Chapter Sixteen
Ryan thought he’d be prepared. He’d seen her photograph. And it wasn’t like he’d never encountered a five-year-old before.
He just couldn’t exactly recall when. Or why. Or whether it had been anywhere besides the grocery store, say, the kid begging for whatever sugar crack they were into these days. He’d been a Frosted Flakes man himself.
But Claire had made it clear that meeting Maya didn’t make Ryan a parent. And Ryan wholeheartedly agreed. Maybe some guys would suddenly want to have summers at their place, a chance to teach the kid to ride a bike, throw a ball, take her on her first driving lesson.
But he spent half his life on tour, worked crazy hours, and considering that he’d only recently gotten the hang of taking care of himself, he wasn’t going to pretend he had the chops to add anyone else to that list.
His life didn’t have room for a child. He’d only fuck her up the way he’d fucked things up with Claire. The way his dad had fucked him up by never being around.
So, the point was just to see her. Once. Then he’d know she was real, she was happy, she was some tiny extension of him out doing good in the world. He could go back to Chicago feeling like he’d made some amends in his life.
And then he could move on.
But when he walked over to the playground from the hotel, he spotted Claire pushing Maya on a swing and had to stop in his tracks, his chest tightening as if he could actually feel his heart, that unfamiliar muscle, start to grow.
He’d seen the photograph, but that didn’t prepare him for the real thing. She was beautiful. He took it back—there was no way any part of her was him. There was nothing in him that could be so good.
Until her legs pumped through the air and she leaned back, tightening her fists around the chain, and he had to change his mind. That was his kid all right, complaining that Claire wasn’t pushing her high enough.
“Hey!” he called, jogging over.
“Hey, you,” Claire said brightly, and it was funny, this little act of pretending like they hadn’t just had sex. Twice. Plus about a billion times before that. This pretending that he was exactly who Claire told Maya he was—Ryan, the friend Claire had talked to her about, who was going to play with them today.
Maya was shy for approximately four and a half seconds. Then Ryan said he’d push her higher than her mom could, and that was it. She was his.
His words may have been asking her how far she could see, and if she could fly to Canada, and what would happen if she spun all the way around on the swing—a prospect Maya seemed very into, even if he had to tell Claire to relax, it wasn’t going to happen.
But when he looked at Claire, he hoped she could see into him and tell how much this crazy freaking moment meant to him.
When Maya abruptly got tired of the swing, she ran over to some crazy jungle gym thing that was way better than the scraps of metal Ryan played on as a kid, his brothers beating the shit out of him and shoving his face in the dirty sand, his mom wringing her hands at how three boys could be so uncontrollable, his father shouting at them to shut their damn mouths.
“You’re the princess,” she announced to Ryan, shoving a stick that she’d found on the ground into his hand.
“Wait, what?”
“Princess Ryan,” she said matter-of-factly, looking to her mom like geez what’s the matter with this guy?
“I don’t think that I—”
“You’re the princess, and I’m the wizard,” Maya interrupted, picking out her own stick. “We both have magic wands, but mine is more powerful because I’m a wizard, but yours is okay, too, because you have fairy dust.”
“Oh,” Ryan said, trying to follow her logic. “Okay?”
“Sweetheart.” Claire stepped in gently. “Maybe Ryan wants to—”
But Ryan, grinning, was totally ready to be the best goddamn princess this playground had ever seen.
“Who’s your mom going to be?” he asked.
Maya didn’t skip a beat. “T. rex.”
“Like the dinosaur?”
Maya looked at him like he was seriously stupid and then spat out a dozen facts about theropods he’d never known—since prior to being schooled by a five-year-old waving a stick at him, he’d never even heard the word theropod, never mind knowing it was some kind of dinosaur classification. Or something. It was kind of hard to follow when Maya was talking so fast.
“She’s really into dinosaurs,” Claire stage-whispered, curling her fingers into claws and pretending to stalk after Maya with big, lumbering steps as Maya shrieked and ran away, waving her “wand.”
It was official. Claire was the best fucking parent since the dawn of time. Ryan got up and chased after them, trying to act princessy, although Maya was quick to inform him he was doing it wrong. His wand needed more sparks. “Also,” she added. “You run too slow.”
They chased each other all over the playground, hiding behind trees, climbing the jungle gym, hiding in what Maya termed the tower but was really just a platform where she said the T. rex couldn’t reach them. Ryan, for one, was glad for the break. It was clear he needed to add more cardio to his climbing routine.
“How about some ice cream?” he said, once the wizard and the T. rex had reached some sort of magic truce and the princess’s services were no longer needed.
Maya lit up like a thousand-watt bulb. They walked down the street to a small ice cream place, Maya chattering away the whole time.
“Anything you want,” Ryan said.
“Careful there,” Claire said. “Don’t make promises you’ll wind up regretting.”
“Anything your mom says you can have,” he amended.
“I want that one,” Maya said, pointing to a new flavor the store was giving out free samples of.
“Sorry, pumpkin,” Claire said. “That one’s called peanut butter bomb.”
Maya pouted until Claire steered her to the other flavors.
“You can pick any other flavor that doesn’t have nuts in it.”
“She’s allergic?” It felt silly that he was so surprised. But it had started to feel like he knew her…until he was slammed by another example of how much he’d missed.
“I always have to be on my toes,” Claire said. “It’s easy not to keep anything in the house, but out in the world…” She gestured around the store. “You’d think I’d worry about sharp knives and, I don’t know, kidnapping or something. But really, it’s whether there’s a trace of peanut flour hiding somewhere.”
She explained something about facilities and equipment and allergen washing and reading the fine print, but all Ryan heard was more evidence that he was so not cut out to be a parent. How had Claire even figured all of this out?
She must have seen the look on his face because she said, “Relax. You don’t have to worry about it.”
But the reminder that he wasn’t really part of Maya’s life hardly made him feel better.
She touched his arm. “I just mean that you get used to it.” She paused. “Actually, that’s a lie. It makes me worry a thousand percent more. And you know my normal state of worry isn’t exactly at sea level to begin with.” She laughed at herself when he didn’t disagree. “But she’s okay. Really. And I never go anywhere without an EpiPen.” She patted her purse. “Anyway, we’re here for ice cream. So, bug.” She turned to Maya. “What’ll it be?”
She finally decided on peppermint stick, while Claire went for chocolate fudge brownie. Him? Chocolate chip cookie dough, every time. And he was definitely paying, no matter how hard Claire argued.
They decided to eat outside on a park bench to enjoy the last of the day’s sun. “You’re my favorite of all of Mom’s friends,” Maya declared as swung her legs back and forth and licked her ice cream cone.
Now, this is interesting, Ryan thought.
“Does your mom have a lot of friends?” he asked.
“Yeah. But not as many as me.”
Ryan glanced at Claire. It was clear they were both trying not to crack up, Claire biting on her plastic spoon to keep from laughing.
“And not a lot of them are boys,” Maya went on, and a piece of ice cream cone nearly lodged in Ryan’s throat.
“Um. That’s okay.”
He shot Claire a look, eyebrow raised. So, Claire didn’t have men in her life… Or she wasn’t bringing them around to meet Maya. Either way, he couldn’t deny that the information from the little snitch sitting next to him made him happy.
“I don’t mean that I don’t like Mom’s friends,” Maya said with a careful diplomacy that had to have been a hundred percent Claire’s influence—Ryan didn’t have that nice a bone in his whole body. “Mack’s the best because she makes me hot chocolate and puts in extra marshmallows when she thinks nobody’s looking.” She flashed Ryan a grin like she was sharing a very big secret. “But even Connor and Austin don’t play magic with me. Grownups are busy.”
She said that last line like she’d been told it a few dozen times before.
“Well, I got time, kiddo,” Ryan said, even as he sensed Claire shooting him a look. Don’t go there, it warned.
But how could he not?
He understood, suddenly, why his father must have made so many promises he couldn’t keep. It was impossible not to get swept up in the moment. For just a few seconds, he honestly thought what he said could be true.
But Claire was right. Even she must barely have the time she wanted to spend with Maya. There must have been so many things she missed out on, things she wanted to do but couldn’t because she was juggling it all by herself.
Underneath his long-sleeved shirt, he felt his tattoos prickle as though he’d just gotten inked. If he and Claire had stayed together and raised this baby, it could have been like this all the time. The three of them, together.
But he couldn’t picture it. Maya didn’t belong in their tiny basement apartment in New York, screaming her head off as Claire ran to her waitressing job, doubling up on extra shifts, collapsing in exhaustion at the end of each day.
And Ryan? He imagined himself plucking at the guitar, trying to make the chords come. But he knew that wasn’t really what he’d have been doing. He knew he would have been drinking, barely present, not helping anyone. Certainly not being a father, or a husband, or even a very good musician. Not being much more than a waste of space.
Claire had seen all that, and she’d been right to walk away. She’d been right to give Maya this life. It was so weird, these fucking feelings. How one second he could be grateful and happy, leaning over to brush the dark hair from Maya’s cheek so the ice cream didn’t get in the strands.
And the next second he could feel his heart breaking, that she was his girl. His daughter. And her life was better precisely because he wasn’t in it.