by Malcom, Anne
With Nathan, it could be “what’s for dinner?” just as easily as it could be “why aren’t there gas stations in the sky for planes that run out of gas?”
I stopped frowning down at the bills in front of me and put on a smile for my kid. “Yeah, baby?”
“Why is Captain hanging out with us so much? Is it so my daddy doesn’t come and take me for a sleepover again?”
Shit.
How did I not know this was coming?
We’d had the talk about his dad, and why he picked Nathan up, why he acted weird, why Mommy was really upset when she saw him. Why he probably wouldn’t ever be seeing him again.
But I had avoided the whole reason for the strange men around the house because I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to explain it to him. So far, he’d been acting like they were new friends and took in their presence without blinking. Probably because there was usually almost always someone for him to play with, he and Ziggy were fast friends, despite the age gap. But there were significant changes in our lives. The security systems. Lance doing a ‘walk through’ before we were allowed in the door.
I wanted to tell Nathan as much of the truth as I could. At the same time, he was five years old and telling him that these men were here to protect him from his violent father was not a truth he could handle and not one I wanted him to.
He had taken them all in his stride, as if it were normal to have beautiful badasses around all the time. As if Lance was just a new friend that lurked around the house, speaking mostly in grunts and smoldering looks.
Well, there weren’t as many grunts for Nathan, and definitely not smoldering looks, which was maybe why he had waited until now to bring it up.
I stood up from where I was sitting to move to the sofa and bring Nathan into my arms. I pushed his hair from his face so I could give him a forehead kiss, breathe him in for a second and also think of what the heck I was gonna say.
You’d think, as a mother, I’d have something prepared for this, knowing that the question would arise. But I didn’t. Because I’d been putting my head in the sand for most things, like paying the bills on the table along with the hefty one from Greenstone I was expecting any day now, and almost anything pertaining to Lance and thoughts about him that were not professional.
That was all of my thoughts, since nothing I thought about him was professional.
I focused on Nathan’s wide, expectant and patient eyes. “Yeah, Mr. Lance and his friends are all around to make sure you stay here with your momma where you belong,” I said. “They’re really nice people who think you’re awesome and want you to be happy always.”
Nathan reached up to play with a strand of my hair. It was a punch to my heart. He’d done that with his chubby baby fists ever since he was born, and he still did it now.
I hoped with all my soul that my little boy would still look at me exactly like he was now—like I had all the answers in the world—and grab a hold of my hair like this.
I knew my time was very limited, as gazing up in wonder at your mom and touching her was not something boys did for very long.
“I am happy though, Momma,” he said, smiling to prove his point. “And I’m really happy that Captain is here to come to school with me and have pancakes on Sundays.”
Fuck. Another thing that I hadn’t prepared for. How in the heck I was going to tell my son that his favorite superhero wasn’t a permanent fixture in his life?
“I’m so glad that you’re happy, baby,” I told him, trying to make sure my voice didn’t break or my own smile didn’t crack. “But Captain is a superhero, right?”
He nodded seriously.
“Well, you know that superheroes don’t just help one family. They’ve got a whole world of people to look after.”
Another serious nod.
If there was anything my five-year-old didn’t fuck around with, it was superheroes.
“So that means, at some point soon, Mr. Lance is going to have to go off and help other people. He won’t be able to come to school with you and have pancakes,” I said gently.
Nathan’s smile disappeared.
My own wavered but I made an effort to keep it firmly in place. Nathan didn’t need to get more upset by seeing his mother’s sadness at the prospect of his hero leaving. My little boy was an empath. He felt deep, he felt for himself, and for me, if I let any kind of sadness show. Which was why I perfected the ‘mom smile’ the smile a parent gave their child when they didn’t want them to know their suffering and take it on as their own.
“But I like Captain,” he said, his voice as close to a whine as it ever had been before. As almost perfect as my boy was, he was still a kid. “He likes us.”
“I know, sweet boy,” I said, brushing his hair from his face. “He isn’t a dummy, so of course he likes the most awesome kid on the planet.”I tried to keep my tone light and teasing, so my son’s developing little brain didn’t hear the tightness in it. The fear.
“But you’re the most awesome mom on the planet,” he countered.
I rolled my eyes dramatically. “Well, of course I am.”
“And he likes you.”
Wow. No way did I see that observation coming from Nathan’s mouth sounding far too wise and knowing for my liking. And my son noticing the fact that the robot badass had any feelings toward me was way too perceptive for my liking. Maybe I needed to have him exorcised. Maybe had the spirit of some old monk rattling around amongst action heroes and dreams about sugar.
I recovered quickly. “Of course he does,” I said with a grin. “But just because he likes us, that doesn’t mean he can stop being a superhero, do you understand that.”
Nathan’s bottom lip jerked out and he nodded slowly, defeated.
“Hey, honeybear,” I said. “You want people to be helped, happy, right?”
Another sad nod.
“So it would be pretty unfair of us to want Lance to stay and not help other people, right?”
Nathan’s brows furrowed. “I guess.”
“My honeybun, he’s not gonna forget about you, promise.”
I knew he wouldn’t. My kid was unforgettable.
Me, on the other hand, I thought Lance was using all his energy to forget before he even left.
I was doing the same.
Or trying to.
Chapter Twelve
I spooned the peanut butter into my mouth, staring aimlessly into our back yard. I loved this time of day, that last glow of light bathing the garden in just enough darkness so I couldn’t see our crappy fence that I kept meaning to get around to repairing. I couldn’t see the trash heap that our back yard neighbors continued to add to as if they were trying to make a record for height width and stench. I could almost pretend that it stretched farther than it did, that there was nothing but nature beyond our home.
I’d always dreamed of living on a property with acres. So I could have chickens. Other animals. Definitely at least one dog. Maybe a goat. As long as the goat and the dog could become friends. Natural predators became friends all the time, right? Or was that just wishful thinking on the account of the predator that was currently in my living room, doing something to the security system.
Hence me hiding in the kitchen with my peanut butter thinking about my fantasy life, building more to it. This was a habitual daydream.
I’d grow all my own vegetables.
Nathan could explore.
He could breathe in the coolness of nature, instead of the trash from the neighbors in our close city air that seemed just a little too thick.
Maybe one day if I got a better job, figured out a way to save enough for a house deposit on a place like that, found a way to support us both living so isolated.
A dark shape in the corner of my vision punctured the low light and the daydream.
His eyes focused on the jar in my hands then the spoon that had just been hanging from my mouth. My stomach dipped with his cold blank stare on my mouth. There was nothing sexual about the way he
looked at me. Nothing. I was a job to him. A task.
So why was I responding the way I was?
Well, obviously because I had two eyes and hadn’t got laid in recent memory.
But it was more than horny single mother syndrome.
It was a thing, apparently.
Dangerous too, as Marie, my only other single mom friend, explained. You could find yourself desperate enough to jump the balding and overweight cable guy like some bad porno and then have to extract yourself from the situation when he wants to date you and for you to meet his mother.
This obviously didn’t happen to me.
We didn’t have a cable guy.
Luckily.
The only guys I came into contact with on a regular basis were Bobby, our line cook. Beautiful, chocolate skinned, bald-headed, muscled and oh so very gay. Logan, who had gone gray and worked it, was tall, barrel-chested and married to a woman I loved and respected and would kill anyone who looked at her husband. Then the busboys who hadn’t even graduated high school.
And then my son.
So not really laden with options.
But it wasn’t just the lack of male stimuli in my environment.
It was him.
There was something magnetic about him that yanked me in. Something very frickin’ dangerous. You’d think I learned my lesson with dangerous after everything that had happened. You’d think after my marriage and my upbringing, I’d want a safe, normal and boring type of guy.
But that was not me.
I did not come from the trailer park with dreams of a ‘normal life.’ No, I wanted a life as abnormal, unique, and my own as possible. I wanted to bring Nathan up to understand that normal was a construct made to cage people into one way of thinking. I wanted him to think however he wished, dreamed, no cages.
No normal man would cut it for me.
“Please tell me that’s not your fuckin’ dinner,” was what the dark, attractive, dangerous abnormal man said. No, demanded.
I dropped the spoon from my mouth. “Peanut butter contains a lot of protein,” I answered.
He folded his arms.
I struggled not to watch the way his veins moved as he did so.
“It also has sodium, which is important to muscle health,” I continued.
He did not look convinced or impressed.
Like at all.
“I’m not hungry?” I tried.
That was kind of a lie. I was hungry. But it was payday tomorrow.
And I budgeted fiercely around payday. Not just to the dollar. But to the cent.
All of our bills were paid—well, except the one I’d owe Greenstone Security, but I guessed that would be paid off once Nathan made me a grandmother.
The rest of them, though, rent, power, gas, Nathan’s school stuff, health insurance, all paid up.
Which meant the fridge had the fixings for Nathan’s breakfast, lunch, and snacks were in there.
The cupboards had the bare essentials, flour, sugar, canned food, Nathan’s mac and cheese, all of which I didn’t really touch in times such as these. Payday was tomorrow. I could skip breakfast and grab something at work. They always fed me at work. I wasn’t sure if it was out of pity or kindness. I didn’t say no to either. I wasn’t too proud to accept a meal. Or the leftovers they always made me take home.
Nathan loved cherry pie and I swear Bobby ‘accidentally’ made extra every two weeks. And on those other weeks he ‘accidentally’ made too much peanut butter chocolate, my ultimate weakness.
We dined with Karen and Eliza at least once a week, and they never let me bring anything but a vegetable dish which was nothing to make. Then they came over regularly too, which put a small dint in the food budget, but they always brought over bread, sides, and wine.
I never really went hungry.
The supplies currently in the cupboard were my rainy-day collection. Just in case a huge unexpected bill came that obliterated my checking account and meager savings, in case we found ourselves without the means to buy food for a week.
So Nathan wouldn’t go hungry.
No way was I touching that stash.
But I wasn’t telling Lance that.
“What do you care?” I asked, surprising myself at the confrontational tone.
I was not confrontational.
No way.
I found ways to avoid confrontation at all costs, and was always the first to back down to rude customers, to bitchy co-workers, people that cut in line, or stole my parking spot.
The one exception was anything to do with Nathan.
Everything else, I shied away from conflict. I knew it was because of my past, and all of my negative associations with conflict and relating it to violence. I’d done a lot of inner work on that, meditated, tried to explore the trauma not hide from it.
But with Lance, it seemed I wasn’t afraid of it.
When he was definitely the one person I needed to be afraid to engage with, not the overweight customer who told me his eggs were too hot and coffee too strong.
His eyebrow twitched but otherwise he didn’t react to my tone. “What’s your favorite food?” he asked.
I blinked. I hadn’t expected the question. “Peanut butter?” I shot back.
Something in his face moved and I swear it was close to amusement.
But then it was gone, replaced by the scary blankness with a tinge of impatience that was his default around me.
I wanted to have a proverbial stare off with him, refuse to answer a question with such a harsh and almost confrontational tone. I wanted him to think I was the woman who could stand up to him. Because I assumed that’s the woman that would end up with a man like Lance. A woman like Rosie. Strong. Able to take care of herself and take on men like Lance. Able to beat them in most circumstances.
But that wasn’t me.
I was painfully aware of that.
If it was, Lance wouldn’t even be here in the first place.
“Steak, rare, fries and broccoli,” I relented. “A full-bodied red. And if it was really my last meal, like on death row or something, plus a whole packet of Oreos for dessert.”
I definitely didn’t think it was possible to surprise Lance, who seemed like he was prepared for anything and everything, but he blinked once, slow and long at my response.
“Steak?” he repeated.
I nodded, almost salivating at the mere thought of it. The last time I’d had steak, Eliza and Karen had taken me out for dinner on my birthday. Logan and Esther had taken care of Nathan. They’d plied me with red wine beforehand so I was agreeable when we pulled up to one of the nicest restaurants in town and announced they were paying.
Then, when we got inside, they hadn’t even let me look at the menu, Karen declaring that she knew I’d just order the cheapest thing on the menu and not what I actually wanted. Because she knew me so well, she knew what I actually wanted and ordered it for me.
I dreamed about that steak for a week straight after that. Promised myself one day I’d be able to take my friends back to that restaurant, order them a steak, wine and be able to pay for it without even blinking.
My birthday was in two months.
So I hadn’t eaten steak in ten.
“Would’ve thought you’d be more of a quinoa person,” Lance responded, causing me to curl up my nose in disgust.
“What would make you think something like that?” I asked, mad that the thought of quinoa chased out the taste of perfectly cooked, grass-fed beef from my tongue.
Lance didn’t say anything, obviously back to his mute, badass routine. He merely looked around the room, pointedly pausing on crystals, and a book on the moon cycle, open on the counter.
I rolled my eyes. “That’s so very cliché of you, Lance. To take me at face value. I thought you would’ve been able to read people better than that,” I teased.
Lance made it clear that he did not appreciate me teasing him. He did that by narrowing his eyebrows, treating me to a glare that chilled
my bones and turning on his heel and walking out.
Without a freaking word.
I blinked at the door for a couple of minutes before resuming with the peanut butter and trying to get my breathing under control.
He returned an hour later.
By this point, the peanut butter had all but evaporated from my stomach and I was trying to distract myself from my hunger by cleaning the house.
I was on my hands and knees, trying to reach under the TV cabinet for one of Nathan’s toys when the door opened and closed.
Thinking it was Eliza or Karen, I didn’t move from my compromising position, merely turned my head over my shoulder, in preparation to say hello.
It wasn’t Eliza or Karen.
It was Lance. Standing frozen in my living room, bags in his arms, eyes focused squarely on my ass, which was all but hanging out of my shorts thanks to the angle.
I didn’t do the sensible thing and scramble up and out of this position and try to snatch onto dignity. No, I stayed exactly where I was.
Because Lance was giving me a look that did not chill my bones. It charred them.
My panties too.
There was heat, hunger in his gaze. So naked that I almost leaped from my position and pounced on him there and then, hunger that I didn’t think I was capable of due to my past all but possessing me.
But reason returned, and quickly, when Lance wiped that look off his face, replaced by indifference edged with contempt.
Then he moved, away from me in the direction of my kitchen.
Hearing him place the bags down on the counter, I realized that I was still on my living room floor on my hands and knees. I scrambled up, hitting my knee on the coffee table in my haste.
My eyes watered as I bit my lip and clutched my knee, determined not to make a sound that would cause Lance to come running, expecting a threat or bullet wound, not a wuss who couldn’t handle whacking her shin on the coffee table.
Because of this, I took longer to make it to the kitchen than I would have if I was a normal human being, capable of interaction with a hot guy like Lance without acting like an idiot or injuring herself.