“Okay.” She taps the pen on the book. “Let me ask you a couple of questions. What are your interests?”
“Hockey,” I answer right away without thinking twice.
“Okay, so hockey.” She writes it down. “Every account I run has a theme of five things so people know your branding. Like for Miller, it’s fitness, hockey, his dog, golf, and fishing.” I smile when she says that.
“Only Miller could do fitness and fishing at the same time,” I joke. “Okay, so I’m hockey, fitness, Ari…”
“Yeah, I got those already. I had an idea on my way here to help grow your audience,” she says. “I was actually looking through it after we got off the phone.”
“You went to check me out?” I joke with her, and she rolls her eyes, making me laugh. It actually feels good.
“I always check out potential clients,” she says, tapping her pen, and I can see she is a bit uncomfortable.
“But I’m not your client,” I say. She shrugs, and I see that her face turns a bit pink.
“How comfortable are you with having Ari on your Instagram?”
“Not at all,” I say right away. “I don’t want her out there.”
“But she’s who you are,” Candace tells me. “She is everything that you are. There is no Ralph without Ari,” she says. “I don’t know what happened.” She avoids eye contact with me. “But you’re a single dad.”
“You don’t know what happened?” I ask, shocked, and she shakes her head. “Cassie died giving birth to our child. Alone in a room without me. I stood there in the white hallway waiting for her to come back. They rushed her into surgery when her blood pressure fell.” I swallow, thinking back to the day. I haven’t been able or actually I haven’t wanted to tell anyone anything. But with her, I want to tell her, and I’m ignoring the reason. “Told me they were going to get her situated and then come back out and get me. So I stood there looking up at the fucking ceiling while she died on the table.” I say the words and see the pain on her face right away, and I don’t want it. I don’t want her to look at me with the same look everyone else gives me when I say the words out loud.
“Ralph,” she says, blinking away the tears in her eyes and trying not to cry. “You don’t have to—”
“When the nurse came out and told me that she died on the table, I collapsed onto my knees, and then I threw up. I must have passed out at some point because when I opened my eyes, I was on a bed and the doctor was examining me.”
“I can’t even imagine the horror of that,” she says. She walks over to me now and puts her hand on my arm. “It must have been horrible.”
“I don’t even know if I understood what he was saying. It’s almost as if I was having an out-of-body experience, and I kept thinking this has to be a nightmare. He has to be lying. I listened to the words that came out of his mouth, but I can’t remember much from that time. What I do remember is when they brought Ari in and placed her in my arms. She was wrapped in this white blanket and a pink hat and the biggest eyes I have ever seen in my life and at that moment”—I smile now—“I knew then that I had to be strong for her. I live for her, and I’m not sure I’m okay with sharing her with the world.”
“I get it,” she says. “What if we have a Daddy and me segment?”
“What?” I ask. She leans over, her hand reaching out to rub Ari’s cheek with her finger.
“It’s Ari’s and your world.” She smiles at her and holds up her hands to grab Ari. I want to stop her from touching my girl, but Ari throws herself at her, and Candace catches her, kissing her cheek. “You can post things that you try with her. Little clips of what is working for you.”
“Like how I get her to stop crying at three a.m. when she’s been up for four hours, drank three bottles, and has a clean diaper, and all I want is for her to stop crying?” I mention. “How I put her in the car and took a drive for an hour just so she could sleep?”
She looks at me and then looks at Ari. “Yeah, like that,” she says, and my eyebrows go together. “Are there any sponsored brands that you have to wear?”
“I’m working on that,” I answer. “I just wear my Dallas stuff,” I trail off, and she looks at me.
“Okay, so this is how we are going to start,” she says. “We are going to close down your website.”
I laugh at her. “I don’t have a website.” She looks at me smiling.
“Well, you actually will,” she says. “I want to post a picture of last year’s hockey thingy.”
“Hockey thingy?” I joke with her, making Ari laugh. “You mean headshot?”
“Yeah, that,” she says. “We are going to post it on your Instagram and Facebook and tell them that new content is coming and all that good stuff.” I look at her. “What?” she asks.
“I don’t really have a Facebook page,” I say. “I mean, I did at the beginning, and then it slowly faded because I didn’t keep up with it.”
She looks at Ari. “Your dad is really making this hard for me.” Ari turns to her, grabs her face, and sucks on her cheek. Instead of throwing her off or giving her to me, she just squeezes Ari closer to her. “Also, what do you think of doing charity?”
“What?” I ask, not sure my heart can focus on anything except the sight of my girl loving someone other than me.
“Is there a charity you promote or are associated with?” she asks. Ari lets go of her face, and Candace has drool running down her face and she just walks over to the table, not skipping a beat. “You used to help Justin with his, right?”
“Yeah, for underprivileged children,” I say. “I never thought of starting my own. To be honest, it was on my bucket list. But with everything that’s happened, it was put on the back burner.”
“Do you have an assistant?” she asks, and Ari starts to whine in her arms.
“What do you think?” I laugh at her and just watch her with my daughter.
“Ariella.” She looks at my daughter and wipes Ari’s face before wiping her own cheek. “What are we going to do with your dad?” She looks at me. “Okay, I think we need more time to meet,” she says.
“Well, my schedule is open most days. Miranda comes to watch Ari, but other than that . . .” I say.
“This is what you need to do. Step one is you need to set up a photo shoot,” she says, and I put my hands on my hips. “It’s going to be fine. We can use the pictures for a good six months.”
“Great,” I say and then see that Ari is getting really fussy now. I walk to the kitchen and prepare her bottle.
“What kind of charity do you want to work with?” she asks as she bounces Ari up and down to make her stop whining.
“Definitely underprivileged children,” I say. And then without even thinking, I add, “I was bounced from foster home to foster home, and the only thing that saved me was hockey.” She looks at me. “It’s not something that I talk about,” I say, avoiding looking at her. “My mother had me at seventeen. She couldn’t handle a newborn with the need to party every single day, so my grandparents took me in. When I was seven, we were in a car accident, and I was the only one who survived.” I make the bottle, trying not to think about the sound of metal clinking together as the firefighters fought to get me out from under the rubble. “They tried to find my mother, but she never did leave a forwarding address, so I was sent into foster care.”
“That must have been hard for you,” she says while she holds Ari lying down in her arms.
“It was tough not knowing where you were going to go next. All my clothes were in a brown paper bag.” I have never told anyone this story—never shared this part with anyone—and I don’t know why I’m doing it now. “Lucky for me, I was good at hockey, so I got a scholarship for high school and didn’t really need anyone except for in the summertime.” When I walk over to her with the bottle in my hand, I see her blink away tears, trying not to let me see. “It’s why I’ll never leave Ari or have someone do something for her. She is never going to feel unloved.” I look at my baby g
irl as she looks at me but stays with Candace. I hold up the bottle. “She is never going to feel like that.” I hand Candace the bottle, and she grabs it, but our hands touch, and I just hold it there. “It’s also why I’ll never give my heart to anyone.” I don’t say it’s because I never gave Cassie my heart, which is why it hurts so much. “She owns my heart.”
Chapter 11
Candace
If my heart could shatter in my chest, it would be now as he looks at his daughter with all the love that he has. Telling me that she is the only one who will have his heart, I want to drop the bottle and hold his face in my hand and finally release the tears started when he told me about Cassie dying and then about his childhood. He avoided looking at me, and I was glad he did because he didn’t see the tears rolling down my face that I had to quickly wipe away. The only one to see them was Ari as she looked at me with her big blue eyes, and at that moment, I fell more in love with her.
“Do you want to feed her?” I ask as we both hold the bottle. “She is pretty comfy.” I look down, seeing her resting against my breast. “But I can hand her over.”
“No,” he says and drops his hand. I walk to the couch and look down at her. She opens her mouth the minute she sees the bottle. Her hand holds my finger as she drinks. “So do you think I’d be able to start a foundation?” I look at him as his eyes light up. “Not going to lie, it would be pretty cool if I could help people.”
“I think you can,” I say. “I think anyone who wants to help kids should be able to. I think that if you are comfortable with telling your side of the story, it might get even more notice,” I say as I watch his eyes. “But you don’t have to. You can just leave it at wanting to share.”
“Justin had a great summer hockey one where all the underprivileged kids spend the whole summer. It’s where he met Caroline.”
“Yeah,” I say, thinking of their fairy-tale love story. “I heard. I can also ask Allison how Max started his, and we can go from there.”
“You would help me with this?” he asks, and I start to say no. My head tells me that it’s not a good idea. My heart tells me to run away, but my mouth, it’s not wired with the other parts of me.
“As much as I could,” I say before I can actually tell him no. I look down at Ariella, and she smiles while she drinks, and some of the milk spills out at the same time she lets off the biggest fart. I just laugh as I hear the explosion happen. “Well, then,” I say to her and then look up when I see Ralph shoot out of his chair and rush over to me. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m going to say this as delicately as I can,” he says, sitting on the glass table in the middle of the room. Looking around, I realize this room doesn’t even feel like him. I look at him now as he sits down in front of me. His blue eyes look a little lighter. “When she blows, she blows.”
“I’m going to say this as delicately as I can.” I look at him. “I have no idea what you mean.”
“I mean that fart”—he points at Ariella, who looks at me again with a huge smile as she lets another one rip—“can go from a fart to full blown everywhere.” He uses his hands to mimic an explosion. I suddenly feel wetness soaking into my leg, and my mouth opens wide and so do my eyes.
“Oh, God.” He gets up. “It’s happening.” I watch him as he runs to the kitchen, and I suddenly hear water running.
“Pretty girl,” I say. “That is not polite.” She kicks her feet and the hand that I have under her is now wet. “Um, Ralph!” I yell for him as he rushes out of the kitchen with a pair of scissors.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
“I’m going to cut her out of her onesie,” he says, and I laugh.
“What? Why?” I ask him, shocked, looking down to see the pink onesie with butterflies all over it.
“What do you mean why?” he asks. Getting up, I try not to move her as I walk over to the kitchen and put the bottle down on the table. “Trust me when I say this. We need to just cut it off her, or it will be everywhere.”
“How many onesies have you cut off her?” I ask, trying not to laugh when he shrugs. “Can you get me two towels?” I say, and he just looks at me. “Trust me.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He turns and runs down the hallway to the bathroom. “And her soap and shampoo,” I say and look down at Ariella who is babbling away while chewing on her finger. He runs back in with what looks like four towels and then looks at me. I walk into his massive kitchen with stainless steel appliances. The light beige countertops make the dark wood cabinets pop more. Making my way over to the kitchen sink, I see that it’s huge, and she could definitely be washed in there.
“Where do you give her a bath?” I ask, and he points down the hallway he just came from. “Is it a deep tub?” He just nods. “Okay, let’s do it here. I want you to put a towel down on the counter right next to the sink.” He walks over and puts one towel down and then another one over it.
“I don’t want it to be too hard for her head in case,” he says, and I swear if I could fall in love with a man, he would be it. I walk over and place her down on the towel, putting my hand on her chest to make sure she won’t roll anywhere. I finally look down and see the brown stains seeping into my white silk blouse.
“I will pay to replace the shirt,” he says, looking at me.
“You stay away from me and my shirt with those scissors. I refuse for you to cut me out of my clothes,” I joke with him, and I suddenly picture his hands ripping open the buttons. Ariella’s squealing cuts through my daydream.
“Is that water okay?” He walks over to the sink beside me and puts his elbow in and then nods his head.
“Okay, here we go,” I say, seeing that she has poop all over her legs, and she is vigorously kicking. “I found out the trick once when I was watching Zoey,” I start saying when I unbutton the clips. “It was everywhere.” I look at him.
“That’s why I just cut the shit off.” He holds up the scissors, opening and closing them.
“The trick is to take it off downward and not over her head,” I say and point at the flaps by her neck on her shoulders. “It’s made like this so you can pull it down.” He watches me as I pull her onesie down. “That way it’s not in her hair.” I roll it into a ball and then take off her diaper. “And just like that, all you have to do is wash her.” I put her into the sink water, and she immediately starts splashing her hands in the water making it go everywhere. “I’m giving her a minute, and then I’m going to drain the water and wash her off,” I say. He just looks at me, and I don’t know what the look is for.
“I can take over if you want,” he says quietly.
“It’s okay. Can you get her a change of clothes?” He nods and walks out of the kitchen, but this time, not so frantic. Ariella screams with glee as she splashes water everywhere, and by the time Ralph comes back with clothes in one hand, my shirt is about soaked through. “She’s almost done,” I say, and I rinse off her body with water, and she laughs and tries to catch the water in her hand. “Do you want to open the towel and take her? Or you can lay a towel down so I can wrap her.”
“I got her,” he says, opening a towel as I hand her to him, his arms securing her in the towel. I watch him, and he looks at me. His eyes narrow almost to a slit, and he looks like he’s glaring at me. I wonder if I did something wrong or if I overstepped somehow. The look he gives me makes my stomach sink, and I don’t even know what to say.
“Are you okay?” I finally have the courage to ask him.
“Why don’t you cover yourself up?” He avoids looking at me, and I look down and see that the shirt I’m wearing is completely see-through. The lace bra leaving nothing to the imagination. I turn quickly and put my hands in front of me.
“Oh my God,” I say, ignoring the fact that he just saw me half naked, and from the look on his face, I grossed him out. “I’m going to get going,” I say, keeping my back to him as I walk over to my purse.
“You can’t leave like that,” he says, and I
look over my shoulder at him as he dresses Ariella. He rubs her cream on her as she now eats her toe. “Give me a second and I’ll get you a change of clothes.”
“No, you don’t have to do that. It’s fine; I’m going right home,” I say, putting the books into my bag and then taking the keys. “I’m fine,” I say and walk out of the room with my back to him. Once in the hallway, I run out of the house, slamming the door behind me. I ignore the smell of myself and ignore everything else until I walk into my house. I dump my bag at the door, not bothering to turn on the lights as I make my way upstairs to my bathroom. I peel the pants off me and put them in the sink with the shirt and my lace bra that didn’t help at all. I step into the shower to wash off and then wash my hair at the same time. Once out of the shower, I slip on my big white plush robe and wrap my hair up.
I walk out of the bathroom and force myself not to think about Ralph. Heading to the door to grab my bag, I take out my books and put them on the island as I walk to the bedroom and grab my laptop. I set myself on the counter grabbing some leftovers and heating it up. I walk over to the counter to grab my phone but don’t find it there. I walk back to get my bag and don’t find it there either. I hear my computer ping, but I ignore it as I walk to my bedroom, looking on the bed and then in the sink where I have my pants, and it isn’t there. I walk back out when I hear my computer start ringing, and I’m about to lose my shit going nuts for my phone. It stops ringing and then starts again, and I walk over, seeing that it’s a FaceTime call from Ralph. I accept and wait as it says it’s connecting, his face fills the screen with Ariella who is sitting on his lap looking into the phone.
Only One Kiss (Only One Series) Page 7