“No, buddy. I’m going to sleep at my house tonight,” she says, pulling him back onto her lap when he looks like he’s ready to cry. Jacob is too close to her already. She’s been a fixture in our lives for almost six months and she’s been the one to tuck him in every night for the past few weeks. “Your new room doesn’t have bunk beds, so there’s nowhere for me to sleep here and I really need to go home and take a shower. I stink.”
Jacob bursts into a fit of giggles again, letting go of his disappointment that she won’t be here in the morning when he wakes up. That’ll be the real test because she is the first person he wants to see every day. It stung the first few mornings after she came to North Carolina, but I locked that pain away with all the rest, somewhere deep in my mind, telling myself that I can cope with anything as long as it makes my son happy.
“But you can take a shower here. And now that I have a cool room, I won’t need to sleep with Daddy, so you could share his bed.” I spit soda from one end of the kitchen to the other. I wonder if Jacob senses something more going on between me and Melanie than there really is. No, he’s too young to understand what it typically means when a man and a woman share a bed.
“That’s a nice offer,” Melanie says sweetly after giving me a wide-eyed ‘what do I say to that’ look. “But I really miss my own bed. Maybe some night, you can come over and we’ll have a slumber party. Then you can see how awesome my bedroom is.”
Is it wrong to feel the slightest hint of jealousy because your four-year old son has just been invited into the bed of the woman you’re trying to convince yourself is nothing but a friend? Yeah, probably.
“Dinner’s ready.” I put some noodles and sauce into a bowl for Jacob. When I look up to ask Melanie to strip Jacob down to his undies, I shake my head in disbelief. My boy is already sitting in his booster seat at our new table, wearing nothing but his Superman underwear. Someday, Melanie is going to be an awesome mom.
Chapter 14
After helping Xavier get Jacob into bed, I gather all of Brody’s toys and walk home. That stupid girly part of me keeps looking over my shoulder, hoping Xavier will run after me, begging me to stay with them just one more night. You know, to make sure Jacob doesn’t have any problems acclimating to a new place.
Keep telling yourself that. Eventually, maybe you’ll stop using a four-year old child as an excuse to get close to his father.
I open all of the windows in my apartment, hoping to air it out a bit. Right now, it feels stale from being closed up for over a month. I find a bottle of red wine in the kitchen and pour myself a glass before heading out to the balcony. The view of traffic sailing down the hill sucks now that I’ve grown accustomed to watching the moon rise over the ocean every night.
Everything is so confusing when it comes to Xavier. I don’t want to have feelings for him, but I’m not foolish enough to say they aren’t there. What I don’t know is whether it’s because of him, his son, or their situation that fuels the ache in my chest. With every passing day, I find myself wishing for something that can never be. There are quiet moments, much like this one, when I wonder what life would have been like had we never broken up. Would we have our own shaggy-haired little boy running around the house? Would we have a little girl who Xavier would treat like a princess? What would that life look like?
I need to get out of here before I drive myself crazy. I left town hoping to find myself, but now that I’m back home, I feel more lost than I have in a long time. I’m wishing for things I told myself weren’t important to me. I’m back to pining over the only man I ever loved. And I really wish I had more wine.
Maybe sitting on the balcony was a bad idea. I need to do something that won’t remind me of Xavier, the Outer Banks, Jacob, or anything else that’s going to do no good to think about. I flop onto the couch, pulling a throw blanket over my legs to ward off the chill from the night air. In a nearly catatonic state, I flip through the cable channels, not even stopping long enough to see what’s on. Brody burrows himself into the blankets between my legs, looking up at me with his sad puppy eyes.
“I know buddy, I miss them too,” I whisper, reaching down to scratch the dog’s head. There are things I could be doing, like trying to figure out what I’m going to do with my life now that I’ve thrown away a good career and have no desire to put my six years of college to good use any time in the near future, but instead, I sit and mope on the couch with Brody. Jesus, how pathetic are we?