Let it Be Me

by Jody Holford

  Megan had left the number on the counter before leaving earlier that day. He hadn’t brought up the idea of her accompanying him again because in hindsight, he thought maybe he’d asked for the wrong reasons. Sure, he said it was because he knew they’d have a good evening, but the problem was he might have too good an evening with Megan. The last thing he needed as she was leaving them was to become attached to her in a way he’d never imagined. In a way he’d promised himself he would never feel again. Keeping his distance—and the professional wall between them—was for the best.

  Charlie knocked on Declan’s door. When his friend opened it, he grinned down at Charlie.

  Declan pointed to Adam and winked at Charlie. “What’d you bring that guy for? I thought we were going to hang out?”

  Charlie giggled as he stepped into the apartment. “I couldn’t find him a sitter.”

  Adam smirked, shooting his friend the middle finger when Charlie wasn’t looking. He shut the door behind them.

  “No surprise there. He’s a handful. Guess we’ll do guy stuff anyway.”

  Slipping off his shoes, Charlie looked up. “What kind of guy stuff?”

  Adam toed off his shoes and walked further into the wide-open apartment. The kitchen, living room, and Declan’s office area were all one huge room. Down a hall, there was a bedroom and a bathroom. When Dec had bought the bar, he’d fixed up the apartment exactly as he’d wanted it.

  “We’ll drink beer and talk about chicks,” Declan said, pointing to the six-pack Adam held. “Got plenty of beer, man,” he said with a wry smile.

  Adam shrugged. He didn’t like to go anywhere empty-handed. “New IPA. Figured we’d try it.” He took one of the bottles for himself before passing it over to Declan, who grabbed one and put the rest in the fridge.

  “Beer and chicks are gross. Except Megan. She’s not totally gross,” Charlie said.

  Declan gave a loud belly laugh as he pulled out a can of root beer for Adam’s son.

  “How about we drink root beer and look at comics then?”

  Charlie took the can, still bouncing with excitement. “Cool.”

  “What do you say, Charlie?”

  Adam twisted the top on his beer, tossed the cap onto the counter, and took a long, refreshing swallow.

  “Thanks, Dec. Can I go look at the comics now?”

  “You bet. You know where they are. No soda back there, though.”

  Charlie took a drink before leaving the can beside the sink and headed toward Dec’s bedroom, where he housed a crazy comic and Lego collection on a long wall of shelves.

  Adam walked to the couch and grabbed the remote before sitting on the plush sectional sofa. Declan enjoyed bachelorhood more than any guy Adam knew. What money he didn’t save or spend on comics and toys, he used toward his apartment, making it a kick-ass place to hang out. His stomach growled when Dec opened a couple of bags of chips, dumped them into bowls, and brought them to the coffee table.

  Adam flipped through channels, looking for sports highlights. He wouldn’t mind checking the news, but Dec would just hassle him for not turning his brain off.

  Grabbing a chip, he smirked at Dec. “Look at you being all fancy with the bowls.”

  His friend chuckled, popped a couple of chips in his mouth, and spoke around them. “Nothing but my A-game for you.”

  Serious soundproofing kept Declan’s apartment from feeling, or hearing, the effects of living over a bar. Every now and again, if there was a live band, a gentle thump would vibrate through the floor, but mostly, the place was a brightly lit man cave of epic quality.

  “Sorry I couldn’t get a sitter. Didn’t want to do that two nights in a row, and I have the charity thing tomorrow.” Adam leaned back and munched on a handful of chips.

  “No worries. Charlie’s always welcome. You know that. Not like I had strippers lined up for this evening’s entertainment.”

  He laughed and relaxed his shoulders.

  “Megan have a hot date tonight? She usually covers you for everything.”

  She did. She was endlessly flexible. He didn’t even want to tell Declan just how accommodating his nanny-turned— Shit. He didn’t know what she was right now. More than his son’s caregiver. Somewhere between a friend and something he couldn’t describe. Thinking of her on a date put a sour taste on his tongue.

  “I don’t know. Didn’t ask. Things have been…awkward.” He had no desire to tell his friend he’d made things strange between himself and his nanny by making a ludicrous request. Then followed it up by kissing her until he couldn’t breathe. That’s what was crazy. Not his plan. His plan was solid, sensible, and very time effective.

  The wide grin that ate up Declan’s face at this news poked Adam’s already irritated feelings. There was nothing funny about this. His friend was as loyal as they came, a shrewd businessman, and a great person. But he knew absolute shit about having another person’s life depend entirely on him. Some days, it was a weight Adam found particularly heavy.

  “Awkward how? You and the nanny get naked?”

  Adam growled. “Screw you, and stop calling her the nanny.”

  “Someone’s sensitive.”

  Declan took a pull of his beer, and Adam did the same. He didn’t want to talk about it, but he did. Was what he wanted really so strange? People looked for their matches online all the time. He’d just asked for a little help weeding through his. A little help? Be honest with yourself. You’ve dropped the whole deal on her lap and stuck your head in the sand. Knowing that didn’t feel good. Maybe he didn’t trust his own judgment. That sucked to admit, but if he’d taken this approach with Reece, testing beforehand whether or not they were a good fit, he’d have saved himself a lot of trouble. But you wouldn’t have Charlie. Charlie was worth the soul-stripping failure he’d felt when his marriage fell apart. But he wasn’t willing to go through that again.

  Declan grabbed the remote and muted the TV. “What’d you do?”

  Charlie came into the room with a structure he’d made. “Dec, look how cool this is.”

  Leaning forward, Declan put his beer down and thoroughly inspected Charlie’s Lego creation. A stitch of guilt caught Adam off guard. This was the guy who kept a bin of extra Legoes at his house and made sure he had Charlie’s favorite pop stocked. He was his best friend and not only was Adam being a dick to him, he was shutting him out.

  “Look at you, bud. You should be an architect,” Declan said, turning the little rectangular building side to side.

  “What’s that?”

  “They design buildings,” Adam said.

  “Cool. Do you like it, Dad?”

  “I sure do.”

  Charlie frowned. “How come you don’t play with Legos like Dec does?”

  Adam sat forward while Charlie helped himself to a chip. “I play with you, don’t I?”

  Charlie nodded. “But how come you don’t have your own? You just use mine.”

  Declan shook his head, but Adam laughed, happy the tension in his shoulders vanished. “Because I like big boy toys. Dec’s still growing up a little, pal.”

  His friend sent a menacing glare, which made Adam chuckle more.

  “Oh,” Charlie said around a huge chip. “Like calculators and stuff?”

  Declan’s laugh made Adam scowl. “Yup. That’s the kind of toys your dad likes. Calculators and computers.”

  “When I get older, I’m going to have both.”

  “Good plan,” Adam said, smiling at his son.

  Charlie went back to build more, and Adam tried to avoid giving in to the waiting silence that sat between him and Declan.

  He stood up, grabbed his near-empty bottle, and went to the fridge for another. “Megan’s leaving. She offered to help me find a replacement, but I don’t want to go through this again in a couple of years. So I asked her to help me find a match.”

  He pulled the beer out of the fridge, popped the top, but didn’t drink. There. He’d said it.

  “A match for wh
at?”

  Putting his beer down, he met Declan’s wary gaze.

  “A match. You know, a partner. A wife. Instead of a nanny, I want to find someone who will be there for Charlie and me. Long-term.”

  Dec rose slowly, like he was moving through mud. “You asked your extremely hot, sweet nanny to be your pimp?”

  Adam’s grip on the bottle tightened. “What the hell? No.” Megan had said something similar, and it made him feel like a creep.

  “You offer to pay her for performing this service?”

  Unease turned his stomach. “Shit, Dec. Knock it off. I asked her if she’d help me find some legit sites, set up some profiles, and find possible matches. No big deal.”

  “For money?”

  Adam scowled and looked down at his beer.

  Declan huffed out an exaggerated breath. “Did she agree?”

  “Yes. But I think she’s regretting it. She said she’d give it another try, but if I didn’t find a match, she was done.”

  Declan’s hands gripped the countertop. Adam had kept his head down and hadn’t seen him walk over.

  “She follows through when she gives her word. What made her change her mind?”

  Adam wasn’t a coward. He looked up, locked eyes with his friend. “Things were a little weird about a week ago, and I don’t know what happened, but we kissed. She said everything was fine between us and knows we’re not a good long-term match. But then when I asked her to accompany me tomorrow night, she got all stand-offish, said the lines were blurring and I was too picky.”

  “You fucking idiot,” Declan whispered.

  Adam lifted his bottle in a salute. “Very supportive. Thanks, man.”

  His buddy wasn’t deterred. “You’ve been married, lived with a woman, and had a kid. How is it you know so little about the female species?”

  Not wanting to listen to this, Adam walked around the counter and back to the couch. Declan knew how to get a woman in and out of the sheets. Nothing more. So who the hell was he to judge Adam? He unmuted the television and pretended to focus on the highlights of the basketball game.

  From where he stood, Dec kept talking. “Ever think maybe you insulted her or at least confused the hell out of her by asking her to find you a wife then kissing her?”

  Of course he’d thought of that. What was he, an idiot? Yes. Adam tossed him a glance then looked back at the television. “She didn’t seem confused over the idea of me paying off her student loan. And thanks for the backup. You’re a hell of a friend.”

  Unwillingly, his mind bounced back to Megan’s appalled reaction when he’d first suggested her helping him.

  Declan joined him on the couch. “I’ve got your back, man. Always. You know that. Sometimes, that means telling you to get your goddamn head out of the sand or actually pulling it out of your ass for you.”

  Adam slammed his beer down on the table and stood. “Let it go. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “How was the kiss?”

  “What?” His body was vibrating, and he clenched his hands to try to stop it.

  “How was the kiss with the nanny?”

  Adam lost it and stalked away from his friend before he gave in to the urge to shove him on his ass. “Her name is Megan, it’s not that hard to remember, and the kiss was insanely fucking good. Can you shut the hell up now?”

  He glanced down the hallway, hoping Charlie wasn’t listening to any of this conversation. How had he gotten himself here?

  “Then why are you still looking for a nanny or a wife?”

  Adam stared out the picture window that overlooked the darkened street below, and his spine stiffened. “She quit, remember? She starts her new job in September. And as for the wife, I’m not looking for a romantic happily ever after tale. Megan is, and good for her—she deserves to see how that shit blows up in a person’s face first hand. But me? I’ve been there. I know what I want, and it isn’t that. I care about her. I won’t pretend I want something I don’t, no matter how great she is with my son.”

  Declan’s laugh was hollow. Adam avoided looking at him, even when his voice lowered, making it harder to hear him.

  “When are you going to get over Reece?”

  Weariness swamped Adam. “Don’t do this. I am over her, and I do not want to talk about this.”

  Declan nodded and picked up a couple of chips but didn’t eat them. “Yeah. You are over her. You’re right. But you aren’t over what she did. You need to be, because not every woman is her, and Charlie deserves a hell of a lot more than his dad marrying some woman he doesn’t love just so he won’t have to feel. Fuck. You deserve better. Why don’t you get that?”

  “I’m giving Charlie everything he deserves. My whole life focuses solely on that goal, so don’t tell me what my kid needs when you’re still acting like a goddamn eight year old yourself.”

  His friend’s smile was mean. It was the one he saved for confrontations with assholes and drunks in his bar. “Yeah. I’m acting like the kid here. Only I realize that what I do has consequences, and I’m man enough to make my choices knowing that. Stop for one second and ask yourself what it teaches Charlie by marrying a woman you won’t even put the effort into finding on your own. Great lesson, man.”

  The phone rang before Adam could respond. Which was fine, since he didn’t have anything else to say.

  “Yeah. Okay. No. I’ll be right down. Don’t worry about it.” Declan hung up and pocketed his phone. “I have to go deal with something downstairs. Say bye to Charlie for me.”

  Adam’s stomach tightened. “You’re not coming back up?”

  Declan met his gaze. “Nope. I have a business to deal with. I don’t let someone else do the heavy lifting.”

  With that final shot, Dec walked out the back door, leaving Adam staring after him.

  …

  “Dad! Amanda is here,” Charlie called through the house.

  Picking up a dark blue tie to go with his crisp white shirt, he called back, “Okay, bud. Let her in.”

  Adam didn’t want to go tonight. Normally he enjoyed the company events that he actually felt connected to, such as this one. But his head wasn’t in it. His argument with Declan the night before combined with his growing uneasiness over Charlie going away, made Adam want to just stay home and push everything else aside.

  Checking his hair, he figured it was good enough and walked out of his bedroom, down the hall, and into the kitchen. Charlie was animatedly telling Amanda about his Minecraft world.

  “Hey, Amanda. Thanks for coming,” Adam said to the quiet, dark-haired seventeen year old.

  “Hey, Mr. Klein.”

  “Come on, Amanda. I’ll show you,” Charlie said, taking her hand.

  “How about a goodbye, bud?”

  Charlie let go of her hand and came to give Adam a hug. “Love you, Daddy.”

  “Love you, too. See you in the morning, okay?”

  “Yup.”

  “I’m going to head out. I should be home by eleven. Earlier if possible.”

  “No worries. We’ll be fine, and I have your cell phone number.”

  “Great. And I think Megan’s home as well if you need anything.”

  Charlie waited by the doorway. “Nope. She said she was going out.”

  Adam glanced at his son. “When did you see Megan?”

  “Earlier when I was playing soccer in the backyard. You were in the shower.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well, I’m sure everything will be fine.” Still, he hesitated.

  “It will,” Amanda agreed, clearly waiting for him to go.

  He nodded and grabbed his keys from the counter. Pocketing his wallet and cell phone as well, he pulled on his suit jacket as he walked out of the kitchen. When he got outside, sure enough, Megan’s car wasn’t in the driveway. If he wasn’t too logical to think otherwise, he’d label the weird sensation in his chest as missing her. It wasn’t that, but if it was, he’d better get used to it, because like every other woman who’d come into his lif
e, she was leaving. Which was best for all of them.

  The more time he spent with her, the more he found himself wishing he could give her some of what she needed. But Adam had learned at a young age that saying you’d be able to give somebody something and knowing you couldn’t hurt them. He’d been on the receiving end of that hurt too many times. He wouldn’t do that to Megan.

  When he got into his car, he realized that he still had an hour before he needed to show up. He could go early and see if there was something he could do to help. The committee hired organizers and caterers and took care of most things. Adam didn’t feel like going sooner and making small talk when his whole evening was going to consist of that with a stranger. Damn. He’d thought to cancel the date with Emily but figured why not. He’d been toying with the idea of pulling his profiles and just asking Megan to help him hire a nanny instead. Maybe he was irrational to think he could find a good match, have a happy, well-adjusted marriage. If this woman didn’t work out, Megan wanted to step back. Maybe he should as well. Regardless of what happened, he and Charlie would survive just fine as long as they had each other.

  As Adam drove through town, his stomach growled, and he realized he hadn’t had much to eat today. He’d tried to cram some phone calls and paperwork into the day and still spend time with Charlie. Amanda would order a pizza for them, so he hadn’t thought to make dinner. Pizza sounded good, easy, and quick. He pulled over on Main Street, finding a spot in front of Pop’s Pizza. Best pizza around, but they didn’t deliver. He and Charlie came here for lunch any chance they got. Now and again, he’d pick up a large pizza on the way home from work. It would definitely hit the spot right now. Checking his watch, Adam knew he had time for a quick slice and a soda, and maybe his stomach would feel more settled for the evening ahead.

  Doubtful, but at least he wouldn’t be hungry.

  It was busy inside, which wasn’t a surprise on a Saturday night. Local teens loved the place because it was reasonably priced, a fun atmosphere, and the owner himself welcomed them with open arms. Mario Strombi, also known as Pop, had run the place for as long as Adam could remember. It’d been a place he and Dec and their friends had come after school whenever they could.