Panic at bay, she pulled on her robe and crept from her room. If Lily was sleeping, Kevin was probably crashed on the couch and she didn’t want to wake him. Then she heard his voice and stopped, peeking around the corner into the kitchen.
He was swaying back and forth with their daughter gazing adoringly into his face from the cradle of his arms. “I’m going to do my best to make sure your life is awesome, but it won’t always be. Those are the times you need to dance in the kitchen the most. It’s good for your soul.”
Beth sighed and leaned her head against the corner of the wall, as enchanted as Lily by the soft, tender timbre of his voice.
“You don’t even need music,” he told Lily. “You can dance to the music in your head. Hopefully not to that country-and-western shit your mother listens to, though. Oh…damn. Don’t say shit, Lily-bean. Or if you do and Mommy hears you, don’t tell her you heard it from me, okay? Tell her Uncle Mike said it.”
She might have giggled if her throat wasn’t all clogged with emotion. Seeing Kevin with Lily always made her feel blessed, but this moment—this was an intensely private moment between a father and his baby daughter and she shouldn’t be eavesdropping.
Backing slowly out of sight, she turned into the bathroom and made some noise flushing the toilet and brushing her teeth. When she walked back into the kitchen, Lily was in her bouncy chair and Kevin was setting two steaming mugs of coffee on the table. He smiled at her and Lily kicked her feet, making herself bounce.
“Morning, sunshine.” He pulled out her chair for her.
“Thanks…for everything.” She sat and wrapped her hands around the mug. “You didn’t have to stay. I just needed a good nap, that’s all.”
“No, a good night’s sleep is what you needed. And we had it all under control, didn’t we, Lily-bean?”
The baby kicked her feet and blew a raspberry at him.
“Don’t listen to her. All under control.” He sat in the chair opposite her and took a sip of his coffee. “I should probably tell you there’s a diaper out in the hall, though, because I didn’t think the trashcan lid would hold it. It was…gruesome.”
“So you put it in the hallway?”
“It was either there or the freezer.”
“Hallway works.”
They were quiet a few minutes, drinking their coffee and watching Lily kick her feet. A quiet family moment, she thought. Almost like they were a real family.
And they could be. She knew all she had to do was say the word and Kevin would have her down at city hall signing a marriage license so fast she’d be lucky if she got her shoes on.
Last night, while she was exhausted and crying and Lily was exhausted and crying, she’d asked herself why she was going through it alone. Right across the hall was a stand-up guy who’d treat them like princesses and shoulder his share of the burden. Hell, probably a good chunk of her share, too, because that’s just the kind of man he was.
If only there was some way to separate their relationship from Lily. She wished they’d had more than one date before the baby sideswiped them, changing everything forever. There wasn’t any way to untangle him as himself or as Dad, or her as herself or as Mom.
She and Kevin had been bed partners. They were friends. Most importantly, they were co-parents. But were they lovers? Not in the sexual sense, but were they two people whose relationship was based on love? No matter what he said, she couldn’t be sure.
“You look better,” Kevin told her, and she was startled to realize she’d been staring into the bottom of her empty coffee mug.
“I feel better. The last couple of nights have been a little tough.” When he opened his mouth, she held up her hand to stop him. “Yes, I should have dragged you out of bed and handed her over.”
“We’ve been together—or non-together or whatever you want to call it—a long time now, Beth. I don’t know what else I can do to make you believe you don’t have to go it alone.”
“I’m trying.”
He looked sad more than anything. Beaten. “A year. It’s been almost an entire year and sometimes I don’t feel like we’re closer to…anything, than when we started.”
“Please don’t do this right now.”
“Then when?”
“When I’m not a wreck. When I’ve had more than six consecutive hours of sleep in a month. I don’t know, but not right now.”
“And then she’ll be teething and then it’ll be something else.”
“I can’t do any more than this, Kevin.”
“Maybe you could see about my mom watching Lily so we could go out for dinner.”
“It’s too soon.” She stood and walked toward the coffeemaker so she wouldn’t have to see his face. “How about I make us some breakfast?”
***
Kevin felt himself hit the wall—a big brick wall he couldn’t go through and could see no way around. A dead end.
“I can’t go on like this, Beth.”
Her shoulders slumped as though she recognized the note of finality in his voice. “We decided a long time ago the best thing we could do for Lily was be friends.”