Chapter Twenty-One
Jason
Damien and Shelby didn't end up making it to the airport with me. My flight was too late. I sat in my seat, staring listlessly out the window at the lights of L.A. disappearing into the distance. I had left my hotel at check out and ended up spending the day at Shelby's. She was still on her break from work, and that had been the way we had spent our days since last Friday anyway. Together. Damien, Shel, and I, like a family. We had just put him down to sleep before I had left for the airport.
I had just learned that I had a son last week. I had only gotten to be a dad to him for the past few days. He was such a good baby; I was going to miss them. I was no expert, but I was working on getting the hang of it. Holding him right, feeding him, I hadn’t given him a bath yet, but I had watched Shel do it a couple times. I’d be able to give it a shot when I got back.
This trip wasn't going to be long, but it sucked anyway that I had to make it at all. I had quit my job already, so there wasn't anything really pulling me back, just the fact that I had had my entire life in New York: my car, my penthouse, everything I owned. I was moving to L.A., and I wouldn't have been able to do that from L.A.
I had lived in New York since graduating, more or less my entire adult life. Thinking about leaving, I had thought that maybe I'd be a little sad or something, but nope. The city had lost its place as my home when my family had stopped being there. Wherever Damien and Shelby were was where I wanted to be. The only reason I was okay with making this trip was because I was going to be back in L.A. with them soon. I didn't have an exact number of days, but I was getting started sorting my shit out as soon as I landed.
Meeting with Victoria was at the top of the list of things I had to do, then contacting a realtor, then packing my place up; it would probably take a little while, a couple days or so. I wasn't looking forward to it, but it had to be done. This was what it would take to start my new life. I ended up sleeping most of the flight, so I wasn't exhausted the next day. Vic had asked for a morning meeting. Going into the station for what was going to be the last time didn't feel the way I had thought it would. A few old colleagues stopped me to ask why I had quit and where I was going but a lot more were busy and didn’t bother. My job had been it for me for such a long time; being back in the station, it was like eating a snack you used to love as a kid as an adult and finding that it tasted like shit all along, but you just hadn't known better as a kid.
It had taken losing Shelby and becoming Damien's dad to realize that I had wanted both. I had quit my job and was moving across the country for them; I didn't just want them: I needed them. I could get another job, but I couldn't see the rest of my life without Damien and Shelby in it. I wasn't going to live the rest of my life without them in it. Giving things up was easy when that was the trade-off. Vic was waiting for me in her office. She had had time to cool off since I had quit over the phone, but I apologized again.
"Hm," she said. "Some Christmas present that was."
"I could have had better timing. That's not the kind of thing you want to hear on Christmas day especially after the call I had given you before about the leave of absence."
"It could have been worse. Actually, the ratings have been fantastic since you left." My eyebrows raised. Yeah? Had they? Huh. Okay then. I didn't have much of an opinion on that. Good, I guess, for her and for the station.
"Good way to end the year," I said.
"Great way," she said. "Why didn't you walk out of here sooner?"
The ratings that the station got were none of my business anymore; I no longer worked there. Paying attention to the ratings hadn't even been my business when I had had a job here, but I had cared whenever anyone had taken the time to mention them to me. They mattered; obviously, the aim was to have more eyes watching you than anyone else. What did it mean that more people were watching since I had left than when I had been there? Fuck if I knew; a whole load of factors went into ratings. I probably would have been pissed if they had gone up since I had left in the past but now, it just seemed like someone else's problem, and I had my own to think about.
Once Victoria was out of the way, I could think about the penthouse. I had only lived in it for the last three years, moving in a year after starting at WRTC. At the time it had been an investment, but things changed. I had seen myself living in it for a while longer, maybe buying another home, moving and making it a rental property. Keeping it when I was in L.A. wouldn't make sense, especially if Shelby and I were going to end up moving into a house. Her apartment was spacious, but we'd need more eventually. Damien wasn't going to be a baby for that much longer.
That was the next step: the three of us moving in together. I mean, we hadn’t had the most conventional trajectory, and I didn’t even know what to call us at this point. I knew what I wanted though. I had missed out on months of living with my son. The days we had spent together had been great, but I hadn't spent a night before. I wasn't getting the full fatherhood experience. Shelby and me too, we had been doing well. We made a pretty great team, and I felt good about what was happening. It would just make sense. Once Damien got a little older, and this place had sold, we'd figure out what to do from there.
The penthouse was nice; I wasn't worried about how it would sell. White oak floors, one-eighty-degree views, and close to four thousand square feet. I had gotten it furnished but added some stuff. Not much. I had switched the bed out, added some storage and shelving, converted one of the bedrooms to a library and home office. All that would go into storage, no problem. That would take care of itself tomorrow. I still had the contact with the firm that had found me the place; one easy phone call had gotten me a meeting with a broker for the next day.
I wasn't going to miss it. It had been a bachelor pad. I worked so much, I wasn't spending hours and hours in the house anyway. All that was going to change once I got back to L.A. and I was looking forward to it. Finding time finally around nine that night, I called Shelby. It was around six her time, so I hoped she was home. She picked up quickly.
"Jason?"
"Hey, I hope this isn't a bad time."
"No. I just took Damien for a walk. We’re heading home. How was your flight?"
"It was all right. Sorry, I couldn't call sooner."
"Busy day?" she asked. "What were you doing?"
"Just getting stuff back on track after being gone so long," I said vaguely. I hadn't told her that I had been planning to sell my place or anything else about the move. She had no idea, and I wanted to keep it that way. As far as she knew, I'd be back in L.A. to see them in a few days before I left again. We hadn’t made any plans about what was going to happen with the three of us; we were sort of just taking the days as they came.
That set up wouldn’t be enough after a while if we ever wanted to get anywhere, which was why it made the most sense for us to move in together. I couldn’t be a dad, not the kind that I wanted to be, from New York when Damien was in Los Angeles. I didn’t want to be long distance with Shelby either. When I told her like that, she’d totally be on board. I wanted to surprise her, but this felt like something you discussed face to face. I’d say something once I got back. As soon as I was done getting all my stuff in order, I was gone, and I wasn't looking back.
"How's that going?" she asked.
"All right. What about you?"
"I'm okay," she said lightly. "I've been thinking about sleep training Damien."
"Sleep training? What's that?" I asked. She explained it to me. Apparently, Damien couldn’t sleep the whole night through yet. They did that with babies to get them on a regular sort of routine. I'd never even thought about that. Damien napped a couple times a day; I just figured babies liked to sleep and were good at it. I had a lot to learn. I was getting a little tired of being clueless in front of Shelby, even though she was being really patient with me.
"He only gets up once or twice right now, so I think he'll pick it up fast," she said. "Could I call you right back? I have to get up the stairs."
"No problem. I wanted to ask whether I could talk to you later on Skype, so I could see Damien." She told me to give her a couple hours; she'd call me just before she was getting Damien down for bed.
It had been a while, a long time since I had called a woman and asked her how her day had been. This whole thing with Shelby was pretty new, but in a good way. I had never wanted to in the past. The year that Shelby had been gone hadn't been a long enough time for me to forget her. It was good that I hadn't because of Damien, but there had been something else too. I wanted her. I always had. When we had worked together, I had thought that I had her, but I had been wrong. I never stopped thinking about her the whole time we had been apart. I had had hook-ups, a short-lived thing with some model who split her time between New York and London, but Shelby had always been there, somewhere at the back of my mind, reminding me that none of those women was her.
Of all the women that I could have gotten pregnant by accident, and that was a long list, I was glad that it had been her. Something told me that she was the only person who I would have actually wanted to take that step with. She ended up sending me a text a little while later to get on Skype; it was getting close to Damien's bedtime, and that was the only time that I'd get to see him before he dozed off.
I smiled seeing them fill my computer screen. I had been with them the day before, but it hadn't been enough. I had never been as certain of anything in my life as I was of this. They were my future. I'd say goodbye to everything to be able to have them. In a few days, I'd tell Shelby the good news.