We agreed to meet for coffee at Starbucks on the second. Neutral space. I thought it best to avoid my house, where I might be tempted to A) drink or B) get naked.
When I pulled into the parking lot, the sight of Charlie’s car set a mass of butterflies loose in my belly. But it was nothing compared to what the sight of him standing near the door waiting for me did to my heart. It stopped, cranked out a few erratic beats, then settled into a patter like hummingbird wings. I parked my car and walked toward him on unsteady legs.
“Hi.” He moved toward me as if he were about to kiss my cheek but aborted the mission.
Oh, God. We were back to awkward.
“Hi.”
He opened the door for me, and we waited in line silently before ordering drinks and choosing a table in the back. At two in the afternoon, the place wasn’t that crowded—just a few people with laptops and a few pairs of friends.
“How have you been?” he asked quietly. No sign of the teasing, cocky Charlie I met last fall, nor was he the cold, defensive Charlie he’d been the night we fought. Today he just looked sad.
Miserable without you. “OK.”
“How was your Christmas and New Year’s?”
Horseshit. I shrugged. “Decent. Yours?”
“Decent.” He took a sip from his cup before setting it down and putting both hands on the table. “There’s a lot I want to say.”
“There’s a lot I want to hear.”
“But first I need to apologize for my behavior the last time we met. I shouldn’t have reacted that way. I get…frustrated with myself and my bad decisions, and I take it out on others sometimes. It’s something I need to work on. Forgive me.”
Moved by his simple request, some of my self-righteousness dissipated. “I didn’t behave very well either. I was hurt and angry and felt betrayed—but I should have given you a chance to explain without all the yelling and accusations. I owe you an apology too.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
I put a hand over his. “Then just let me offer it, OK? I’m sorry. And I’m ready to listen.” I sat back, hoping that was true. “So. You have a daughter.”
“Yes. Her name is Madison. She’s seven.”
“Do you have a picture of her?”
He pulled out his phone and flipped through his photos until he found what he was looking for. For some reason, I was so nervous I could barely breathe. “Here she is.” He turned the screen toward me, and I took in the image of an angel-faced little girl with chin-length honey-blonde hair and Charlie’s blue eyes. She was grinning up at the camera with a missing-tooth smile and proudly displaying her right arm, which was covered with temporary tattoos.
“She’s beautiful.”
“Thanks.”
I leaned closer. “Are those…frogs?”
“Yeah. She’s crazy about frogs, for some reason.” He looked at the photo again, unable to keep a smile from his face. It was a different kind of smile than I’d ever seen on him—affectionate and prideful. He even sounded different when he talked about her.
I leaned back again. “My mother heard about her from someone at church who keeps in touch with your mom.”
Charlie closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I figured that would happen eventually. I was going to tell you, Erin. I wanted to tell you. So many times. In fact, I was going to tell you the weekend we fought about it.”
I stiffened. Of course he was. “That’s two months too late, Charlie. You should have told me right from the start.”
“I know that now. But there’s a reason I didn’t say anything right away, and then the more time that passed, the more difficult it got. But I don’t want you to think it’s something I take lightly, or that the reason I didn’t tell you has anything to do with you personally.”
I shook my head. “I’m confused, Charlie. How could it not have anything to do with me? From my perspective, you didn’t care enough about me or about us to disclose who you really are. Being a father is a serious thing.”
“It is, and I came to that realization way too late. I’ll tell you everything if you’ll hear me out.”
I took a breath. Steady. Steady. “OK.”
“I once told you I have a bad track record with nice girls. Junior year at Purdue, I took advantage of one.”
“How so?”
“Laura was the ex-girlfriend of a guy in my fraternity I didn’t get along with. He was always complaining that she didn’t put out, and I bet him I could succeed where he had failed.”
My stomach turned. “Ew. So you slept with her?”
He grimaced. “Eventually. First, I got her to fall for me. Trust me.”
“Why?” I shook my head, disgusted. “Just so you could win a bet?”
His tone grew slightly defensive.“At the beginning it was that, yes. But she was pretty and fun and smart, and I liked her a lot. We ended up dating for a while, but I was never a good boyfriend.” He paused, his shoulders slouching. “Then she got pregnant.”
“I see.”
“When she told me, I freaked out. Accused her of doing it on purpose to trap me.”
“God,” I said, folding my arms over my churning insides. My good will was diminishing quicker than I’d hoped. “That’s revolting.”
“I know.”
“Go on. What happened after she got pregnant?”
Charlie stared at the table top as he continued. “Laura didn’t believe in abortion, which was what I wanted her to do. I offered to pay for it.”
“How nice of you.”
He winced at my sarcasm but went on. “She told her family, and her father came down to school and demanded that I take responsibility for my actions like a man. My father said the same thing. Then my grandfather called—same thing.”
“Oh good, you actually have a grandfather. I wondered.”
He raised his eyes from the table. “Of course I have a grandfather. And he is important to me—I didn’t lie about that.”
Great, that’s one thing, at least. But it’s not enough. “So you married this girl.”
“Yes. I married her, dropped out of school and took a job to support her and Madison, but I was a terrible husband and father. I was twenty-one and angry and resentful that this thing had ruined my life. All my plans.”
“That’s pretty callous, Charlie.”
He looked pained. “I know. But at the time, I was too young and stupid to realize what I was throwing away. I wasn’t there for Laura at all when Madison was born, or when she was a baby. I missed almost everything.”
“So Laura left you?”
He nodded. “Yes, when Madison was three. And much to the dismay of my family, I acted like I didn’t care. I partied and carried on with women and tried to go back to school and finish up. But I was miserable. Because I knew what Laura’s dad and my dad and my grandfather said was true—I wasn’t being a man. I was being a child, a selfish brat. I hadn’t owned up to my actions. I hadn’t taken responsibility.”
This selfish brat Charlie sounded a lot like the one I remembered from childhood. Had he really changed? Or was that person still hiding somewhere inside him? “So then what happened?”
“A series of things that made me re-evaluate my life.”
“Such as?”
Charlie took a breath. “When Madison was five, Laura remarried and moved up here to Ann Arbor. I didn’t argue it at the time, and I came up to see Madison only sparingly.” He shook his head. “I don’t even know why Laura allowed it. And the worst thing was, Madison would be so happy to see me, this stranger who bought her things and let her eat candy and doted on her only when it was convenient. I could tell it drove Laura and Blake—that’s her new husband—crazy.”
“And then?”
“Laura and Madison were in a car accident last winter, about a year ago. Some asshole drunk ran a red light at three in the afternoon, crashed into the passenger side of their car, where Madison’s little seat was. Laura was fine but Maddie had broken bones and swelling in her brain. I raced up here and sat by her side for two days, begging God to give me another chance.”
I stared, wide-eyed, jolted by the unexpected turn of his story. “Was she OK?”
He nodded. “But when she woke up, she didn’t recognize me. It was like a bullet to the chest. Then Laura told me Blake wanted to adopt Madison. She wasn’t mean about it. She just said that I hadn’t been a good father and Madison needed stability, especially as she recovered. The best thing I could do for her would be to give her up. Stop confusing her.” Charlie looked at me, and honest to God, his eyes were wet. “She’d started calling Blake Daddy.”
I didn’t have it in me to say good, you deserved it. But I sort of felt it.
“It hit me hard. Here I had brought this child into the world, and I hadn’t been grateful enough. Hadn’t been good enough. Hadn’t been man enough.”
Damn right. “She recovered?”
He nodded. “She did, thank God. And I kept my promise. I moved up here and begged Laura to give me another chance to be Madison’s dad.”
“What did she say?”
“She said no, at first. She said I had given up my rights and I should just sign the papers and let Blake adopt her. They were having another baby, and I could see it would be the perfect little family. Blake loves her like his own, I know he does, but she isn’t his own. She’s my own.”
“Fine. So you moved here to be a dad. That still doesn’t explain why you felt like you had to hide it from me.”
“I didn’t do it to hurt you, Erin. I did it because one of Laura’s stipulations for time with Madison is that there can’t be any women around. That’s why I don’t date.”
I bristled a little. “That doesn’t seem fair, not that you deserve any breaks from her.”
“That’s what she wanted. And I had no room to argue.” He looked uncomfortable. “After Laura and I were separated but before we divorced, there were times that Madison saw other women at my house.”
Nauseated, I put a hand over my mouth.
“It confused her, and she asked her mom about them. Of course, Laura was livid. Rightfully so.”
I didn’t even know what to say.
Charlie rolled his shoulders as if to relieve tension or shrug off the shame of the memory. “So in order to prove I was serious about being a father, I had to promise that there wouldn’t be any women coming and going around Madison. And there haven’t been.”
“Not that you’ve been celibate,” I said archly.
“I’d be lying if I said that. I don’t want to lie anymore.”
Ugh. At least he looked me in the eye.
“But there hasn’t been some sort of parade of women in and out of my bed, either, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he went on. “I have Madison every other weekend now, and I’ve been really focused on her, adjusting everything in my life to be a better father—and enjoying it too. In fact, until you, it had been months. And if you’re wondering, no—there hasn’t been anyone since I met you.”
“Not even Krista with a K?” I couldn’t resist asking.
That brought a cautious smile. “Especially not Krista with a K.” He lowered his voice. “After that rainy night in your kitchen, I told myself to leave you alone—I knew I couldn’t offer you what you wanted, what you deserved.”
“But you didn’t leave me alone,” I said pointedly.
He shook his head. “I couldn’t. I wanted to see you again so badly, and I figured if I took a date to your class, I’d be safe.”
I blinked—that was his plan? Boy, had he botched it. “You might have been safe. Except that you came back later.”
He closed his eyes and exhaled, and I wondered if the sight of me crawling toward him on the studio floor was going through his mind like it was mine. “I did.” He met my eyes. “And I don’t regret it.”
I crossed my legs.
Lowering his voice to a whisper, he leaned forward. “I thought maybe we could just do it once, get it out of our systems. I didn’t know how good it was going to be.”
My arms and legs prickled with goose bumps. It had been good. More than good.
“Afterward, when I went outside to throw the trash away, I was so mad at myself. Because I could feel something happening with us, and I didn’t want it to. I couldn’t let it.”
I nodded. “I remember. It felt like forever before you came back inside.”
“I was out there beating myself up. Because I hadn’t gotten you out of my system—in fact, it was the opposite—you were completely under my skin. But I had to go back in and act like it was no big deal. Give you the lines I’d rehearsed.” He shook his head. “Believe me, I didn’t feel that way.”
“You’re a good actor,” I said flatly.
“I was trying very hard to convince myself and you that what we’d done hadn’t affected me. That’s why I said right away I couldn’t date you. I did that for both of us—so we wouldn’t start wanting something that couldn’t happen.”
Uncrossing my legs, I leaned forward, putting both palms on the table. “But it did happen, Charlie. What about last weekend? What about telling me you wanted to give me more?”
His blue eyes pleaded with me. “That was all real. Things changed. I do want to give you more, Erin. I want to give you everything. But I also said I needed time. You said you could be patient with me, remember?”
“I meant I could be patient with you slowly opening up. This is not the same thing at all.”
“Yes, it is,” he insisted. “These are personal things about me that I don’t share with anyone up front.”
“Charlie, it’s been months.” I thumped my hands on the table.
“But I didn’t realize the night of the burglary that we were going to end up sleeping together. And then when we did, I didn’t realize I’d end up falling in love with you.”
Anger exploded in my chest, so hot and fast I nearly rocketed out of my chair. “Falling in love with me! You don’t love me, Charlie Dwyer. Don’t even try to play that card right now.”
He looked sad and earnest, the bastard. “I do, Erin. I do love you. I realized it was happening that night at Cliff Bell’s and I fought admitting it for days. That weekend I was supposed to have Madison, which was why I couldn’t go to the wedding. But then Laura called and said they were seeing Blake’s family for the holidays that night. So I was able to come and surprise you. When I saw you in that church, I knew how I felt. I nearly told you I loved you that night.”
“But instead you waited for Starbucks?” Horrified, I looked around and lowered my voice. “God, Charlie. This just feels so wrong.” I propped my elbows on the table, my forehead on my fingertips. “It’s not how I imagined this moment at all.”
He reached for one of my wrists and took my hand in his. “I’m sorry. For all of this. Look, I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve clearly never had a successful relationship, and I wouldn’t blame you one bit if you walked out of here right now and never looked back. But I hope you don’t.”
Part of me wanted to do just that—walk out. This man had serious baggage, and he’d lied to me. Maybe it was by omission, but it was still a lie in my book. Yet another part of me missed him badly and still longed to be with him, whatever it took. “I don’t know what to do, Charlie. I…have feelings for you, but I need to think about this. How do I know you didn’t hide this because you suspected I might have an issue with dating someone who has a child?”
Worry creased his forehead. “I don’t know. I guess you just have to trust me that I didn’t look at it that way. I never meant for you and I to get to this point, Erin. But we’re here, I’m telling you the truth, and I’ll ask you now.” Taking a deep breath, he asked me the question I’d been afraid to ask myself. “Are you willing to be with someone who has a child, knowing that child will always come first?”
I chewed my bottom lip, agonizing over the answer. Was I a horrible person if I said I wasn’t sure? Was I being selfish and immature to think it might be too difficult? It wasn’t only a child, but an ex-wife too, one that had the right to make rules Charlie had to follow. My eyes filled. “I don’t know, Charlie. Maybe if I’d known of her existence, about the whole situation from the beginning, I’d have had time to get used to it. As it stands right now…” I felt too awful to say it.
He nodded sadly, stroking the back of my hand with his thumb. “I understand.”
I looked at him through tears. “Can I have some time to think about it?”
“Of course. But while you take that time…” He closed his eyes briefly. “As hard as it will be, I think we shouldn’t see each other. I don’t want to hide things from Laura anymore—I shouldn’t have done it in the first place.”
I nodded, the tears beginning to drip down my cheeks. “You’re right. Plus it would just confuse things for me.”
He let go of my hand and offered me a napkin. “When you’re ready to talk again, let me know. If you decide you want to try, I’m willing to come clean with Laura and see what she says.”
My battered heart dusted itself off a little as I wiped my eyes. “You’d do that? Come clean about us?”
“Absolutely.” His bright blue eyes were clear, his gaze firm. “I never thought I’d say this to anyone, Erin, but I want you in my life. Completely. And that means you’ll be in Madison’s life, too.” He reached for my hand again. “But if you decide that’s too much for you, I’ll understand.”
He looked so heartbroken at the possibility, a fresh wave of tears broke, and I tried to stifle my sobs so we wouldn’t attract attention. Already I felt the censure of people’s stares. You’d turn away a man who loves you just because he has an innocent little child?
But they didn’t understand what it felt like to fall in love with someone and have that person turn out to be someone else! Ever since my mother had told me about his daughter, I’d felt like I couldn’t catch my balance. Everything was off kilter. I needed solid ground under my feet again in order to think clearly, and that was only going to happen with a little distance to gain perspective. Being in a relationship with a man who had a child wasn’t anything to take lightly.
With a viselike sadness squeezing my heart, I hugged him goodbye outside. He held me for a full minute while I wept on his shoulder. Then he kissed my cheek and let me go.
#
Later that night, I curled up in bed alone, cursing myself for changing the sheets since he’d last spent the night. I wished I could smell him again. I wished I could hear his voice. I wished I could see his silhouette in the darkness, moving above me.
With no more tears left to cry, I wrapped my arms and legs around my body pillow and lay completely still, begging God to give me the answers I needed.