Chapter Three—Declan
I was sitting on the couch with work spread out all over the coffee table when I heard Emily running down the stairs, with Barkley running right behind her. She was wearing the new princess nightgown I bought her yesterday. “Oh look, it’s Princess Sweetpea! Have you seen Emily?”
She giggled and jumped on my lap. “It’s me. Emily.”
“Oh, Em, I didn’t even recognize you. You look just like a princess. Are you all ready for bed? Did you brush your teeth?”
She smiled and nodded her head. “It’s almost time for bed Sweetpea, you have school in the morning.”
“We haven’t done my backpack yet.”
I grimaced. I was always forgetting stuff like that. In less than six months, I’d somehow managed to move an entire corporation across the country—but this parenting thing made me feel like an epic failure. I watched her run across the room to the kitchen and grab her pink backpack. She settled on the couch next to me and opened her backpack and pulled out the folder we were supposed to look at together every night. She handed me a bunch of papers.
I leaned back on the couch and sighed. It had been six months. Six months since Eleanor had died. I’d been through three nannies. I bought her a puppy. I enrolled her in ballet lessons and scouts and she was playing soccer. I had her seeing the best child psychologist money could buy. But nothing seemed like enough. I always screwed up. There were some things that money couldn’t fix. She needed a mother. I swear there had been times I’d considered marrying someone—maybe even hiring someone to marry. It was a ridiculous thought. As much as I wanted to, I knew that I couldn’t buy what Emily needed and I didn’t have it in me to give it to her.
The only person in my life who Emily had bonded with was Jacques, my driver. He took Emily to school every day and picked her up. He also drove her to all of her activities. It was ridiculous that a five-year-old had her own driver. I paid Jacques seventy-five thousand dollars a year to do a job that should be included in the nanny's job description. I didn't care though. I'd do anything to make her happy.
I shuffled through the paperwork. Luckily there was no homework that should have been done over the weekend. I stopped when I saw a green piece of paper that said, “A parent-teacher conference is scheduled for you Monday at 2:50 p.m. to discuss your child’s progress. Please contact the teacher below at the email provided no later than Sunday at 1:00 p.m. if you cannot attend at the scheduled time.” I put the paper down and texted Tasha to clear my schedule tomorrow afternoon. How did I keep missing stuff like this? I picked up the note again and looked at it. The teacher’s name listed was Andy Walton. I felt a pang of something in my chest. Could it be him? No way. He was from somewhere up in the Northeast. He told me he had gotten a job in New York. I didn’t even ask him what kind of job. I doubted he was a teacher. Andy Walton? It was a common name, right? It was probably a woman. There were plenty of women named Andy.
I looked over at Emily. “I have to go meet your teacher tomorrow. I thought her name was Mrs. Davis?”
Emily rolled her little eyes. “No. Mrs. Davis had a baby, remember? I got a new teacher after Christmas.”
I did remember now that she said it. The woman was pregnant when I met her. Jesus, school was out in a week and I hadn’t even met her teacher. I looked at her sparkling blue eyes smiling up at me and tweaked her nose. “Is your new teacher as pretty as Mrs. Davis?”
She giggled. “That’s funny, Daddy.” Daddy. She called me Daddy. She had never done that before. I watched as she put her little hand over her mouth like it accidentally slipped out. “I mean, Uncle Dec,” she said, with a little red face.
I smiled at her. “It’s okay, Em, you can call me Daddy. You can call me anything you want because you’re my favorite Sweetpea in the whole world.” I reached down and tickled her while she screamed and kicked. It broke my heart. I meant it when I said she could call me anything. I wondered what it must have felt like for her to be five years old and have no one to call Mommy or Daddy.
After I put her to bed, I poured myself a scotch, lay down on the couch, and thought about Andy Walton. I met him the night after graduation from NYU. We were both at the same party in Connecticut. I’d never been so attracted to a man in my whole life. I’d come to the party with some girl, I couldn’t even remember her name. She had disappeared with another guy to a bedroom to do some coke, which made my decision to never see her again easy. I was hanging out on the back porch drinking a beer the first time I saw him.
His hair was dark brown and wild, his eyes were as green as emeralds and they lit up every time he smiled. And fuck! When he smiled, these dimples appeared out of nowhere. I wanted to eat him up. He was a couple of inches shorter than me and maybe a little smaller, but he was toned. He was wearing board shorts, flip-flops, and a tight gray t-shirt that hugged his slender arms and chest. He was cut. I wondered if he was a runner.
I wanted to look away. I remember trying. But I couldn't. A couple of times, he caught me staring and I averted my eyes. Eventually, the redhead he was talking to walked back in the house and the two of us were alone on the porch. I remember my heart was racing. My palms were sweating. There was an unfamiliar sensation in my stomach when he walked over and sat down in the chair next to mine. “Hey man, Andy Walton,” he said, stretching his hand out toward me.
I shook his hand. “Declan Marsh.” It felt good to touch him. Everything about it felt right. I didn’t want to let go. We sat out there for hours talking about nothing, about everything. The more we talked, the more I wanted him. Eventually, he suggested we check out the lake and we walked down to the water together and sat next to each other on the dock, looking out on the lake. I remember our hands were right next to each other on the splintering wood when he barely touched mine with his pinky. That one tiny touch made my cock spring to life. I wanted him more than I had wanted anyone in my entire life. That's why when he leaned over and pressed his perfect soft lips against mine, I didn't pull away. I wanted to devour him. But when he slipped his perfect tongue between my lips, I heard my father's voice, calling me weak, calling me a failure.
I pushed him off me. “What the fuck, man?”
His face turned red and I felt like a bastard. I was a bastard. I’d been leading him on all night. He turned his head away from me. “Sorry, I thought—I was picking up a signal.”
I could tell he was embarrassed. “No harm, dude—just, I’m not gay, if that’s what you were thinking,” I lied. “I better get going. I have some packing before I leave tomorrow.”
Months went by after that night before Andy Walton stopped consuming my every thought. I was so close. So close to taking a chance. I wanted to call him and tell him every fucked-up thing about me and my dad. I wanted to kiss him again. I wanted to feel him pressed up against me. I wanted him in my bed every night. I spent hours trying to work up the nerve to call him. I thought about telling my father I wanted to open an office in New York just to be near him. But in the end, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be weak. I couldn’t let my father down.
When I went to bed later that night, I jerked off like some damn teenager thinking about him and then convinced myself that there was no way I’d be seeing him tomorrow. It couldn’t possibly be the same Andy and even if it was, nothing could happen between us. That wasn’t possible for me.
The next day, I arrived at Emily’s school ten minutes early because I hate being late for shit. I walked through the front doors and my phone rang. It was Tasha. I made my way down to Emily’s room as Tasha told me that the newest nanny had turned in her notice. I ran my fingers through my hair. “Fuck, Tasha. She’s the fourth one. What the hell?”
“Don’t kill the messenger, Dec—she got selected for some study abroad program. I keep telling you to stop hiring college students, they’re not dependable.”
I took a deep breath. “I just don’t want her to have some old cranky woman taking care of her. She needs someone young who will play with her.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you, Declan.”
I walked to the door of Emily’s room and looked through the glass window. My breath hitched when I saw him. It was him. It was Andy. “Just find somebody, Tasha.” I hung up on her before she could say anything else.
He was sitting with his legs crossed on the floor. All the kids were surrounding him as he read to them. He looked the same, like I’d just seen him yesterday. He was wearing faded jeans with a hole torn in the knee, black Chuck Taylors, and a faded NYU t-shirt. It was almost impossible to believe that it had been six years since I’d seen him.
I watched as Andy read to the kids, his voice imitating the sounds of the characters. Every one of them was hooked on every word that he read. I watched as Emily’s eyes lit up as she listened. They all laughed and giggled as he pretended to be a monkey. When the story was finished, he said, “Guess what time it is now?” All of them raised their hands.
He chuckled. “Josh, what time is it?”
The little boy bounced up and down. “It’s time to go home!”
“That’s right!” Andy exclaimed. “Time to get our things together. We need our backpacks and don’t forget the field trip permission slip that’s in your cubby so we can go to the zoo.”
“Okay, the first one who gets their backpack and their permission slip and sits back down in the circle without running—that’s a very important part—no running or pushing, gets to be line-leader and they get a horseback ride from me all the way to the pick-up line.”
I watched all the kids scramble to do what he asked. I laughed watching the look of determination on Emily’s face as she struggled not to run. Some redheaded kid raced by her and sat down next to Andy. Emily looked disappointed when she made it back to the circle. I knew how she felt, it sucked to come in second. Andy looked at the little boy. “Sorry, bud. You ran. Remember how I said no running?” I watched the little cheater bury his face in his hands and couldn’t help but feel pride for my over-achieving niece.
She hopped on Andy’s back as he carried her across the room on his hands and knees trying to buck her off. She had a look of sheer joy on her face as she giggled the whole way. I wished I could make her look that way all the time. The other kids laughed as she gripped the back of his t-shirt. I took a step back when Andy asked the little boy behind them to open the door.