by Alyse Zaftig
Arrogant Single Dad
Alyse Zaftig
Copyright © 2020 by Alyse Zaftig
and Cocky Hero Club, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to actual persons, things, living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.
Editor: Natty Hat Services
Created with Vellum
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue I
Epilogue II
Epilogue III
Epilogue IV
Epilogue V
Cocky Hero Club
Chapter 1
“I’m pregnant.”
Those words took my breath away. “What? Why? How?” I sputtered.
“The usual way, I guess.” She’d only been married to Dex Truitt for what, a year? Two years? I’d lost track of time since I got way too drunk at Bianca and Dex’s wedding and had gone home in a Lyft before the party ended.
I felt the burn of envy in the pit of my stomach and wished that I didn’t feel anything. I wasn’t the kind of woman who spent years fantasizing about her own wedding with a Pinterest board and everything, but I was a sucker for parenting magazines even though I didn’t have any kids. Somehow doctors kept them in their waiting rooms. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who liked looking at pictures of babies.
I was single and childless by choice. Mostly.
“Congratulations,” I choked out, even as I thought about asking for the check. I wasn’t one of the 22-24-26 girls with whom I’d gone to college back in Indiana. There were women who had their life plan set up to graduate and marry at 22, have a first child at 24, and have a second kid by age 26. I’d been more focused on my own little startup, which was just now getting to the point where I felt like I could afford casual dinners like this instead of eating some boiled ramen over a sink at home and not worry about running out of money before the end of the month. My paycheck was paid by me to me on the first business day of every month.
“Dex has been insatiable.” Bianca was blushing prettily. When I blushed, I looked like an over-boiled lobster. She already had that pregnancy glow that everyone talked about, which was noticeable even though she had gleaming skin on a normal day. I hadn’t seen it until she came out with her news, but she was already walking down a road I might never go down. I hadn’t dated in years, too busy with my company to have time for men and the stupid back-and-forth that came with online dating. And now my friends had kids and the number of single people who could come out for a happy hour drink was dwindling to the people who were adamant about being child-free. I didn’t understand the child-free movement since I loved babies, but to each their own. Bianca and Dex hadn’t talked about their future plans much, so Bianca’s news came as a shock to me.
“But enough about me. How’s work? How’s the business?”
“Doing fine.” I smiled stiffly. “I’ve finally got it off the ground now. My parents have been getting louder about seeing me, so I’m flying home for my thirtieth birthday.”
“To Indiana?” Bianca wrinkled her nose.
“Hey, don’t knock it. We have the best corn in the world.”
Bianca giggled. “I’ll take your word for it.” She looked down at her watch. “I’ve got to run. Dex wants me to check out some different styles of cribs before we have our kiddo.”
“Seriously?”
“Yup, he bought baby books and everything. You’d think that our baby would come out of the womb already reading. That man has bought so many board books just for our little jelly bean.”
The waiter came by and ran our cards.
“Talk to you soon,” Bianca said before going out the door. Nowadays, she still loved to wear her sexy heels. I imagined that she’d be opting for flats soon if she was pregnant. Didn’t your center of gravity shift? I didn’t know very much about it. I sighed. Soon I’d be back in Indiana; my parents would make pointed remarks about my child-free life and how many nice young men lived in Indiana. I was used to it to some extent; I’d always said that I had to get my money’s worth out of my Harvard MBA.
Chapter 2
I stepped off the plane in IND and checked my purse for my wallet and phone, like I always did. One time, my cell phone fell out of my purse while I was still on the plane, so I had a habit of checking both before going through the security checkpoint. I could smell the scent of freshly popped Indiana popcorn in the airport.
I was only back for a little while anyway. It was weird to be sleeping in my childhood bedroom with my mom and dad just a wall away. I had my ten-year high school reunion two years ago, but I hadn’t bothered to attend. Nothing in my wardrobe looked like it had when I was a teenager wearing t-shirts and jeans. The glittery midnight blue top that I wore attracted looks in Indianapolis that it wouldn’t in NYC. I was too dressed up for the Midwest.
I got an Uber to get to my parents’ house in Carmel. My dad was talking to our landscaping guys and waved his hand as I got out of the cab. I was close enough to my parents to call home on a weekly basis. Dad didn’t want to sit in the cell phone parking lot when I could easily grab an Uber or Lyft home at the right time. I packed light for a girl, so there had been no need to wait around for my luggage. Once, I had watched a Youtube video with a designer who described putting together specific looks and only packing the components of different outfits. I was home for only a week. I was going to make the most of my vacation. I had an e-reader full of to-be-read books that I hadn’t gotten around to reading for years. I wasn’t even checking my work email, trusting my assistant to keep things running for a week. She had firmly banned me from lifting a finger for a week, saying that I needed to relax.
It was weird to be home. I knew somewhere around here, that old heartbreaker Logan Simpson was still around. We’d broken up when I went to IU and he went to U of M in Ann Arbor. Romi Anderson had gone to Michigan, too, and I’d seen their shotgun marriage and their baby pictures on Facebook. The last I heard, Logan was single and bringing up their daughter with primary custody. I was looking forward to a week without much digital stuff, though. I needed a digital cleanse in the worst way. Cal Newport wrote Digital Minimalism, which I heard about from people who were eager to evangelize the message. I had already read Deep Work and So Good They Can’t Ignore You. I liked how thought-provoking his works were, even though he took his conclusions to illogical extremes. There were people who evangelized about a simpler lifestyle. I was already getting itchy without the perma-present pressure of emails.
After hugging my mom, I geared up to go to the new Kroger on Michigan Road. I’d grown up going to the Marsh there and hadn’t really gone shopping in Kroger yet. There was one near my old prep school Brebeuf Jesuit. I used to shop at Krogucci w
hen I was at IUB. I loved my parents a lot, but ever since my dad had gotten diabetes, they had zero junk food in the house besides pork rinds. If I wanted snacks, I had to hunt for them on my own. I called the Enterprise closest to the house to get a rental car at a better rate than what I’d get at the airport. The Enterprise man showed up with my car, had me sign some things, and let me drive my week-long rental to the closest Kroger. I pushed my way past Indiana apples and picked up corn. Then I saw a little kid inspecting the apples from her dad’s arms.
“Logan Simpson,” I called out, waving.
Chapter 3
The kid yelped as her dad held her closer. He looked up and saw me.
“Candace Beauclaire,” he said in a sports announcer voice. He always teased me about saying his full name.
“What are you doing here?” asked both of us at the same time. Annabelle was sucking her thumb, quietly watching the interaction.
“I came back to Indiana for my thirtieth.”
“I thought you lived in NYC.”
We were still talking over each other. Annabelle blurted out, “You’re pretty.”
I didn’t get that a lot. With my extra curly hair, I never thought of myself as that pretty.
“Out of the mouths of babes,” said Logan. “Anyway, welcome back to Indiana.”
“It’s good to be home,” I replied. “And this must be Annabelle.”
She held her arms out to me, the confident action of a child who was never told no by an adult. I pulled her into my arms. She felt solid and warm. I felt jealous then of Logan for having a child to whom he could tell bedtime stories and splash around in the bathtub with. Going to the grocery store was a mundane activity which everyone did, and I knew that it was harder when you had a baby along. But there was a part of me that wished that I had a kid, too. I had friends in NYC, but they were starting to have their own children, left and right. Now that Bianca was married and pregnant, yet another friend fell off the list of last-minute happy hour drinks. Soon, I’d be the last one standing in our group of friends without even a husband.
Annabelle pulled on my hair, not hard enough to actually hurt. “You have curly hair,” she announced.
“Don’t pull her hair,” Logan admonished Annabelle.
“It’s okay. She’s just curious.” My hair took a lot of care to make it presentable, but she wasn’t hurting me.
“Where are you from?” Annabelle asked me, hand still yanking on my hair.
“I live in New York City, but I grew up here.”
“Oh.” She shook her head. “I’ve never been to New York. Daddy might take me sometime.”
“I can take you when you’re older. Pushing a stroller on the crowded sidewalks of New York never really appealed,” Logan interjected, smiling at the both of us.
“Anyway, I should let you get back to shopping,” I said quickly.
“I want to have dinner with the lady from New York,” announced Annabelle.
“You have to invite her, Annabelle,” prompted Logan.
“I invite you to dinner with me and Daddy,” replied Annabelle to her father.
I laughed a little. “I’d be happy to.”
Annabelle looked at my cart. “How come you don’t have any real food?”
“I just came for snacks.”
“We can have real food at my house. Daddy said chicken nuggets tonight.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” I responded.
“I’ll cook chicken breasts for the grown-ups,” Logan quickly offered. “You don’t have to eat frozen chicken nuggets.”
“Do you still like chicken parmesan? If you’re hosting, I might as well help. And let me buy the ingredients.” I took out my phone to look up my chicken parmesan recipe, which lived in Evernote. “What would you need?”
“If I’m hosting, I’m buying the ingredients. And all I’d need is cheese. Annabelle likes chicken parmesan, too.”
“It’s like a big chicken nugget,” explained Annabelle. “With cheese.”
“How could I turn that down?”
Logan laughed a little. “I guess you can’t turn down big chicken nuggets. With cheese.” He and I shared a grin. The three of us walked to the cheese aisle.
“Do you have anything that’s refrigerated?” Logan asked me.
“Nope.”
“Then let me drive you to my house. I’ll drive you back here after dinner.”
“Sounds fine.” I’d known Logan for long enough to know that he liked to be the person who called the shots. If he was the one driving me back to my car, he’d be in control of the situation.
The three of us went through the cash registers quickly, and I headed to my car after seeing where Logan had parked. I quickly shoveled my snacks into my trunk, then I went to his car. The passenger seat was immaculate, but I could see the remains of some decimated goldfish next to Annabelle. The car smelled of cherry juice, which I imagined was also Annabelle’s responsibility. She had been buckled in by Logan. We pulled out and then headed to Logan’s home, where I’d never been before.
“How long are you here?” he asked me.
“A week. I’ve been too busy to come home for a while,” I replied.
“Annabelle thinks that you smell like Dove soap,” Logan reported.
“I probably do,” I laughed.
At a red light, he leaned over and gave me an exaggerated sniff. “You still do. You did in high school, too.”
I blushed a little. Back in high school, he had a habit of giving me quick pecks on the mouth at red lights. My face was warm remembering how easy it had been to be with him. It had only ended when he went to University of Michigan - Ann Arbor while I’d stayed closer to home to go to Kelley School of Business in Bloomington.
“How’s work? What do you do?” I hadn’t looked him up beyond the odd Facebook post about Annabelle.
“I run my own company. We do human resources, outsourced from a lot of small companies,” he shared.
“Sounds cool.”
“What do you do?”
“I have a publishing business for genre fiction. We’re putting out a lot of books nowadays.”
“Sounds like you’re busy,” Logan commented as he smoothly navigated a left turn. We were in an average Carmel suburban neighborhood, where everyone had a manicured lawn. It was humid and muggy during an Indiana summer, but Lord forbid anybody forgot to cut their lawn. Logan took a few turns before we pulled into a driveway with a two-car garage.
“We’re home!” Annabelle called out.
Chapter 4
She was already unfastening her seatbelt. Logan got out of the driver’s seat and went to the back immediately.
“Easy does it, Munchkin.”
There was a lump in my throat looking at the two of them together. Logan had been kind of wild in high school. It wasn’t surprising that he was running his own business now, and it didn’t surprise him at all that I had my own publishing business in NYC. But he’d made the time to have a kid, and I hadn’t. I wondered what it would be like to come home to an apartment where I had to clean up crumbled goldfish the first thing after I came through the door. The light in Logan’s face when he picked Annabelle up to take her out of the car was worth working some 9-to-5 under fluorescent lights in a gray cubicle somewhere. I’d sacrificed a lot to get my publishing business off of the ground. Seeing them together made my heart twist a little bit. Bianca was pregnant. There were a lot of friends who didn’t mind pushing a stroller down the streets of New York, unlike Logan. Some of my friends had moved a little further out, like Long Island, in order to have more space for their own Munchkins. I was seeing less and less of them while their sticky little kids ate up more of their time.
“Are you okay?” asked Logan, one arm around Annabelle and another hand pushing the door of his minivan closed. I couldn’t believe that Logan had a minivan. Logan Simpson, the former basketball player, had a minivan for a single child.
“I’m fine,” I said, and I shook off the
feeling. I was here to make some chicken parmesan before I went home to my parents. I remembered to text them that I wasn’t coming home for dinner because I’d run into a friend. They didn’t mind it, because my dad was already on an intermittent fasting schedule that interrupted family dinners the way we’d had them when I was growing up. He was on a sixteen-hour fasting schedule so his eating window was just eight hours per day.
When we got into the house, I saw the controlled chaos that erupted around every small child. Annabelle’s toys were everywhere in that house. I narrowly avoided stepping on some Legos. She bounded out of her father’s arms and said, “Play princess?”
“The adults have to cook, pumpkin,” Logan gently admonished her. “Plus, you play princess every day.”
Annabelle’s lip started to jut out. “How about Peppa Pig?”
“Peppa Pig!” Annabelle shouted. “Hurray!”
“I limit her screen time,” said Logan. “I only whip it out when it’s necessary to distract her. If she wasn’t addicted to Peppa Pig, I’d be in trouble.”
It was so weird to think of Logan being a responsible adult with screen time limits for his kid. When we had been in high school, he could stay up all night playing video games like Call of Duty with his friends. Now, he was on the other side of the concerned parent telling the kid to turn off their electronics. What a bizarre feeling.
Logan started pulling out the mise en place for chicken parmesan. His kitchen had two ovens, which made me ask, “Why do you have two ovens?”
“Ex-wife,” said Logan.