B: I miss you.
I stared, feeling empty, at the text. The words got bolder and seemed to lift from the screen on my phone.
Cricket and I had spent an ample amount of time typing the license plate on the car into search engines on my laptop last night. Nothing. Unless we wanted to pay twenty-nine ninety-nine to get any information on it. I’d tried that before, trying to figure out what random number had called me and hung up the second I answered. I paid whatever the company charged that promised to provide me with a name and all I got after my information was entered was the fact the number belonged to a land line somewhere two towns over. It wasn’t worth it. Though, in the back of my mind the what ifs started creeping their way into my thoughts. What if it provided more? What if it provided the name of the owner and where the car was located. Yeah, on a fat chance.
B: I have to see you.
Texting Bryant had become a regular thing. He had started texting me every morning after we had made things official. They were sappy texts, the kind of thing you’d expect to see in a romance movie. Still, as corny as they were, I hung onto his every word. Words that defined what type of person he saw me as. You didn’t know yourself until you knew what other people thought about you. How you saw yourself was not near as important as how others saw you. You had to tread carefully though. You couldn't let their opinions become the total definition of who you were, but their insight would help you find yourself.
I had learned that I was easy to be around. I gathered this by how often Bryant wanted to see me. Every damned second of every damned day. Even though I could annoy myself faster than anyone, somehow Bryant was immune to that. It was stupidly adorable.
I typed out a quick reply to him. Twenty minutes tops.
B: Can you meet us at the park?
Sure. Make that fifteen minutes.
Us. Bryant and his daughter. I had no idea why my palms started thickening with sweat. I had met Delia before. Of course, the circumstances had been different than they were now. I was now her dad’s girlfriend, not just another softball mom. Bryant had said he didn’t want Delia knowing about us until he knew she would take it well. He wanted to gauge her reaction before he went full force with admitting we were a thing.
I scrambled, without grace, across my room to find a pair of jeans and a sweater with a hood to put over the current shirt I was wearing. I slipped my shoes on before stumbling into the living room.
“Where are you going?” It was two in the afternoon and Cricket was stuffing her face with ice cream. I couldn’t blame her. She was recovering from my mental and physical break down yesterday. I’d eat some damned ice cream too if I felt I could stomach it. Her eyes floated from my neck to my untied shoes.
I knelt down to tie them. “Can I use your car?”
She finished off her last bite and let the spoon clink against the bowl. “Where are you going?” She asked again.
“Bryant wants me to meet him at the park.”
“If I take you, can he bring you back?”
I considered this for a moment before asking him so I would know for sure. It would’ve been easier for him to come get me, but I assumed his request was a last minute one. We had agreed we wouldn’t really hang out on his weekends with his daughter but that agreement was getting more difficult by the day.
B: Yeah, I can drop you off when I take Delia home.
“He said yes.” I relayed the message to her.
She threw the blanket off of her and went to retrieve her shoes from her bedroom. “Does he not realize it is forty degrees outside? What’s he doing at the park anyway?”
“It’s his weekend with Delia.”
“Oh.” She fumbled with her keys, tossing them from one hand to the other as she reentered the living room. “Let’s go.”
We pulled in the parking lot to see Bryant pushing Delia on the swings, oblivious to anything else around him. I sat in the car for a few moments, watching them both.
“I suppose it’s a good thing he wants you around Delia?” Cricket asked, disturbing the silence and breaking me out of my trance.
“It’s a slow process.” I told her, yanking on the door handle of her car. “I’ll see you soon?”
She shoved the gear shift into reverse and smiled at me. “How many days should I wait until I call the rescue team?”
I laughed and rolled my eyes at her, lifting myself from her car.
Watching Bryant with Delia was refreshing. I no longer felt jealousy when I saw a parent with their child. I saw love, happiness, and relief. Love that they had for one another. Happiness that they were living in the moment. Relief that they were spending time together and making memories for years to come. As I approached them, I was tempted to dig my nails into his sides and yell out and scare him but chose to wrap my arms around him instead.
I inhaled his scent, noticing that he was wearing cologne. I couldn’t place what name brand created it but its presence helped steal my heart. The little gestures meant everything. I noticed the first day he had worn it, after he had found out I was working at Skrillex.
He faced me and delivered a light kiss to my forehead. Within seconds, last night was forgotten and I felt nothing but relief.
“Daddy, who’s that?” Delia crept up to Bryant’s side, squeezing her frame between his arm and torso.
“Delia, this is Amberly. Remember Haylie’s mom? From softball?”
Delia’s eyes shot up and then darted around behind me, looking for something or someone. “Where’s Haylie?”
An innocent question that would be answered by a heart-retching truth.
Bryant lowered himself so he was eye level with Delia. “We’ll talk about that another time.”
“Why? Did something happen to her?”
No matter what age, death was never an easy subject. It was even more difficult when the person you were delivering the news to wasn’t quite in their teens. They wouldn’t fully understand it. It wasn’t like I could blurt out that Haylie died. No, the deliverance had to be softer. You had to treat the person you were talking to as if they were porcelain and your words mimicked the same damage as if you threw a rock at its surface.
“How about you and me go out to lunch the next weekend you come over to see me? I’ll tell you then.” Bryant was buying time. No way he wanted today to end with Delia finding out one of her past teammates was no longer around.
Delia shrugged her shoulders as if her curiosity vanished in thin air and ran off to the slide. Her brown hair tumbled behind her, creating a sort of cape behind her scalp. If the sun was out, no doubt it would make her hair sparkle.
“I missed you.” Bryant watched to make sure Delia’s back was turned before kissing me.
“I missed you too.” I said once he pulled away from me.
The remainder of the park visit played out this way, Bryant stealing kisses and me wondering when he would do it again.
Chapter 22
Man Enough Now
Bryant
“Who’s that?” Mac’s accusing question hung in the air like a thick fog, its tips spiraling towards me. She leaned to the side, trying to get a look at Amberly.
“Nobody.”
Mac huffed in annoyance, deliberately scooting herself to the side so she could get closer to the passenger side of my truck. “I wonder what she would think of the fact you think she’s a nobody.” A smirk found a way to her lips. She was testing me.
“I meant, she’s nobody you need to worry about.” I shoved Delia’s jacket into her chest, not hard enough. I opened the door and jostled Delia awake. Helping her down out of the vehicle, her sleepy eyes opened.
“Mom, did you meet dad’s new friend? That’s Amberly, Haylie’s mom.”
Something flashed across Mac’s eyes before it was replaced with a scornful look. “The ink isn’t even dry on our decree and you’re introducing our daughter to your fuck buddy?”
I cringed even though Delia had disappeared into her mom’s house. I couldn’t
even look at Amberly’s reaction before I shut the door and faced back to Mac. “She’s not a fuck buddy and even though we were just recently divorced, we haven’t been together for a long time. She’s my girlfriend. And, again, nobody you need to worry about.” I waved my arm up and down as if to display her living conditions. Living conditions, she was obviously unaware of. “You’re living with someone and you’re in contempt but I’m not saying anything about it. Speaking of, you’re raising child support?”
Hostility. Anger. Resentment. Mac was full of them all. She would never be happy. If I had figured that out earlier, I would have saved the both of us a waste of the years we spent together. “I did.” She jutted her hip out and puckered her lips, satisfied with herself.
“Nice. As if what I have given you isn’t enough.”
I shouldn’t have said it. I’d never been the one to start an argument, and I tried to defuse them before they could explode into something unmanageable. It was like with a fire, you extinguish it with water. I extinguished arguments with backing off if I felt the conversation was headed in that direction. I lowered my voice and agreed with what was said. That was how I had figured I needed to handle any confrontation with Mac. Still, the subject of Amberly never needed to be brought up. I was defensive where she was concerned. It was the first time I felt I could move on from a failed relationship.
“You’re nothing but a pussy. Letting some stranger around my daughter and now you’re worried about your money. It’s always been this way. I shouldn’t have expected anything less.”
I lowered my head and closed my eyes, composing myself before I said something I might regret. Funny, because I always regretted not saying more to Mac, not putting her in her place. “Amberly isn’t a stranger. You’ve met her plenty of times when I had the softball team. As far as the money goes, take it. I don’t care anymore.”
There’s a saying that money can’t buy happiness. But, everyone failed to mention it buys the food to feed your family. It buys the electric you need to make sure thirty-degree weather isn’t an issue. It also buys clothes and shoes for your child. In a way money buys happiness. It buys an easier life which means you can enjoy it rather than wondering where you’re going to end up.
“Whatever. You better make sure this doesn’t happen again. I’ll be damned if you have some woman, trying to take my place, around my child.”
“You’re forgetting she’s my child too. Amberly isn’t trying to take your place, and I’m not trying to fill your place. You emptied it so now there’s a new place, a place that only someone like Amberly could fill. Besides, she fills a lot more than you ever could.” The words sputtered out like a runaway tire, rolling down the hill with no obstacle to stop it.
Mac’s eyes narrowed, using them to build invisible daggers to pierce into me. “Michael told me you slept with his sister while we were together. Maybe I can tell Amberly about that. Maybe then she’d run far away because you know she will the second she finds out about you, the true you. Not the you that pretends that you love someone before trashing them.”
Confusion flooded me. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
She stomped her foot like a two-year-old child. Stomped. Her. Foot. A typical thing for her to do. “Michael’s sister. You don’t remember? Yeah, he gave me exact details. Like how you two disappeared to her car and you fucked her. It was the night you told me you wanted to hang out with the guys. You needed a moment, when really you needed an excuse to be around her.”
She was a millisecond away from screaming. “You’re delusional. I never slept with her. I’ve never even looked at Samantha in that way.”
In truth, I wanted to tell her I had slept with the entire town while we were married. We’d been split for two years and it was what she wanted, why did she suddenly care who I slept with and who I hadn’t. Did it even matter?
She flicked her hair away from her ear, if her hair had been longer this movement might have made sense. With short hair, it looked beyond ridiculous. I let her walk, not wasting any more time and got behind the wheel.
Amberly’s hand touched my shoulder and I flinched, surprised by it. “Are you okay?”
I felt her eyes searching for mine as I back out of the driveway. “I’m fine.” I mumbled. I was aware I was supposed to take Amberly home, but that’s not the direction I headed in. We pulled into my driveway, conveniently a couple minutes from Mac’s house.
I wanted to slam my hands against the steering wheel and if Amberly wasn’t with me, I would have. Every moment spent in Mac’s presence was a moment that tested my sanity.
“Don’t worry about her. I probably would have told her I had slept with the entire town if I were you.”
My head snapped up and my eyes fell across her face as I studied her to see how much truth was in her statement. That was exactly what I wanted to say to Mac. I didn’t. I wimped out. Extinguished the fire. It was what I was good at. I didn’t know how to not do it. I didn’t know how to walk away and ignore the things she said or did to me. I had to say what she wanted to hear, even if it wasn’t the truth. She didn’t want to fathom me cheating on her. It would no doubt, crush her ego. I should have crushed her ego. Should have even told her that I slept with her sister.
“I’m worried more about what she said about you.”
Amberly’s laugh filled the silence in my truck. “That I’m a fuck buddy? I’ve been called worse. Besides, we haven’t even slept together.”
I wanted to change that, so damned bad. I wanted to feel her skin against mine. I wanted to turn my aggression into something more positive.
“You should stay the night.” It sounded more like a demand than a question when it traveled to her ears.
“I need clothes.”
I started the truck back up, lifted the console up, and yanked her closer so she could be by my side. Hiding a relationship from your daughter was much harder than hiding it from your parents. It was almost as exhilarating too. I took her to her house so she could get some clothes and then we made our way back to my house, thankful she hadn’t objected.
“Why do you let her do that?”
The conversation steered to the one subject I no longer wanted to address. “Do what?” I played dumb. It was obvious what my answer should have been, what the truth was. Admitting it was harder though. I felt cornered. I had to play nice if I wanted my daughter around. She’d threatened it once, she’d do it again if I didn’t let her defeat me at her sick game.
Amberly hoisted herself onto the counter top in the kitchen. She was tiny, her frame not taking even a quarter of the counter up. “You know what.” She lowered her head and peered at me through her eyelashes.
I poured a glass of milk for her and then myself, dragging down the container of Oreo’s from the highest cabinet in the kitchen. It seemed natural, doing this with her. Drinking milk and eating cookies.
I dunked an Oreo into the milk, letting it saturate it to near sogginess before engulfing it. “Because, this state is a mother state. I don’t stand a chance if she takes me back to court.”
“What do you think is going to happen?” She asked before taking a bite of one of the cookies.
I tapped my hand against the counter, stalling the answer. Saying it aloud had brought me to tears before. Lucas had asked the same question. He had listened as I named off the outcomes of other court hearings. Divorces were common at my previous job and most every guy who had been in the force for a while had horror stories of how the judge had taken everything from them. The most devastating? Time with their children. Even if they had started off with full custody, the time was snatched from them before they had a chance to figure out why.
“She calls all the shots where Delia is concerned. I got lucky getting the visitation I did. She can take that away at a moment’s notice.”
Amberly lifted her head a bit and wiped a stray piece of cookie from her lips. To be honest, her looking at me the way she was made me want to take back the words
I said. The way she looked at me, made me want to storm back to Mac’s house and tell her everything I have been too afraid to say this entire time.
She was calculating. What, I didn’t know. Several moments of silence passed between us, a comfortable silence where she was picking what she wanted to say next.
“How long are you going to live your life afraid of what she might do and what a judge might say? You have to live your life how you want to, not based on what bullshit she might accomplish if you piss her off. How do you ever expect to maintain a relationship with another woman when your main concern is whether or not you piss off your ex-wife?”
Every word came across harsher than I assumed she intended. It punched me in the gut and then laughed at me as I figuratively plummeted to the ground. But, she was right. It was more truth than I had heard in a while. Instead of answering her, I moved my body so I was between her legs. Her hands landed on my shoulders and she was looking down at me, the questions lingering in the air unanswered.
My heartbeat was erratic, it pounded against my ribcage and begged for some sort of release. I could feel my body becoming weak the second I snaked my arms around her. I plucked her from the counter and sat her down in front of me. Her eyes never faltered from my own. She was expecting my answer minutes ago.
I couldn’t give it to her. I wouldn’t be able to move on to the future if I couldn’t release my past. How much hold would I allow Mac to have on me? Was Amberly giving me a warning that things with her wouldn’t work if I kept doing what I was doing?
I lowered my head down, pressing my lips and body against hers. She tasted like Oreo’s, no surprise. There was something urgent in the kiss we shared. She wasn’t done talking or she was telling me more with this kiss. Entranced by her response to me, I deepened the kiss. I needed her. I needed whatever she was offering.
Unbreak Me Page 14