“Janice and I are moving in together. She’s going to be part of my life, meaning she’s going to be part of Jaden’s too. I called Dr. Menendez. I’m not doing it, Adina. I don’t want to be with you anymore.”
I looked at him in shock. He wasn’t breaking up with me; we would have to be together for that to happen. We were on a break as he kept reminding me. He wasn’t breaking up with me. He was giving up on me. Giving up on us.
I couldn’t say anything for a second and even if I could, what would I have said? I had nothing. I wasn’t going to stand there and beg him to keep trying with me with his girlfriend right there. I felt his words when he said them. He was done, and he sounded like he was. I wasn’t going to argue with him. I had some pride. Not enough not to feel hurt, though.
It ached. Like taking a battering ram to my heart.
“I have to go,” I said, turning abruptly to look for Jaden’s bag.
“Adina. Addie, wait,” he said.
“Where’s his bag, I have to leave?”
“Adina, you can’t. You aren’t driving when you’re like this, not with my son in the car.”
“No, Jared. No. Shut up. How long… were you just coming to the meetings with Dr. Menendez because I wanted you to? Did you have any intention of actually fixing things between us?” I demanded.
“I should have told you earlier, Addie. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. I am too.” Janice was holding Jaden’s bag out to me, and I grabbed it. I didn’t want to turn my anger on her because I didn’t know her, but she was sort of in the crosshairs.
“I’ll call you,” Jared said.
“To tell me what? Didn’t you just break up with me? Again?”
“We still have a kid together, Addie. Whatever happens between us-”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Save it, Jared. This isn’t about Jaden. This is about us. I’m so happy you nutted up enough to say how you really felt, but I wish you had had this epiphany earlier, Jared. For all of our sakes.”
I left the house and managed to make it to the parking garage, strapping Jaden in his car seat before I broke down crying. At least Jared wasn’t here to see this. He was upstairs with his girlfriend. He had… he’d won. He was what, moving in with her? Starting a new life with someone new and I was crying in his parking garage with a dozing four-month-old. This was where I was in my life and he… he’d moved on.
More than the fact that I truly wanted us to work out, and we hadn’t, I hadn’t expected it to hurt so damn much. I didn’t even think I was crying over him. It was the dream I had of raising our son together. It was the loss of what I thought I had with him and what I wanted us to be. He was right. I couldn’t drive when I was like that.
I texted Jessie to help me get home. Yes, Jessie. I had technically told her she could have the weekend off, but I didn’t have anyone else I could call. It was a Sunday evening; I had no idea where she could be or what she was possibly doing. Whatever it was, I was interrupting her. She picked up after a few rings.
“Hello, Adina?”
“Jessie? Hi. I’m really sorry for calling you like this but can you help me?”
She was in the driver’s seat driving Jaden and I home in about a half hour. He passed out during the trip, and she was nice enough not to ask me why I was crying so much. Sitting in the passenger seat, I figured I’d pay her for this the way I paid her hourly for watching Jaden.
“Let me take his bag,” she said when we got to the house.
“Just leave it in his room, I’ll take care of it later,” I said, looking down at Jaden. He was sleeping, so I wasn’t going to wake him for a bath. I’d do that in the morning. “Do you need cab fare to get home?” I asked her.
“My uh, my boyfriend’s coming to pick me up,” she said. “That’s okay, right?”
“It’s fine, just ask him not to ring the bell if he comes up. It’ll startle Jaden.”
“Can I ask what happened?” she asked cautiously.
“It’s just Jaden’s dad. We’ve been trying to reconnect,” I said, forgetting that this was probably too much information. “We’d been going to therapy, but today he introduced me to the woman he’s moving in with and told me it’s over,” I said.
“Wow. That’s cold,” she said.
“Just yesterday he was saying that he and I should get the same babysitter for Jaden and I got to meet her today. Guess who it was?”
“His new girlfriend?” she asked. I nodded ruefully.
“I just thought… fuck it. I was stupid. I thought we could reconcile, but he wasn’t at the same place as I was. I don’t think he ever…” I trailed off because it was hard to admit it to myself. I knew I suppose, but I never wanted it to be true. I never wanted him to be done with me. It was rejection, and rejection stung, and I should have prepared myself for the possibility of it not working, but I hadn’t, and now I was crying in front of my babysitter.
“I’ll put Jaden down,” I said quietly, taking him into my room. Jaden was a pretty good sleeper and hadn’t woken up since we had gotten here. I placed him in his crib and looked down at him. He had no idea. He didn’t know anything about what was going on, and I was jealous. He didn’t care now but he would in the future. It didn’t matter to him now that his mother and father weren’t together. So many people’s parents were split up, but I wanted differently for him.
Joint custody, weekends at his other parent’s house… I didn’t want that for my son. I thought I wouldn’t have it, but I should have known. I should have seen it coming. I wiped my eyes. I didn’t want to start crying again. What was the use? It was over now. Really over. I didn’t have to try anymore because there was nothing left to salvage.
I heard a knock on the door and looked up. It was him, Jessie’s boyfriend. The guy with the tattoo on his face and the dick out in my kitchen… yeah, that guy. He must have been here to take Jessie home. My first instinct was to put myself between him and Jaden.
“Can I help you?” I asked, walking around the crib. “Jessie should have been in the living room.”
“Yeah, I saw her. Sorry. I’m Marcus. I wanted to talk to you,” he said taking a couple of steps into the bedroom. He looked around like he’d never been inside it before. At least they had never had sex in my bed, I guess.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Jessie told me you wanted some help putting your nursery together,” he said. Did I tell her that? I didn’t remember. If I had, it was because it was true. Jaden’s nursery was pretty much lying fallow one door down from my room. He would be big enough soon to need his own space, get used to sleeping alone.
“Do you know someone?” I asked.
“I could help,” he said. The lights were low, but I got to get a better look at him than I had gotten before. His hair was pulled back out of his face, and he was fully dressed. He looked pretty big, muscular like he lifted weights. Like if he told me he worked in construction, I’d believe him. He was pretty cute. No, he wasn’t cute, Jaden was cute. This guy was hot; I could call him that in my head. Not my type, but that didn’t change the facts.
His hair was brown, and his eyes were blue, really light like you could see through them. His neck was tattooed, like the whole thing, and the tattoos continued down under his shirt. The one on his face was over one temple, sort of disappearing into his hairline. It was a word ending in ‘tion’ in curly, fancy script. Where could you get employed when you looked like that? It didn’t look bad. It sort of… worked, in a way.
The face itself was nice—that was probably why. The nose, eyes, mouth, jaw all were good independently, and pretty good in combination as well.
“Who do you work for?” I asked him.
“Nobody. I mean, myself.”
“What are you, like a freelance home reno guy?” I asked, crossing my arms.
“You need some work done, and I’m happy to help.” Who told him I needed help? Probably Jessie, again. I needed to watch what I said to her. I did need help; he wasn’t wr
ong. Part of me didn’t want to finish the nursery because it made this place feel more permanent. I wanted to believe that it wasn’t, and sooner rather than later I would be back with Jared, and we would be a family, but that wasn’t happening.
I looked at him. How much did he know about me? How much had Jessie told him? The thought didn’t make me feel unsafe, just a little exposed like he had to tell me stuff about him, so we were even. I wished it was another night, one when I didn’t look like I had been crying and one where it wasn’t nighttime, and I didn’t have an attractive man in my bedroom.
“You can’t start right now. Can you come by tomorrow, so we can discuss what needs to be done and your rate, and all that?” I asked.
“Sounds good,” he said. I laughed softly looking at him. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. It’s just, Jessie’s never talked about you before.”
“Great, then there’s no way for me to disappoint,” he said smiling at me. I couldn’t help smiling back. He was cute.
“I don’t know about that, after what happened in the kitchen the other day?” I said. His smile didn’t waver.
“Like I said. No way for me to disappoint,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He walked out, and I heard him talking to Jessie before the sound of the door closing meant they had left. I left the room to lock it. Was he… had he just flirted with me? Had I just flirted back?
No, because they were together, and you didn’t do that with other people’s boyfriends. He was just being friendly. I’d have to learn how to tell the difference between flirtation and friendly conversation again. I was back on the market, sort of. I was like a half-burned Yankee candle you tried to return to Bed Bath and Beyond when you decided you didn’t like the scent anymore.
I left my room to empty Jaden’s bag. I wasn’t hungry. I had so much food in the fridge I should have asked Jessie and her boyfriend, Marcus to stay over for dinner. Recipe testing was usually done at our kitchen, but Helena had been letting me do it from home since I’d had Jaden. She had let me keep being her head chef too.
The brunch had been a success. They’d loved the mustard crusted salmon. Marcus had too, I thought. Blowjob and a meal, no wonder he wanted to come back.
I looked at my phone, brewing some tea before I went to the shower. I’d started drinking nettle tea when I was pregnant. It tasted like lawn clippings, but I’d bought so much I had to finish it. There were several messages from Jared all asking me to call him. He wanted to know whether I had gotten home alright. He had been calling, but I had ignored all his calls.
I’m fine. Home. Jaden will be ready at six on Friday. Don’t be late I typed out before deleting it and turning my phone off. What was I in such a hurry for? He didn’t care.
He was done and if he was, so was I.
6
Marcus
“You’re doing what?” Jonny asked. He was on the couch, stretched out on his back—way too comfortable for someone who was on house arrest. The best part about his monitoring gear was it had to be charged. He had to charge it, but he couldn’t take it off. He had dragged the couch close to the wall so he could plug it into the wall outlet while still lying on the couch.
It was sort of funny. Jonny was so dumb. I couldn’t feel sorry for him. His sentence had been under a year, so the worst he had seen was the county jail. Guess you could say he had had it easy, but county was fucking terrible. You couldn’t do anything in jail. You could get anything in prison. House arrest was like jail then, in a way. No head counts, no gangs, no shitty food, but you couldn’t leave, and maybe that made it worse.
My apartment had one bedroom because that was as many as I needed. Jonny took the couch. It folded out, so it was like an actual bed, and it had not even been a full forty-eight hours and he was already treating it like it was his house. I guess it sort of was. He was on house confinement. He couldn’t leave.
House confinement meant different things for different people. Usually, you could leave the house to go to specific places, for specific amounts of time. Jonny could probably leave, but his probation wasn’t going to let him for a while most likely.
Lucky him, he got to stay in my house all day. I hadn’t had a bunkie since the halfway house. I hadn’t lived with Jonny since before I moved out of our mom’s. He was still a teenager then, attending some of his classes, but mostly not and smoking weed. Did he ever get his GED? I didn’t know.
“Jessie’s boss. She has a baby, but she hasn’t built a nursery yet.”
“So you’re doing it for her? When did you start doing home repairs?”
“Since I couldn’t get a job doing anything else. I still have to pay rent on this place.”
“You said she was a single mom?”
“Yeah. Brand new baby.”
“What does she look like?” he asked. I smirked. The no visitors rule was driving him crazy. I didn’t really want to talk about Adina with him. He was too young for her anyway unless she liked that sort of thing. God, that was fucked up. I didn’t want to think about my brother fucking anybody, especially not her.
“She’s cute,” I said shrugging.
“If her baby’s brand new, is she still showing? Is she like in month seventeen of her pregnancy?” he asked. I rolled my eyes. Jonny liked to pretend he was picky, but really he had no business turning women down.
“She’s hot. You can’t even tell.”
“Where’s the dad?” he asked.
“Not there,” I said. That was all that mattered. According to Jessie, she and that guy were done. He had a new girl, and they were moving in together. Adina was upset about it. She tried to hide it, but I could tell the night before when we were talking. Her face was red. Her eyes were bloodshot. I felt sorry for her, but this was a good thing. It was a good thing for me, and I could make it a good thing for her too. I’d help her forget.
“I just can’t believe she’s letting you in her house,” Jon said, settling back into the sofa. He stuck something between his lips and tried to light it up. I looked away before I realized it was a joint.
“Hey!” I grabbed the joint and the lighter from him.
“What the fuck Marc?”
“No way, not in here,” I said. I tore the joint open and threw the grass and paper out the window.
“That was my last joint,” he yelled.
“Are you out of your fucking mind? You’re not a free man, Jonny. There’s no cage, but you’re still incarcerated. That violates your home confinement, and it violates my probation.”
“What the fuck am I supposed to do all day when I’m here?”
“Literally anything else. You haven’t been out long enough to not want to go back, but I have. If you fuck up, it fucks me up. Try that shit again and I will call Wilson. I’ll fucking drag you back to county myself.”
“Lighten up, man. It was one joint.”
“No. That was a one-way ticket back to county or worse. If you want to do that shit, you don’t do it here.”
“I can’t fucking leave. I’m on house arrest.”
“Exactly,” I said, walking away from him. “Aren’t you supposed to be sober?”
“I am. I haven’t touched dope since I went in,” he said getting up.
“I don’t think you understand what sober means,” I said, “you can’t smoke when you’re sober.”
“Why not? I was addicted to heroin, not weed. People do this all the time, Marc.”
“You’re not people, Jonny. You’re in my house. If you want to stay here, you don’t do that. No smoking, no booze. No nothing.”
“What happened to you?” he said, “you sound like Mom.” I rolled my eyes. If he was going to be a kid about it, maybe what he needed was a mom.
“I want this place clean when I get back,” I said heading for the door. He said something, but I was on the other side locking it before I could hear him.
Adina hadn’t told me when to show up, but I figured after nine was a good time. I wasn’t just talki
ng out of my ass when I said I could help her with her nursery. I had taken classes in prison; carpentry, repairs, things like that, mainly to pass the time. It was free. I had skills. I could do stuff. Whatever I couldn’t do, I could learn to do. I just couldn’t get a fucking job.
Well, I had one now. It would be over as soon as I had finished her nursery, but she was going to pay me for it. That was the most important part. Jessie had class today; she wouldn’t be there. I got to spend time in her house with her alone. That was the other most important part. I got to her house and rang the bell.
“Hi,” she said opening the door. She was holding the baby. Her hair was up in a bun, and she didn’t look like she had any makeup on. Her hair was curly and looked like it was really nice if you touched it. I felt like a perv thinking she looked beautiful.
She was holding her kid. She wasn’t trying to be sexy, but she was. Her white t-shirt and leggings also probably weren’t supposed to be sexy, but they were—on her.
“You didn’t bring anything with you?” she asked.
“Hey, I have to get in the space and see what you need to get done first,” I said. She let me in the house and closed the door behind me. I looked around again. There was a blanket on the floor, and the television was on, but the sound was off. It was a cartoon I’d forgotten the name of, the one with the blue dog and that guy who looked like a sex offender. There was a ton of those colorful, noisy baby toys all over the floor. The house smelled like food like it had the first time I had come over. She was a chef, right? Was that what Jessie had said?
“It isn’t that big. I would have been able to do it myself, but I never got round to doing it during the pregnancy. Then the baby was here, and I’m stuck with him in my room,” she said.
“You haven’t talked to anyone else before me?” I asked.
“Nope. You’re the first.”
“Listen, I have to tell you something,” I said.
Marcus (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 5) Page 4