Jake
One day, as I was out running errands — grocery store, post office, a little bit of business for the Devil's Route, just stuff like that — I finally ran into Halley. I heard her before I saw her; she was laughing at something, and the sound carried from the little outside café table that she was sat at. The next thing I noticed, of course, was that shock of red hair, which was absolutely unmistakable in a small town like this.
I swung my bike in a U-turn around the median and pulled up to the curb, stopping next to her table, with only some bushes dividing us.
“Hey, darling,” I drawled, before I had really processed what I was seeing.
She was having lunch with a little kid. My mind raced for a moment, wondering whose kid it was and why she was having lunch with the boy. I knew she didn't have any siblings, and I knew Tiffany didn't have any kids. But maybe she was babysitting?
That was the thought ran through my head until the boy turned to look at me with his pure, blue-green eyes. His black curls were a little longer than mine, and his cheeks were, of course, pudgier. Plus, he had her nose and her cute, heart-shaped face. But that kid…
I tried to mask my surprise; I wanted to process how I felt about this whole thing before I let on that I knew that he was mine. I had to wonder if Halley realized it. Maybe she thought the kid belonged to someone else and that was why she had never told me.
Or maybe she just thought I was some sort of deadbeat biker dude who couldn't pay his bills and didn't care to have a family.
The thought made my blood boil, but I took a deep breath to calm myself. It wasn't fair to her for me to get upset before I even knew what her reasons had been. For all I knew, she had only found out about the kid after she moved to Louisiana, and then what was she supposed to do, call me up on the phone number that she didn't have and tell me, oh hey, move to Louisiana to be with your kid? That wasn't the kind of thing you could discuss over the phone.
Halley had gone white as a sheet. “Hey,” she said, but it took her a few times before she managed to actually make the sound come out of her mouth.
“Mama, who's that guy?” the kid asked, staring openly at me.
“This is ... a friend of mine,” Halley said, clearly uncertain. “Um.”
I swung off my bike, parking it there but not bothering to pay for the meter since they were sitting right there. “You still haven't called me,” I reminded her. “So why don't I invite myself to lunch with you? My treat.”
Halley looked lost and uncertain, but she nodded and pushed out one of the extra chairs at their four-person table. “Okay,” she agreed.
I sat down and reached for the menu, but then I noticed how rigidly she was sitting, how uneasy she seemed. Jesus, she probably didn't know what to think, and as angry as I wanted to be, I could also tell that she was practically petrified that I might realize the kid was my son. I had to feel for her.
I reached over and caught her hand, lightly squeezing it. “Hey,” I told her, looking deep into her green eyes. “It's okay. Trust me.”
Halley gulped and nodded, even though she still clearly wanted to ask how much I realized about the kid. I didn't want to broach that subject in front of him, though; I recognized that she may not want to introduce me as a father to the kid when we weren't sure how long … well, I just wasn't really father material. Having grown up an orphan and then fucked my way through my teenage years and early 20s, I couldn't say that I really knew the first thing about having a kid.
“What's your name?” the kid asked me, putting his fingers in his mouth.
That seemed to jolt Halley, who quickly began to look normal again. “Hey, honey, remember, we don't want to put our fingers in our mouth like that, especially not right before we eat.”
“Sorry, Mama,” the kid said. But he kept his eyes trained on me. “What's your name?” he repeated.
“I'm Jake, buddy,” I told him, wondering if we were supposed to shake hands or something. Eventually, I decided against it. But I did reach over and tousle his hair a little. “What's your name?”
“I'm Cole,” the kid said proudly. “I'm eight!”
“Seven,” Halley corrected, and his face fell.
“I'm seven,” he mumbled, glancing over at his mom.
I couldn't help laughing, still unable to tear my eyes away from the kid. “So, you're in school?” I asked him. “And wow, you must have just moved back from Louisiana, right? How's your new school?”
“'S better than my last!” Cole told me excitedly. He went off on a whole explanation of how much nicer his new teacher was and all of the friends that he was meeting and the fact that they got to go outside “for, like, all of the day before they go inside for math!” and so on.
I realized I was still holding Halley's hand and I gave it a light squeeze, smiling over at her. She gave me a wan smile in return, but at least she didn't look ready to jump out of her skin anymore. I wanted her to be at ease, I realized. More than I wanted to be angry with her, I wanted her to be at ease.
But at the end of the lunch, I caught her wrist while Cole was in the bathroom. “We need to talk,” I told her, and she ducked her head, looking nervous and chagrined.
“I know,” she whispered.
“I'm not mad,” I clarified, just in case that was what she was worried about. “I just have a lot of questions. Why don't I take you out for drinks tomorrow night? Can you leave Cole with your parents and meet me downtown?”
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay,” I echoed.