And then there’s the subway itself. More than once, I’ve let go of the metal bar for a split-second while preparing to dismount or maybe my hand was getting sweaty—who knows?—and then ended up sprawled on the floor. The floor of the subway, which is the most disgusting surface known to man. And if I had a stop to get off at, then forget it. I would definitely miss it. And someone would inevitably have to help me to my feet.
When I was twenty-five and poor, I’d risk it. Now I’m thirty-four and I’ve got my own vehicle, so I’m damn well not getting near the subway.
Today is Memorial Day, and Lily spent last night at Theo’s place, even though it’s not one of his usual days to see her. She begged to go over there, and Bailey said it was fine. It was nice having the place to ourselves again, but I can’t help but notice she’s been spending more nights there than she used to several months ago. Theo used to have a myriad of excuses ready to get out of spending a night or evening with Lily, but now he’s always up for it.
I wonder if he really has changed.
When I pull up to the corner in front of Theo’s building, Lily and Theo are standing together, side-by-side. Theo holds up his hand and yells out “Go!” And then the two of them go running.
I watch them race as I get out of the car. Theo is holding back, letting Lily stay just ahead of him. Lily, on the other hand, is so incredibly proud of herself for beating her father in a footrace.
“I won!” she screeches, when she ends up back on the corner about five steps before he does. “I won! I won!”
Theo wipes imaginary sweat from his brow. “Wow, you are fast, Lily. How did you get so fast?”
“I practice, silly.” She’s doing a victory dance now, spinning around happily. “We run during gym at school, and I’m the fastest of everyone.”
“I’ll bet you are,” Theo says.
She frowns. “But nobody will ever race me at home.”
“I can race you if you want, Lil,” I say.
Lily laughs. “No, you can’t!”
She didn’t mean to be cruel, but her words are a slap in the face. To be fair, there’s every reason for her to think I can’t race her. For starters, any time we’re together lately and she walks too briskly, I have to tell her to slow down. I don’t give off vibes of a champion sprinter.
“I can race you in my wheelchair,” I mumble, but she’s not even listening anymore. She’s babbling to Theo about running, and how it’s her new favorite sport, and maybe someday she’ll be a professional runner.
That’s not a realistic career. Professional runner? Come on. Entomologist makes a lot more sense.
“All right, Lily,” Theo says. “I’ll see you next weekend, okay?”
“No!” Lily whines. “I don’t want to go! I want to stay!”
Theo lifts his eyes to glance at me. “I wish you could stay too. But Noah is here to pick you up.”
“But I’m having fun!” Her eyes fill with tears. “Can’t I please stay a little longer?”
If I were Lily’s real parent, I’d tell her to get in the damn car and quit arguing. But a tiny voice inside my head is telling me that Theo has more of a right to be with her than I do. He’s her father—of course she doesn’t want to leave him. I can’t stop thinking about how proud she was to show him off at her recital last week.
Theo scratches at his bald skull. “I’m sorry, Lily…”
She swipes tears from her eyes as she plops herself down on the steps to Theo’s building, next to her unicorn backpack. “It’s not fair. I always have to leave when I’m having fun…”
I do a few calculations in my head. Bailey won’t be home from work for another hour. I bought Lily a new book about bugs, and I thought we could spend the extra time reading it. But… well, maybe she’s not into bugs as much anymore.
“Listen, Lily,” I say. “There’s a diner down the block and… how about if I go get myself a cup of coffee and you can race with your dad a little longer. Okay?”
Lily lets out a whoop, and I know I’ve done the right thing. Even Theo’s face breaks into a grin. “Thanks, man,” he says.
“No problem.”
A crease appears between his eyebrows. “Hey, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
Last time Theo said that to me, I had to get him a job. “Sure.”
He nods at my 4Runner. “What kind of booster seat do you have?”
I blink at him. It’s the last thing I expected the man to say. “Huh?”
His smile is crooked. “Bailey was always reading me the riot act about not having a booster seat for Lily in my car, and I used to argue with her that I never had one as a kid, but… the truth is, I couldn’t afford it. But I’ve got some extra money now, and I want to make sure Lily is safe in my car.”
My mouth falls open, and I’m not sure what to say. Theo is actually trying. He’s trying to be a good dad in a way he never did before.
“I’ve got a Graco seat with the high back,” I say. “It was about sixty bucks.” He pales slightly at the price. “But there’s a backless version that’s maybe twenty bucks.”
“Well…” He chews on his lip. “The one with the high back is safer?”
“I think at her height and weight, the backless one is fine.”
“Okay.” He nods. “I’ll get it this week.”
I’m glad he’s getting that booster seat. I was furious when Bailey informed me he was driving her around in his car without a booster seat in it. I was two seconds away from buying him one myself and giving it to him, but Bailey assured me he’d refuse to use it and I’d be wasting my money.
Theo has changed. It’s a good thing.
At least, it’s a good thing for Lily.
Chapter 35: Bailey
Before Noah came along, Lily and I were usually not very formal about dinner. She tends to get hungry at five o’clock, when only little kids and old people eat dinner. So I used to let her eat in front of the television, and then I’d eat on my own at a more reasonable hour.
When I moved in with Noah, he was shocked by this arrangement. Of course, I immediately felt inadequate that his single mom prioritized family dinners when I didn’t. I ate dinner in front of the TV plenty of times when I was a kid, he finally admitted. But I always thought when I had my own family, we’d all eat together.
And so now we do.
We’re having spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. I wanted to make the meatballs from scratch, but time got away from me, and Noah’s got to leave soon for a night shift at the hospital, so we’re having defrosted meatballs instead. They don’t taste as good as my own, but it’s not a huge difference, honestly.
“I love pisgetti,” Lily says as she happily dangles a strand of spaghetti over her mouth.
“Spaghetti,” Noah corrects her, although he’s smiling. “Spaghetti” is one of the few common words Lily still mispronounces regularly, and I almost wish he wouldn’t correct her. It’s cute.
“Pisgetti,” she says again, more uncertainly this time. I’m not sure she can hear the difference.
Noah laughs. “Close enough.”
Lily licks all the sauce off the spaghetti, then finally eats the noodle itself. She can’t manage to eat anything normally. “Daddy likes spaghetti,” she comments.
“Is that so?” I murmur. She’s been talking about Theo a lot lately. I wish she wouldn’t, especially around Noah, but what am I supposed to do? Tell my daughter she can’t talk about her own father?
“Uh huh.” She picks up a new strand of spaghetti. “He also likes cheeseburgers. Medium-rare. With a beer.”
I avoid looking at Noah. “Very interesting.”
“You know what I wish?” she says.
I take a sip of my Diet Coke. “What do you wish?”
“I wish Daddy could live with us again.”
I start coughing violently on my soda. Wow. I did not expect that one. Yes, Lily’s been more excited to see Theo lately, and he’s certainly been stepping it up a bit in
the dad department, but that one really shocked me. When Theo first moved out years ago, Lily used to ask when Daddy was coming home, but it was more out of curiosity than anything. This is the first time she’s ever expressed that she wants him to live here again.
I glance at Noah, who is silent, his eyes staring down at his plate as he shoves spaghetti around in circles. “Lily,” I say patiently. “Your father and I are divorced.”
“So?”
“So you can’t live together when you’re divorced.”
“Why not?”
I don’t know how to answer this line of questioning. And it’s even harder with Noah right here. I can’t even imagine what he must be feeling now that his would-be stepdaughter is asking to have her father move back in. Especially since I know how much he cares about Lily and has tried so hard to be the dad he feels she deserves.
Before I can say anything more, Lily starts building her case. “Sarah’s dad lives with her,” she says. “So does Leah’s dad. And Graham’s dad. And Madelyn’s dad. And Oliver has two dads living with him.”
Noah stands up abruptly from his chair. He pulls the napkin off his lap and tosses it on the table. “Listen, Bailey, I’ve got to get to my shift.”
“Oh…” I glance down at his plate, which still has plenty of food on it. “Are you… I mean, you should finish eating.”
“I’m not that hungry.” He shrugs, but I see a vein standing out in his neck. “I’ve got to get to the hospital.”
“Well, if you have to…” My heart speeds up in my chest. I mouth the words: “I’m sorry.”
He nods, but it’s hard to read the expression on his face. He’s got to be hurt. Lily isn’t doing this to make him feel bad, but there’s no way this isn’t affecting him. He’s gone out of his way for her over and over, but she still prefers Theo. I don’t get it.
Lily is oblivious to the angst she’s caused as Noah shuts the door a little louder than he needs to as he leaves the apartment. She’s munching on a meatball, licking off the sauce first, then eating the outside, all the while maintaining it in ball form as she devours it.
“Lily,” I say, “do you know how much it hurts Noah’s feelings if you say you want your father to live here?”
She looks up from her meatball. “Why?”
Is she really so cruel? Lily isn’t heartless. If anything, she’s more sensitive than most kids. “You realize,” I say, “that if your father moved back in, Noah would have to leave.”
Her mouth falls open. “He would? But why?”
Okay, she isn’t cruel, just clueless. “Because you can’t have two men living together like that.”
“But Oliver’s dads—”
“That’s a different situation,” I say through my teeth. “Oliver’s dads are a couple. If your father lived here, Noah couldn’t live here.”
She considers this, her eyebrows knitting together. “But I don’t want Noah to leave!”
“Well, that’s what would happen.”
“Then I want Noah to stay here,” she says without hesitation.
That brings a smile to my lips. “Even instead of your dad?”
She nods emphatically. “Daddy’s got an apartment already. Also, Noah makes you smiley. You don’t cry anymore now.”
Oh God. I didn’t know Lily was aware of the times I’d suddenly burst into tears in our pre-Noah days. I did my best to hide it from her—if I felt the tears coming on, I’d race out of the room before she could see. But there were times when the loneliness and the lack of money and my whole pathetic life would get the better of me.
But I don’t feel that way anymore. This last year with Noah, I’ve felt happy in a way I never imagined I would ever again.
“Also,” she adds, “he knows everything about bugs.”
I grin at her. “He sure does.”
Chapter 36: Noah
I can’t shake the bad feeling in the pit of my stomach for the next several days. I put in more time at the gym—too much time—but I still don’t feel good. I want to marry Bailey. I want her and Lily to be my family.
But at the same time, I wonder if things will never be the way I want them to be. Theo is always going to be Lily’s dad, and I can’t change that. When Lily said she wanted Theo to move back in with them, it was like a knife in my heart. Bailey tried to tell me that Lily didn’t understand we couldn’t all just live together under one roof like one big colony of hippies. She insisted Lily was really upset at the idea of me moving out, but I’m not so sure.
Theo and Lily have gotten close lately. She has a chance at a real relationship with her father—something I always wanted as a kid and could never have. I’m the one person standing in the way of that.
Thursday is a rough shift at the ER. A multi-trauma comes in early—a bad car accident in which one of the passengers gets rushed to the OR, and I hear later he didn’t make it. That sort of shit haunts me. I’ve lost a few patients over the years, and even though I don’t get to know them that well in my line of work, it stays with me. I lost one pediatric patient my second year on the job, and I still remember how the entire ER was muted for a long time after we called the time of death. I will never forget that day for the rest of my life. Never.
So by the time I get home, I just want to relax. And I’m not thrilled when the first thing that happens when I walk in the door is I nearly slip and fall. I catch myself, but just barely. And then I say a few words I’m glad Lily isn’t in the room to hear.
I look down and see a bunch of magic markers. “Bunch” is an understatement. There are no fewer than fifty magic markers scattered across the living room floor. In fact, the whole room is a disaster. I don’t know what sort of arts and crafts project Lily’s been working on in here, but it’s bad. There are markers everywhere. She’s cut little pieces of white paper that are littering the floor under the coffee table. And glitter. There is so much glitter. So much.
Best of all, Lily is nowhere to be seen. She just made this mess and then left. I don’t get that. If I had raised her, she would know not to leave a room without cleaning up her mess. That’s what my mother taught me.
Bailey is nowhere in sight either. All I see is her cell phone charging on the kitchen counter. It buzzes twice loudly, indicating she got a text.
“Lily!” I yell.
Lily bounces out into the living room, her hair in a messy ponytail. Her dress is just as messy as the room, covered in glitter and marker stains. I don’t feel comfortable putting her in the shower because… well, she’s a little girl and I’m an adult man who is not her father. Not appropriate. That said, there are times when I want to run a hose over her.
“What’s this mess out here?” I ask her.
Lily regards the coffee table and the floor with curiosity, as if she’s seeing it all for the first time. “Oh.”
Bailey must have heard me yelling and comes into the living room. Apparently, she didn’t know what Lily was up to, because she looks just as shocked as I was by the appearance of the living room. She winces. “Oh, geez. Lily, what were you doing in here?”
“Playing,” she says simply.
“All right,” I say. “Well, now it’s time to clean it up.”
Lily looks less than thrilled. “But I’m busy. I’ll clean it up later.”
“No,” I say patiently. “You’re going to clean it up now.” Before I break my neck on a marker.
Her lower lip juts out. “But I’m busy. I don’t want to!”
Bailey’s cell phone buzzes a couple more times. Buzz, buzz. Someone is texting her repeatedly. She glances at her daughter, then back at me. “I’ll help you clean it up, Lily. Okay?”
Is she kidding me? “Bailey, come on,” I say. “You know what happens. You say you’ll help, but then you end up doing all the work. Lily made the mess by herself, why can’t she clean it up by herself?”
“It’s too much!” Lily wails.
Her lower lip is trembling. When I first moved in with Bailey and Lily, I was
taken in by Lily’s act, but now I can see it for what it is: fake tears any time we ask her to do something she doesn’t want to do. She turns it on like a flick of a switch. I have no idea how Bailey doesn’t see through this. Lily’s a good actress, but she’s not that good.
“I’ll help you,” Bailey says quickly.
Buzz, buzz. I glance at Bailey’s phone. It’s starting to irritate me—who the hell keeps texting her? “Bailey,” I say firmly. “Lily is capable of cleaning up her own mess. Let her do it herself.”
“Noah, please,” she murmurs. “Just… let me handle this.”
“But you’re handling it wrong.”
Lily has quieted down now, watching our interaction. Maybe I should back down. After all, I’m new to this game. But whatever Bailey has been doing with Lily, it hasn’t been working. Before I stepped in, Lily couldn’t even read. I don’t fault Bailey for that. I know first-hand how hard it is for a mom to manage it on her own. They need my help. Lily is a good kid, but she needs a little discipline. She needs a father figure. God knows, her real father has never provided that for her.
Bailey grabs me by the arm and tugs me into the kitchen so Lily won’t be able to hear us. “Lily and I will clean together,” she says firmly. “That’s what we always do.”
“Come on. This is a joke. She’s manipulating you.”
Bailey’s eyes widen. “Don’t say that about my daughter!”
“But it’s true.”
Buzz, buzz.
“Listen.” Her voice is low and angry. “If I say this is what we’re going to do, this is what we’re going to do.” She punches her fists into her hips. “She’s my daughter, Noah. Not yours.”
I flinch like she just decked me. It takes a second for Bailey to realize what she said, and then some of the fire goes out of her eyes. But of course, it’s too late.
I can’t fucking believe she said that to me.
I love them. I love Bailey, of course, but I love Lily too. A lot of the time, I forget she isn’t my own flesh and blood.
But Bailey hasn’t forgotten. And neither has Theo. And they never will.
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