. She didn’t say anything, even as Jaxson took her hand and held it as they walked. It was a very un-friendlike thing to do, but since she was enjoying it, she wasn’t about to complain.
It took another block before Jaxson broke the silence. “I think we oughta just stay friends,” he announced. “There’s a lot going on in my life, and you say that dating isn’t a good idea for you either, so…friends with benefits it is. If you’re okay with that.” He pulled her to a stop and looked down at her, the street lamp throwing his face into shadows and light, his eyes dark and burning as they peered into her soul.
She didn’t know what she’d wanted him to say in response to her probing question, but she was sure she didn’t want him to say that. Some stupid part of her wanted…
Well, it didn’t matter what she’d wanted. Friends with bennies was what she was getting. She smiled gamely up at him. “Of course,” she said softly. “I just wanted to make sure that we’re on the same page, is all.”
“Good,” he breathed, his mouth swooping down to cover hers. “I’d hate to think we weren’t.” And then he was kissing her and she wasn’t breathing or thinking but only feeling as his firm lips pressed and molded against hers, and then his tongue was sweeping inside and electrical shocks were pulsing through her as she moaned, pressing herself against his hard body.
This may not have been exactly what she wanted, but for now, it was good enough.
He pulled away slightly, brushing a few strands out of her face lightly before saying with a teasing grin, “I do believe you’re gonna be more fun than any other friend I’ve ever had.”
She let out a belly laugh as they turned to walk the last block to her apartment.
Yessiree, this was good enough for her.
Chapter 16
Jaxson
Jaxson opened the front door and his two boys tumbled inside like puppy dogs, shouting and laughing as they went. His apartment wasn’t much, but it had two bedrooms – albeit small ones – which met the court’s requirement of giving the boys their own room. In a tight rental market, it was the most he could hope for.
“It’s small,” Aiden observed, his hands on his hips as he surveyed the minuscule living room. Jaxson had crammed a couch and entertainment center into it, but had to leave his coffee table behind in storage. There was no room for extraneous furniture here.
“It is,” Jaxson agreed. “But, you guys have your own bedroom back here. Come check it out!” He led them down the short hallway to the bedroom across from his, and pushed the door open. A bunk bed was against the wall, one mattress covered with a Batman bedspread and the other with Power Rangers.
“Cool, Dad!” Frankie yelled, cannonballing into the lower bunk, directly on top of Red Ranger’s face. “You bought this for us?”
“I sure did. I wanted you guys to have something here that you loved. Plus, check it out!” He flipped on the Batman desk lamp, casting the bat logo on the ceiling and they both cheered.
“Wow!” Aiden yelled, throwing his arms around his dad’s knees. “Wait until I tell Isaac about the lamp!”
Jaxson grinned. It felt good to give his sons something that they loved. It made him feel a little more like a dad, and a little less like a family friend or uncle just taking care of some kids for the weekend. “You guys put your stuff in the drawers and I’ll go get started on dinner.”
He headed back towards the kitchen / living room combo as they began arguing over who got which drawers in the dresser. He laughed quietly to himself. Some things never changed.
He pulled out the boys’ favorite – mac ‘n cheese out of a box and a package of hot dogs. He’d tried making high-end mac ‘n cheese one time, thinking that real cheese surely had to have more nutritional value than orange powdered shit, but the boys just pushed the creamy, delicious noodles around on their plates, refusing to believe that this was also mac ‘n cheese.
After that, he stuck with the fifty-cent boxes from the grocery store.
Just as the pot of water began to boil on the stove, he heard a knock on the door. The boys came running out, excitement boiling over at the idea of someone visiting, and Jaxson jerked his head towards the door. “You guys wanna open it?” he asked as he began dicing up the hot dogs. It was probably the neighbor, wanting to borrow a cup of sugar or something; whatever it was that neighbors borrowed from each other in small towns.
“Oh hi!” came Sugar’s surprised voice, accompanied by a howl of arctic air swirling through the room. Jaxson spun and stared at the front door as Sugar stared back, her face white, her eyes wide with panic. “I’m so sorry, I thought you were supposed to have them next weekend…” She stumbled to a stop, just staring at Jaxson, clearly pleading for help.
He wiped his hand on the hand tow
el and hurried over, plastering a smile on his face. “Since Kendra kept them last weekend, she let me have them this weekend,” he said. “Come in and meet them, and let’s close the front door.”
Already, he could hear the furnace kicking on, struggling to keep the apartment a decent temperature against the onslaught of frigid air. Sugar hurried in, Hamlet trailing behind her obediently.
“Scooby-Doo!” Aiden and Frankie shouted in unison.
Sugar and Jaxson both watched closely as the boys threw themselves at Hamlet, making sure that he stayed calm throughout. Not surprisingly, he was gentle as always, letting them stroke his head as he wagged his tail, clearly thrilled to be the center of attention. He was sitting so he didn’t tower over the boys, although Aiden and Frankie’s faces were right within licking range, something Hamlet was happily taking advantage of.
Their squeals of delight could probably be heard a block away, and Sugar used the cover to whisper urgently, “I really am so sorry. I didn’t mean to…I mean, your boys might think something else, and we’re not dating, and I really shouldn’t be meeting your children, and—”
He cut off whatever else she was about to say. “It’s okay. Really.” Which was a lie – a huge lie – because nothing about this felt okay. It felt exhilarating and terrifying and wonderful and puke-provoking.
The one thing it did not feel was simply “okay.” He sucked in a deep breath. “Why don’t you hang out with the boys while I finish up dinner? It’s nothing fancy—” which was the understatement of the century, “—but my boys don’t exactly have refined palates.”
She nodded, her eyes still wide with panic, her face still white, but she turned back to the boys and sat down on the ground with them, her diminutive size helping her to fit right in. Hamlet, overjoyed that Sugar was within licking distance, began giving her a thorough face bath.