by Cara Dee
Even though the second bedroom would be just a guest room slash office, it was a space I wanted Grace to like. A space I wanted her to want to make hers when she was in town. The last thing she’d want was to share a bathroom with her old man. Not even I wanted that.
Adam appeared from the second bedroom when he opened the door on the other side of the bathroom, and he offered a wry look. “Yeah, so this is the main reason it won’t sell,” he said. “And I thought there’d been six owners, yeah? My buddy said it’s been rented out. The original owner can’t get rid of it, so he’s hired a property management company to find renters.”
“Makes sense. It’s a horrible investment.”
What a fucking shame. I left the bathroom and returned to the living room, which offered a lovely view of the street. The trees inside the gates of the buildings across the street were shifting colors with the new season. Fall had always been my favorite time of year.
Unlike the other places I’d been to, I could actually picture myself living here. The flat screen would go between the two windows, and the couch… I’d buy a big, comfy couch, which would be the polar opposite of the one Melinda had picked out at home.
I turned to Adam with a pensive look. In my head, I was ready to bargain. I was tired of looking for a place to live. “You said it’s been rented out.”
“Yeah.”
And given that the place was completely empty right now, I assumed there wasn’t anyone about to move in. Unless that person was me.
The idea sank in slowly, and it felt…good. The more I thought about it, the better I figured this solution would be. Because I could live here for a year or two, let the dust settle from the divorce, and try out city life. If it wasn’t for me, if I missed suburbia, I could venture out of the town and get a house later on.
“I could rent it,” I said.
I took a long lunch one day the following week and signed a lease that would give me arched windows and hardwood floors for a minimum of six months.
It was liberating.
For the first time in…I couldn’t even remember, there was a well of happiness bubbling up inside of me.
The first one I told was Grace. Well, I told her voice mail.
Then I texted Adam.
I believe we’re neighbors now. May I treat you to a few celebratory drinks at your earliest convenience as a thank-you for all the help?
He responded when I was in the cab on my way back to the office.
Make it dinner and I’ll help you move in.
Even better.
That’s an offer I can’t refuse. Name a time and a place.
I would have to come up with something to thank him properly. A dinner wasn’t enough. As the minutes ticked by, the happiness within grew stronger and stronger. This wasn’t merely the way from Logan Square to my office. It was my new route between work and home.
Jesus Christ, I hadn’t lived on my own since… Scratch that, I’d never lived on my own. I’d had a dormmate at Cornell, roommates in an off-campus apartment at Berkeley, and then I’d met Melinda.
I scrubbed my hands over my face, exhilarated and terrified all at once.
Mick was ecstatic to get out of the house on a chilly Sunday morning to help me move.
Shawn arrived too, and he’d brought his two teenage boys.
“Hey, Mr. Scott.”
“Good morning, boys.” I smiled and carried the first box out of the house. “All the boxes in the hallway are mine, and it all goes into the truck.”
They got started right away.
I wasn’t driving back and forth with Melinda’s SUV, and my car was smaller, so I’d rented a truck yesterday. The plan was for me to text Adam when we were about half an hour away, and he would head out to get dibs on a parking spot as close to the building as possible. It’d been his idea, which meant I didn’t mind being that asshole today.
The past few days had been rough. I was moving out, and Melinda was taking cheap shots at me. Snide remarks, passive-aggressive digs. She couldn’t wait for “her freedom.”
Where the hostility came from, I had no idea. That was her way when she was unhappy about something, and it was the worst method imaginable to get a reaction from me. I didn’t take bait, and I didn’t bother with hints.
She’d wanted the divorce, and she’d gotten it. She should be happy. Frankly, I was getting there myself. The divorce wasn’t a bad idea. The hurt hadn’t reared its head, and there was no grief or heartbreak.
When had I fallen out of love with my wife?
The guys and I spent a little over an hour filling the truck with all my belongings. The only furniture I was taking included the things that’d been in my office, an old dresser, and a shelving system for my textbooks and journals.
Photocopies of everything related to my marriage to Melinda were in a box that would be stowed away somewhere. She’d been kind enough to separate those from pictures where Grace was in the spotlight. Those would end up on the walls once I was settled.
Divvying up Grace’s creations from kindergarten and grade school had been surprisingly easy. Because when Grace had finished packing up her room, she’d taken her yearbooks, report cards, and a few knickknacks, leaving a smaller selection for her mother and me. So I’d saved her art projects, and Melinda had chosen the trophies from Grace’s spelling bees and dance competitions.
I’d been a proud father at every recital and tournament, but my heart had been the happiest when I saw her with a sketchbook.
She’d gotten that from me.
“Holy shit, you’re not wearin’ a suit.” It was the first thing Adam said to me when I jumped out of the truck in his premium parking spot only two cars away from the gate entrance.
“You can never just say hi, can you?” I asked.
He shrugged and grinned a little. “Hi.”
“Morning, punk.” I found myself mirroring his grin, and then I went back to open the cargo door and lower the ramp. I did actually own four pairs of jeans and a fair number of hoodies and Henleys. I just didn’t have the option of wearing casual clothes in the middle of the week. “How long are you going to hide your daughter from me?”
He chuckled. “Kell’s dropping her off in a few hours. She had a sleepover.”
Shawn honked as he passed us on the street, on his way to find parking, and I gave a two-finger wave. Mick would show up once he’d picked up the sandwiches I’d ordered from a deli we liked.
“My buddies are curious about this long-lost nephew of mine,” I said, carrying a box out of the truck.
“Here, lemme.” He grabbed it when I was halfway down the ramp, so I took the hint and stayed in the truck. That way, I could merely lob them to him. “Oh yeah? You been talkin’ ’bout me, unc?”
“Well, sure. There are so many good things to say.” I handed him another box. “You tell me I look like shit and keep me humble.”
“It’s a full-time job,” he replied solemnly.
I laughed.
My new furniture was delivered around the same time we’d emptied my rental truck and filled our stomachs with food. Now I only needed to push past the urge to take a post-meal nap.
While Shawn and his boys filled the elevator, the rest of us took care of whatever they sent up to me on the second floor.
The two delivery guys occupied the living room where they could assemble the entertainment unit. My new couch was already in place, and it looked ridiculously comfy right now. I needed to join a damn gym. Today was a workout I hadn’t quite prepared myself for.
“I’ll run down,” Adam said. “Bella will be here any minute.”
“Go for it.”
To be twenty-seven again. He’d long since shed his hoodie, and he sweated like the rest of us, but I’d also seen him lift his T-shirt to wipe his forehead, revealing abs I hadn’t had since college.
Definitely joining a gym soon.
“Finally,” I muttered, done with the kitchen table. I stood back and appraised my work, and i
t felt a little strange having only four chairs. Even though we’d been a family of three, our kitchen table at the house had seated six, and the dining room eight. Huh. Melinda had liked the grander things, hadn’t she?
And I hadn’t cared. Why hadn’t I cared? Why had I never had any input?
“Where do you want this, man?” Mick passed the dining area with a box. “There’s no label on it.”
“The second bedroom, thanks.” I pointed toward the living room and the hallway where the bedrooms were. “It should be the only one I didn’t label.” It was Grace’s things.
A moment later, a little girl with windblown hair and rosy cheeks darted in and nearly crashed into me.
“Ope, careful there, sweetheart,” I chuckled. “You must be Bella.”
“Yeah, hi!” She threw off her jacket and pushed her hair away from her adorable face. “Daddy says you’re not a jagoff anymore.”
My brows went up, and I heard a groan from the entryway.
“Oh, he says that, huh?” Amusement trickled in as I waited for Adam to appear.
“That’s not how you shit-talk, baby,” Adam told Bella. “Jesus Christ. That was supposed to stay between you and me.”
“If something’s a secret, you gotta say it’s a secret!” Bella barked out. “How many times I gotta tell you?”
I smiled widely. Grace had been a firecracker when she was little, too. All demands and lectures and hands on her hips when she was ready to tell me what was up.
Adam picked up Bella’s jacket off the floor and lifted her chin. “Tone down the attitude for me, yeah?”
She huffed but didn’t push her luck. Instead, she snuck closer to hug his thigh while she gave me a curious look.
“She won’t be as useful as your buddy’s sons,” Adam said, “but she offers moral support like a pro.”
“Well, Shawn’s boys know one of my partners at the firm is a Cubs fan and, as of this year, a 1914 Club member, which means I have season tickets through work,” I replied with a smirk. “It tends to motivate them to help out.” I hadn’t mowed the lawn at the old house a single time this year, nor had I washed my car.
Adam let out a low whistle. “I bet. I don’t wanna know what you gotta pony up for those seats.”
“Entirely too much, considering I’ve only attended a couple games myself,” I chuckled. In the end, it was a good investment only because potential clients were more easily swayed in section twenty-two at Wrigley than in a boardroom. “It’ll be interesting to see how the boys will suck up for the next season.” Though, they’d certainly earned the right to be treated to a game today.
“If there’s a will, there’s a way,” Adam said, peering down at his daughter. They exchanged a grin. “You ready to cheer me on while I install Ev’s surround sound system?”
“I’m the best at that,” Bella claimed.
“You don’t have to do that, Adam—”
“Oh, it’s for my sake,” he assured me. “You look like you don’t have a technical bone in you.”
How did one look when they…looked that way? “There you go, keeping me humble again.”
He blew me a kiss.
Well, this could be bad.
Especially if I kept staring once I’d turned off the light. It implied I wanted to watch without Ev noticing, and I sure as fuck didn’t. Not a chance. Okay, so his new bedroom faced mine. No problem. No biggie.
The alleyway between our buildings was narrow, perhaps ten feet wide, and it felt like less than that in the dark. He wandered around his bedroom, unpacking picture frames and books, occasionally bobbing his head to the music he listened to. I’d ended up installing everything in his entertainment center earlier—Xbox, stereo, speakers, TV, all of it. He still listened to CDs.
I should really quit looking.
The man was my uncle. And he was…so fucking lost. He didn’t know who he was after all those years with his ex-wife. Melinda. I didn’t remember having met her, but apparently I had, when I was a kid. Ev was a clearer memory, though mostly from Dad’s stories.
He’d called Uncle Ev “too stubborn for his own good” and “softhearted with no sense for responsibility.”
The various comments had piled up over the years, little things here and there, and, in the end, I’d just wanted to meet the man who’d basically said fuck off to our family and started fresh elsewhere. If that was the making of someone softhearted who didn’t know how to take his responsibility, yet was too stubborn…? So be it. It was a man I wanted to know.
“Daddy?” Bella called from the living room. “I fess up, okay? I’m a little sleepy.”
I grinned into my coffee mug and took another sip. Today had been a good day. Ev had been more chill, and he seemed to like his new place. Right across from me…
What the fuck had I been thinking?
“Daddy!” Bella yelled. “Don’t make me replay myself!”
I chuckled. “I think you mean repeat.”
“I don’t think so,” she replied. After another moment, she spoke again. “Are you working tonight?”
Otherwise, I wouldn’t be guzzling coffee at this hour. “Yeah, I am.”
“Yesss,” she hissed. “So, I can sleep in your bed? That’s the rule.”
That was the rule. When I spent the night working at my desk here, Bella could fall asleep in my bed, and then I carried her into her room when I was done.
I hoped Ev went to bed soon so I could concentrate.
I winced at my own thoughts and took a mental leap backward, a giant one, ’cause this was fucking ridiculous. So, my uncle was hot—who the hell cared? The only reason I was looking was because I hadn’t gotten laid in x number of years. I also hadn’t taken a fun class in a while. That was it. I needed a new distraction. A new hobby.
Right then and there, I vowed not to give Ev’s bedroom another glance.
I was gonna have to watch more TV in here. Otherwise, my eyes would wander.
See? The non-problem was solved.
Four
Everett
“Good Lord, these are good.” I took another baby back rib, the meat falling off effortlessly in my mouth. “Where have they been all my life?”
Adam smiled absently and tapped a pen against the pamphlet he was reading.
He’d stopped by my office with lunch, a pleasant surprise, because he’d had errands down here.
When he yawned for the fourth time and sank down farther in the chair across my desk, I had to ask.
“Are you getting enough sleep, Adam?” Three jobs and a daughter had to take a toll.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. No. Well—sort of.” He straightened a bit and reached for his pop. “It’s temporary. I’m developing an in-house app for a company, and it’s got me working some nights.” He leaned forward and dropped the pamphlet in front of me. “What do you think of this one? I’m tryin’a pick a new class.”
I recalled him saying he liked taking classes, but what he needed now was sleep. “It’s a cooking class,” I stated, wiping my hands on a napkin.
If anyone needed a cooking class, it was me. That’d been a rude awakening in my new life of living alone. I knew absolutely nothing about cooking, and it’d taken me half a loaf of bread to figure out my new toaster.
Now, a week and a half after moving in, I’d mastered one thing. Milk and cereal.
“Bella loves pasta,” Adam said. “I figured a class on Italian cooking might be useful. Plus, she loves helping me when I cook.”
It was difficult not to smile at that. He was a wonderful father.
“There’s this one too.” He grabbed his jacket off the other chair and retrieved another brochure.
Once it was in my hand, I lifted my eyebrows. It was a college course in anatomy. “This one might need an explanation.”
He chuckled and threw some fries into his mouth. “I minored in physiology and started logging hours to become a licensed massage therapist before Bella was born. There’s some good money in sports medicine and reh
abilitation. But then everything was put on hold when I had Bella.” He shrugged with one shoulder. “I gotta do more than just crunching code into a computer, or I’ll lose my fucking mind. I love programming and developing software, but it turns me into a zombie.”
Adam continued to inspire me. His dedication not only to give Bella a great life but also to carve out his own happy medium was more than most people did. He wasn’t trying to fit in or walk down familiar paths; he was blazing his own.
“This is very impressive, Adam.” I scanned the brochure, seeing that he’d circled the dates for evening classes. “I’m going to be so bold and play the uncle card here. If there’s any way I can help, be it tuition or watching Bella, I’m happy to.”
Adam took on an uncharacteristically bashful expression.
“I mean it,” I told him and returned the brochures. “Unlike my gold-digging ex-wife, you’re actually trying to create something, and I encourage that. I say the same thing to Grace. When it comes to education and building your future, don’t hesitate to come to me.”
He smiled hesitantly and nodded once. “You’re really nothin’ like Dad.”
I let out a laugh. “No. Kane and I were always night and day.”
He grinned, then cleared his throat and hitched a brow in interest. “I take it the divorce is coming along great?”
I shook my head and picked up the last of my ribs. “Her biggest mistake was in hiring a cheap lawyer to go after big money. She’s currently trying to get alimony from me.”
Over my dead body. When I met her, she’d been an ambitious student, working her ass off to qualify for grants and scholarships and continue her education. Since I’d come from a fair bit of money, I’d helped her out. And when all was said and done, I’d paid for six of her eight years, and she’d graduated with a master’s degree in public administration.
