Chapter Twelve
Ivy
I’d been in the car for the last twenty minutes. Luckily Hazel was sleeping, and I didn’t know if I should make a move and go to the pre-school. This was the mother of all pre-schools, and they only did tours based on special invitations. Chad and I had managed to get past the screening stage, and I’d been thinking about leaving my job and maybe caring for Hazel full-time. The reality of doing that was beyond me.
I’d spent the last two weeks crying, not only did Chad lie, but he hasn’t even tried to call me. Not once. I haven’t heard from the man. I just got the letter about the pre-school and thought about us when we were filling in the application. We were laughing. Joking about our kids being geniuses if they get into this pre-school. Now, I didn’t know what to think about all of it.
I picked up my phone and decided that I would call Willow. She was my voice of reason, and she would tell me to get the fuck out of here. All this lying just wasn’t worth it.
“Hey Willow,” I smiled as she picked up the phone.
“Ivy, where you at?”
“Outside The Lords Pre-School.”
I hated to tell her that I’d considered going to do the tour when I said that I wouldn’t even think about it when she came over on the weekend. I saw the letter, but I never opened it until then. I thought that it was the typical rejection letter that nearly every parent received about the elite pre-school.
She screeched, “Really? I didn’t think that you would go for it. You told me that you wouldn’t, and there was no way that Hazel would get in, so it was all a waste of time. Besides, aren’t you leaving work?”
She wasn’t just the voice of reason, but she was reminding me of the decisions I said I was making and I was swiftly changing my mind about them.
“Yeah, I know they won’t let me work part-time only Friday’s at home. Which isn’t good enough. The sitter’s great and I don’t have a problem with that. It’s just that I wanted to leave town because of him. Why should I leave because of him?”
“Hallelujah, at last, you finally admit it. Just don’t understand why you don’t call him.”
“Me?” I screeched so loudly that Hazel opened her eyes with fright as I did it. I gave her a reassuring smile and she closed her eyes once again. Back to her fantasy land, the one that had her smiling while she was sleeping peacefully.
I opened the car door to stop myself from making any more loud noises.
“He’s the jerk that lied, and he hasn’t even bothered to apologize.”
She hummed, “Hmm, he sent you a dozen red roses every single day for the first four weeks. He called you endlessly and you refused to pick up your phone. He turned up at work and your home and you refused to see him. What more do you want the guy to do?”
She had a point, Chad had tried to talk to me, and all I had done was slam the door in his face.
“There was no excuse for what he did. None. He lied to me, not for weeks but months.”
She interrupted my train of thought, “But did he lie to you? I mean you assumed that Joshua was his and he just went along with it. Okay, he went a bit OTT with making it seem like he was a single dad and he was dumped by the mom. But apart from that, I think the guy’s really into you, and the crazy part about it is that you’re into him, too. So, I don’t know why you wouldn’t give him another chance.”
I didn’t have an answer to her question. I could hear what he had to say about it. But Chad could have somewhere along the line told me that Joshua wasn’t his kid. He could have told me that he was his uncle and then we could have taken it from there. I knew that Willow was right. If he had told me, would I have given him the time of day?
Probably not.
Maybe the attraction was down to him being a single parent, too. I thought that we had a connection based on us both trying to bring up our kids without a partner. When I found out that it was a lie, then there wasn’t anything holding us together anymore.
“Willow, I need to go. It’s time for me to go in and luckily he has the sense not to show up.”
She sighed, “Maybe he doesn’t know about the meeting. After all, they sent the letter to your house, not to his.”
“Yes, I had the sense not to put his address down. We were supposed to be a couple. Two people trying to put our kids into pre-school.”
She laughed, “The things you parents do to get your kids into the right pre-school.”
“He did it for his nephew. I did it for my daughter.” I corrected her; Chad wasn’t a single parent. He didn’t even have a kid, yet he spent nearly every day with Joshua, and I remember when Joshua was starting to crawl how Chad acted as if it was the best day of his life. I wondered if that was a lie along with everything else.
“Just call me later, okay?”
I asked, “How come?”
She mumbled, “Because I just want to see that you’re okay. You just sound confused right now.”
“Okay.”
And with that, I hung up. She was right; I was confused about so many things. On too many levels. I celebrated my birthday with her and a bottle of Chardonnay. I thought that the older I got, the wiser I was supposed to be, not the complete opposite. I felt as if I had my head screwed on more when I was eighteen rather than now. Back then everything was simple from graduating high school to getting my diploma.
I nearly dropped my phone the moment I turned around and saw that Chad was standing next to me.
“Ivy,” he said quietly. He wasn’t the clean shaven guy that I first met. He was wearing a dark-blue suit with a matching light blue shirt and gray tie. He looked hot, even with his beard that was neatly shaven. I didn’t know what to say to him. I found myself speechless, not only because he looked hot even with his hair slightly longer. But because I wasn’t expecting him to be standing by my side.
“Sorry I frightened you.” he said as he picked up my phone. I just stood, frozen in time. Trying to think of all the things that I wanted to say to him.
Nothing.
My mind was a complete blank as I stood next to him and he handed me back my phone.
“They called,” he pointed to the pre-school. “They wanted to make the meeting twenty minutes later, and you didn’t pick up your phone, so I drove down here. I figured that you would be on time.”
“Where’s Joshua?”
He nodded, “With Olivia. I thought that we should just focus on getting Hazel in the preschool, if that’s okay with you. Olivia’s leaving. She’s moving to New York.”
“Oh.”
He surprised me with his comment, and I wanted to ask him how he was feeling about that. But I could tell by the way his green eyes turned dark that he wasn’t happy about the words he just spat out.
“Anyway, I came to see if Hazel had a chance. If I could do some good after the mess that I’ve caused then at least I’ll sleep better at night. How’s she doing?”
I looked in the car and saw that she was looking up at Chad and she had a big grin on her face. I knew that they had connected when they spent time together. She had been having a couple of tantrums lately, and Willow and mom had said that it was probably because of the negative energy I’d been having lately. Maybe they were right. Who knew.
He smiled at Hazel and said, “Do you mind if I get her out of the car?”
I shook my head and then watched as he took her out. She was so excited to see him. I realized that she wasn’t feeding off the negative energy that I had as a result of our breakup. She missed him, probably just as much as I did. She was clapping her hands and stroking his face.
“Hey, Hazel. You okay?”
He smiled at her, and she nodded as she put her little fingers around his neck. She did miss him probably just as much as her mom did. Maybe I should give him another chance? Chad had more good qualities than he had bad ones. No one was perfect; I should know because deep down I felt that I was far from it at the best of times.