Chapter Seven – Evan

“Goodnight, my big handsome boy,” I say to Liam as I rub his dark hair gently between my finger tips. “I’m glad I got to see you off to sleep tonight.”

“Yeah, I usually miss you at bed time, Daddy. It’s nice to have you here.”

I stare down at my son with love in my heart. I know that I’m lucky to have a selection of some wonderful nannies to help me with raising him, and they’re doing a really good job of it, but I wish it could be me. I wish I could find the time and the space to be the one to raise him but I can’t… and that’s because looking at him hurts me as much as it makes me happy.

Actually, no, that isn’t what I wish at all. I wish that his mother, Victoria was still alive and everything was as it’s supposed to be. I shouldn’t be a single father, she shouldn’t have been taken from me just after my son was born, but unfortunately that’s exactly what happened.

When I first met Victoria, it was very much just a sexual thing. We didn’t have much in common aside from an explosive physical chemistry so that’s all it became. Every few days we would meet for a hook up and then we would go our separate ways. That is until she fell pregnant…

At first, we had no idea what to do. We had to give it a go because it was the right thing to do for our unborn child. It wasn’t always easy but we made it work. There were arguments and hard times but we had a reason to stay together and because of that we stuck it out.

Then Liam was born and everything felt perfect. I proposed to Victoria in the hospital bedroom and we started planning our wedding right away. It was going to be the event of the year, we were both so excited for it. The wedding that would ultimately take everything from me…

My mom and dad took Victoria out to pick out her wedding dress on the day that the accident happened. I was so excited all day long, I loved having baby Liam all to myself for a while, and I knew how thrilled Victoria was. It didn’t even register in my brain that they had taken a long time, I just thought they were having a good time in the city center. It wasn’t until the cops came to the door with the hideous life changing information that a drunk driver caused a pile up on the freeway that crushed the car with three of the most important people in my life inside. I lost everything and I changed that day too. I became hard on the outside, I turned off my emotions, and I became the man I am now.

Now, every time I look at my boy, I see my wife. I see my parents. I see all the people that are missing from my life and it kills me. Maybe that’s why I spend so much time at the office. I want to create a bigger and better life for Liam, I want him to have it all, but I also don’t want him to see the pain in my eyes every time we share a glance. He doesn’t remember his mom at all, which is good and sad all at once, and I don’t want him to see how much I think of her all the time when I see him. He just looks so much like her, it kills me.

“I’m sorry, Liam,” I say while kissing him on the head. “I will try and be home more often. It’s just crazy at work at the moment. You know how it is.”

Of course, he doesn’t know how it is, he’s only almost six years old. I shouldn’t have said that, but sometimes I’m a little awkward around him. Especially when I feel guilty which right now is my biggest emotion. I feel horrible for being so absent.

“Good, because then I can tell you all about my stuff at school. I’ve been learning all about space and the moon and I have lots to talk about. I know all the planets, there’s Mars and Jupiter. There’s also Neptune, and… and…”

His face lights up as he talks and I can see how excited he is to have me around. It makes me feel terrible that I’ve been spending so much time at the office recently, I know I should be back here in time for bed every single night. None of the nannies ever suggest that I will be because they know I can’t always promise that I will, especially when a late night conference calls crop up, but I’m now going to make a promise to myself that I will try more often. I won’t tell Liam, I’ll just start doing it. He’s already lost his mom, he doesn’t need to lose me as well.

“That sounds great, you do have to go to sleep right now but you can tell me all about it in the morning. Does that sound good? I’ll wait for breakfast and we can talk about it then.”

“Okay, Daddy, goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Son.” I kiss him on the head again. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he murmurs sleepily. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

I step back and switch off the light but I don’t leave his bedroom right away. I prop myself up against the door frame and watch as he slides his eyes closed and he drifts into a deep sleep which I hope brings happy dreams along with it. I don’t want him to know the horror of real life, especially when he has already been through so much himself already. Even if he doesn’t realize it yet, it’ll hit him soon that he has no mother or grandparents. I’m dreading the day when he asks me all about it. Every single mother’s day, I brace myself for the questions, but so far they haven’t yet come.

After a while I give up staring at my adorable little boy and I make my way down the stairs where I will spend a long evening alone dealing with work stuff. Mostly, the things that Katy has given me to look at. There’s a whole lot of restructuring plans that I need to lay out for her by Monday, and I don’t want to fuck it up. She might think that I’m a bit of an arrogant asshole with her because there’s a lot that I just can’t negotiate, but I do take this seriously. I do need this to work.

As I hit the bottom step, I make my way towards the kitchen and I grab a tumbler from the cupboard. I won’t drink much alcohol because I’m home alone with Liam, but I do need just one to steady my nerves., I remember way back when, I used to spend my Friday nights out in seedy night clubs, dancing away, hitting on the hottest chick in the bar, then it would usually be on to an after party where things would get really crazy…I never would have expected my weekends to end up like this. Me at home with my baby boy, wondering if I’m allowed to feel just a little bit lonely.

This is why I’m glad to have Ally around, because she helps to starve off the loneliness and the sexual frustration, and she doesn’t want anything more. I don’t know if she knows about Liam, but she hasn’t ever asked. She doesn’t want to get to know me, she doesn’t want me to be her boyfriend, she’s just content to have fun. I can fuck around with her in the office, then come back home and have my real life. It’s like the best of both worlds.

I thought I was content with that too, I always have been, but now there’s something about it that feels a little hollow. I don’t want to pursue things with her, but I don’t know if I’ happy to just keep fooling around either. I feel a bit dissatisfied with all of it, and knowing that Liam isn’t happy with me being away from the house so much either makes it even worse. I would love nothing more than to give him that full family unit, but how can I make that happen? Without Victoria, that just isn’t ever going to happen. When she died, she took away the chance for that to happen so now me and Liam are stuck. We’re in this rut now, and that’s all there is to it.

“Right.” I shake my head and knock my drink back, before making me way over to the table where I have all my work set out in front of me. “Let’s get to this.”

I rub my head hard and stare down at the white bits of paper as the words upon them start to swim in front of me. I guess I’m tired and weary with it all. I really want to settle down and come up with a miraculous plan that solves everything, but it just isn’t happening. I’m too stuck in the detail that I don’t want to lose my business. It’s almost as if I can’t see the bigger picture.

I stare at my cell phone wondering if it’s too late for me to call Katy with some questions. She said that I always can, but it is a Friday night. I don’t know much about her but for all I know she could be out on the town living it up. I know most lawyers are too busy for a social life like that, but Katy might be different. She might somehow manage to be a kick ass lawyer and a social butterfly at the same time.

I don’t need to call her, I tell myself angrily. I can do this by myself.

The thing is, I don’t think I necessarily need to call her, I think I might want to. She seems to care about this working out just as much as I do, and while she might have her own agenda for that it’s nice to have someone who’s solely on my side. I want to hear her reassuring voice, I want her to tell me that she’s going to make sure that everything is okay. I just want to hear her whatever she has to say. I can’t believe I was actually disappointed when she came into my office instead of Grant. Now, I actually like her a whole lot more. I think I will always prefer her and choose her first.

For a moment, I wonder what it would be like if she was here. I never invite women back to my home for obvious reasons. There’s no way in hell that I’m ever going to introduce random women that I sleep with to my son, but I try to picture how Katy would fit in here. Is this the sort of house that she would like, or would she think that it’s too much? Would she assume that I’m flash, or maybe she loves somewhere just like this? Maybe she earns just as much money as me. I mean, I guess not, but she might be wealthy enough. I don’t know why she would even be here anyway, what would she be doing? Working? No, that would be weird and there’s nothing else that would bring her here.

I sigh loudly, I need to stop thinking about her. It’s getting a little weird. She’s just my lawyer, she isn’t the sort of person that I’m ever going to have even a friendship with. This is just a distraction, a way to procrastinate from what really needs to be done. I need to work until this is set, until I know exactly what I want to do.