“No, I’m not married. But having a young son is a lot of work.” He shrugs his shoulders, and there’s a hint of melancholy there.
I nod deeply, because I feel his pain. I feel it, I live it, and I breathe it. “I hear you. It’s like your work is never done. You work all day, and then you come home and there’s more work waiting for you. Even when the kids are sleeping, it still feels like it’s never going to end. I work until I collapse, every single night.”
He looks up at me. “I know, right?” He puts his pizza down and brushes his hands off over the box, then reaches over and grabs his soda and leans back on the couch, throwing his free arm over the cushions. He lifts his leg and rests his ankle on his opposite knee. “My son can be sound asleep, and I’ll be in my bed down the hall, and I swear, I hear when his breathing changes just the tiniest bit.”
I bounce up and down on the couch a little, excited to be talking to another parent about something I know only too well. “Same for me! It’s crazy. If I hear anything that sounds out of the ordinary, I spring up out of bed because I have to go check to see what it is. I don’t know what I’m expecting; it’s not like some kidnapper is going to crawl into my kid’s window on the second floor and snag her. Of course, I get there and find out it was just a change in her breathing pattern or whatever, or one of my son’s action figures has fallen out of his bed onto the floor.”
He laughs. “I check the locks on my son’s window twice before I go to bed. Every night. I’m so paranoid somebody’s going to try to get in there or he’s going to fall out.”
It feels so good to be sharing mutual parental paranoia with another person. “Ha! And here I thought I was the only one with OCD tendencies where my kids are concerned.”
He shakes his head. “Nope. You’re not alone. Trust me.”
Neither of us says anything for a long time after that. The silence should probably be awkward, but it’s not. I’m just enjoying being in the same room with somebody who hears the whack-a-doodle things that I do and doesn’t think I’m whack-a-doodle for doing them.
“We should get our kids together someday.” I smile at him. “Our sons would probably bring the walls down and have a ball doing it.”
Dev’s reaction is not at all what I expect. Instead of nodding and smiling and saying that might be a lot of fun, his face falls and he turns back around to face the pizza boxes. Both of his feet go to the floor and he leans forward, putting his forearms on his knees. After about five seconds he leans over farther, flips up the top on another pizza box, and grabs another piece of pizza. “Yeah. Maybe. Someday.”
It’s like a knife has been shoved into my chest. Did I totally misread the situation? Did I overstep my boundaries somehow? Does he hate my kids without even meeting them? I replay the moment in my head, along with the moments before, trying to find out where I slipped up, but none of it makes sense. I don’t think I said anything rude. Is it just that he doesn’t want to get to know me any better? If that’s the case, what is he doing here having pizza and wine in my family room?
Instead of asking more questions and risking saying something even worse, I focus on finishing my crust. I keep my cup in front of my face, taking a sip after each bite in an effort to hide my expression. I’m afraid that too many of my feelings are showing.
“It’s too bad that you can’t do that freelance work for the team,” he says.
I blink a few times, realizing that he’s changing the subject and putting us back on the footing of being potential future coworkers. I don’t think a cold shower could’ve been more effective at calming whatever ardor might have been growing in my heart for him.
I put my cup and the pizza crust down on the table and stand. Brushing my hands off on my pants I look down at him. “You know what? I just realized I have a lot of work I need to get done.”
He looks up at me, his chewing slowing. He frowns a little but doesn’t answer right away.
I take a step toward my home office. “I’m just going to hook up my laptop while you gather your stuff together.” I gesture at the pizza boxes.
He nods. “Yeah, sure. Go ahead. Don’t mind me.”
I walk away toward the kitchen to retrieve my laptop, sad that something fell apart and I have no idea what the cause was, but glad to be getting back on regular footing again. Having a man in my house, sharing a meal with a cute guy . . . this is all too strange for me. I’m ready to get back to my normal, boring, lonely life, where my kids go away on rare weekends with their father and I catch up on work at home. I’m not even in the mood to pop popcorn and watch a chick flick anymore. This sucks.