BEING AWAY FOR three days royally sucked. In the past, road trips meant fucking new girls in different cities, but not anymore. Not since Dr. Roberts made me promise not to. I was pretty sure that even if Dr. Roberts weren’t in the picture, I wouldn’t be fucking any girls anyway. My thoughts lately had been too consumed with a certain blonde, who I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about yet I couldn’t wait to get home to.
The minute my plane touched down in Minneapolis, I shot Michelle a text. I was anxious to hear how Matthew’s first soccer practice went… and talk to her.
Hey! We just landed. How was your day?
M: Hope you had a good flight. My day was awful. I’ll explain everything tomorrow. I’m too tired now and heading to bed. Text me in the morning?
I didn’t like that answer at all. It stressed me the fuck out, and I wouldn’t be able to sleep without knowing what had happened. Instead of heading ten minutes south from the airport to my house, I headed north to hers.
I pulled in the driveway and cut the lights.
I’m in your driveway.
M: What? You are?
I looked up to the second floor master bedroom window. The curtains moved back a couple inches, then shut again quickly. I stayed in my car, not knowing if she was going to come let me in or text me and tell me to go home. The front door opened and relief flooded through me. She was wearing a light blue tank top, blue and pink plaid bottoms, and her hair was in a messy bun with all those sexy pieces falling down around her face. For a minute I worried she might have already been sleeping.
“Hey,” she said, offering me a tight smile as I walked through the front door.
“What’s going on? Are you okay?” I’d barely let the question leave my mouth when her chin started quivering and her eyes welled up. “Whoa, whoa. What happened?”
She shook her head and covered her eyes. I reached out and gently pulled her head against my chest, thankful that she didn’t resist. She didn’t say anything as she cried silently in my arms, her shoulders shaking. I’d planned on standing there in her foyer, holding her for as long as I needed to, but she pulled back after just a couple of minutes.
“I need a tissue.” She sniffed and walked to the kitchen, flipping the light on as she passed it. In the light, I could see her eyes were puffy and her nose was all red. She’d been crying before I got there. She blew her nose and took a deep, shaky breath. “Wanna go sit in there?” She motioned toward the family room.
“Sure.” I nodded, following along behind her.
We sat down on the couch and she pulled her legs up to her chest, hugging them tight. I wanted desperately to ask her what was wrong, but I knew that whatever it was, she’d tell me when she was ready.
Finally, she turned to face me. Laying her cheek on her knee, she took another big breath. “My dad died today.”
Holy shit. I wasn’t expecting that.
“What?”
Her face crinkled up and she started to cry again. “My stepmom called. Apparently he went to sleep last night and never woke up this morning. They think he had a massive heart attack in his sleep.”
I scooted closer and put my arm around her shoulders. “I’m so sorry.”
She pulled the tissue out of her pocket and wiped her eyes again as she leaned against my chest. “We weren’t close. He’d never even met Maura. I feel silly being as upset as I am.”
“He was your dad. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t talk often. It doesn’t matter if you hadn’t talked in years, it still sucks. Don’t feel silly.” I kissed the top of her head, leaving my mouth against it as I rubbed her bare shoulder with my thumb.
She sniffed again. “He was the only family member I had left. Now I’m completely alone.”
Right there, sitting on the couch in her living room, my cement heart broke into a million tiny pieces.
“You’re not alone,” I reassured her. “I may not be family technically, but I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
She pulled away from my chest and leaned back against the couch, picking at the tissue in her hands. “How long do you really think you’re gonna want to keep hanging out with your dead best friend’s wife?”
“Listen, at the beginning, yes… I came over here because it was something I told Mike I would do, but it quickly evolved into more. Much more.” I turned to face her on the couch, pulling one leg up in front of me. “I like being here. I like hanging with Maura and Matthew. I like hanging with you. You guys make me less lonely too.”
She turned her head toward me, blinking a couple times as she searched my face. The moonlight peeked in through a slit in the curtains, shining right on her face as her blue eyes sparkled. Her head lay back against my arm and she bit her lip like she was holding something in.
“What?” I asked, tilting my head to mirror hers.
“Why don’t you talk to your parents?”
“Oh,” I groaned. “That’s a long story that you don’t want to hear and I don’t want to tell.”
“What if I do want to hear it?” she asked softly.
I shook my head and stared down at the couch. “It’s not pretty.”
She pressed her lips together and sighed. “None of those stories ever are.”
“You’re right.” I nodded slowly. “Okay, here goes… When I was little, my life was normal. Like you, I was an only child. I don’t know exactly why, but in fourth grade, everything changed. It started with getting picked on in school. Ruthlessly. I walked through the halls and the kids bounced me around like a Ping-Pong ball, literally shoving me back and forth. Eventually, that wasn’t enough. They would take my lunch and throw it away before I could eat it or trip me in the halls.” I finally looked up at Michelle, who was staring back at me so deeply I just wanted to lay my head in her lap and stop talking. Reliving my childhood was so exhausting.
“Anyway,”—I cleared my throat—“finally I’d had enough and decided to defend myself. I started punching anyone from that group of boys who came near me, and of course, I was the one who got in trouble because they never got caught. The principal called a meeting with my parents and I was actually relieved. I had told them about the bullying many times, and I remember thinking, this is it. It’s finally going to end. My parents will give the principal a piece of their mind and all this will be over. But it wasn’t. My mom wanted to take me to a doctor who would pump my body full of pills that would calm me down, but my dad had other ideas. He thought the key to ending the bullying was to teach me to be tougher, so that’s what he set out to do.”
Michelle reached out and put her hand on mine, squeezing it as her brows pulled in tight.
“He immediately threw me into hockey so I could get my ass kicked and really learn how to fight, but the real fighting started after I got home. If he sensed I was about to cry, over any little thing, he would stand in front of me, inches from my face, and scream at me until I pulled it together. Or he’d make me do three hundred push-ups in one night, until I couldn’t even lift my arms to brush my teeth before bed. This one time, I remember getting into a fight at school, and they sent a note home saying that I would have a twenty-minute detention the next day. That night, he made me sit in the bathtub full of ice and freezing water. Every time I complained or cried, he would pour more freezing water over my head and add another minute to the timer. He never actually hit me or anything like that, but I almost wish that he had. The bruises would have gone away, but the shit I had to put up with has lasted so much longer.”
I took a deep breath and laced my fingers together in an attempt to stop my hands from trembling. “Anyway, thankfully, it turned out I was good at hockey and had my pick of colleges. I left home the summer after my senior year of high school and never looked back. Instead of going home during summers, I would stay with friends or live on campus. I was drafted straight out of college, and I’ve been on my own ever since.”
“Where was your mom during all this?”
An awkward laugh escaped me. “Sitting in the living room watching Wheel of Fortune.”
Michelle closed her eyes and shook her head as two tears ran down her cheek. “So instead of protecting you from the bullies—”
“My father became the ultimate bully,” I finished her sentence.
“I think about Matthew and someone doing that to him,” she stuttered through a sob, “and I think I would kill them with my own bare hands.”
“That’s how it should be,” I said, “but not all parents come with that built-in protective gene, I guess.”
“Have they ever tried to contact you?”
“Oh, yeah. When I got drafted, it was all over the news, especially in my hometown. They called, wrote to me, even showed up at my first apartment once. The last thing I remember saying to my father was that I was bigger and could fight a lot better than when I was twelve, so he needed to get the fuck away from me fast. My mom stood next to him, sobbing into a tissue.”
“I’m so sorry.” Michelle squeezed my hand again.
“Eh, it is what it is, right? Like you said, we all have our fucked-up stories about our childhood. I just know that if I ever become a father, I’m gonna go to the ends of the fucking earth to protect my kids. I’ll slay bullies, principals, dragons… it doesn’t matter. No one will hurt my kids.” My eyes started to sting but not because I was thinking about my future unborn children; I was thinking of Matthew and Maura sleeping upstairs.
“Do you ever cry?”
The house was so quiet you could hear the clock ticking in the kitchen, but that question rang out in the darkness loud and clear.
“No,” I replied. “Since I moved out of that house, I’ve only cried once.”
She didn’t ask when that had been. She knew.
I put my feet up on the coffee table as she curled up on the couch with her head on my lap. Gently, I pulled her bun down and slowly combed her hair with my fingers until she was snoring softly, and for a long time after that until I fell asleep.
“VIPER!”
My eyes snapped open at the sound of my name, but my back was locked up. I blinked a couple times, trying to get my bearings and remember what the hell had happened the night before. I lifted my head to look around and realized I was lying on my side on Michelle’s couch with my arm wrapped around her waist. She must have been exhausted because she slept right through Matthew’s morning wake-up call. I carefully lifted my arm off of her and brought my hand to my lips, signaling for Matthew to be quiet. I slid out from behind Michelle and scooted down the couch like an inchworm as Matthew covered his mouth and giggled. I finally stood and stretched my arms up as far as they would go.
Matthew wrinkled his nose and jerked his head back as he pointed at my morning friend pitching a tent in my pants. “What’s that?”
“Uh… we’ll talk about that in a few years,” I whispered as I adjusted myself and turned him around to walk toward the kitchen. I grabbed a blanket off the nearby chair and carefully draped it over Michelle. We went upstairs to check on Maura, who was standing, bouncing up and down in her crib.
“Good morning,” I said as I walked over to pick her up.
She grinned at me and shot her arms out, anxious to be picked up. I gently scooped her up and sat on the floor of her bedroom with her and Matthew.
“Why are we up here?” Matthew asked, completely confused.
“We’re just gonna stay up here and let your mommy rest for a little longer, okay?”
He nodded.
I lifted Maura and felt that her bottom was damp. “Uh-oh. Your sister is wet. Wanna teach me how to change a diaper?”
He turned his nose up again and shook his head.
“Thanks for nothing, bud.” I rustled his hair, which was already messy from sleeping. “Brody does this all the time. Surely I can figure it out, right?”
I scanned the room for a diaper storage area.
Nothing.
“Do you know where Mom keeps the diapers at least?”
He jumped up and opened a drawer in the white dresser. It was stocked, full of diapers and wipes and weird creams and potions. I grabbed one diaper and turned back to Maura, who was staring as nervously at me as I was at her.
I laid her on the ground and pulled her pajama bottoms off, tossing them to the side. Paying careful attention to how I took her diaper off, I figured I could just reverse that to put the new one on. Easier said than done.
It took me three attempts to get the new diaper situated under her, but eventually I did. I pulled the little tabs out and secured them, feeling like I’d just walked through some daddy rite of passage.
“Look at that. I did it!” I lifted Maura proudly to show Matthew, who covered his mouth with his hand and giggled as he pointed behind me.
Michelle leaned against the door frame with her arms folded across her chest, smiling at us. Her hair was a little wild, but sexy as hell. She totally rocked that morning-after look like a fucking boss.
“Good morning.”
“Morning.” She grinned as she came over and sat down with us.
“I tried to let you sleep a little longer. Sorry if we woke you.”
“No, that’s okay.” Matthew plopped down in her lap and she wrapped her arms around him, kissing the side of his head. “I appreciate it, though.”
“Look what I did.” I pointed to Maura’s diaper. “First time ever trying it, and I nailed it.”
Leaning down to inspect my dirty work, she pulled her bottom lip up and nodded. “Oh, you nailed it all right… assuming the backward diaper thing is in these days.”
Matthew giggled so hard that he tipped right off her lap as she took Maura from me and fixed her diaper.
I held my hands up. “I get points for trying, though, right?”
Michelle reattached the tabs on Maura’s diaper and sat her up straight. She looked straight into my eyes and smiled sweetly. “You get points for a lot more than that.”