The Guy in the Window

by Cara Dee

  She became teary-eyed again, and she wiped a finger under her eye and glanced away for a second. “Dad, do you know you’re the reason I haven’t picked my major yet?”

  I frowned, instantly wary and on edge.

  “I’ve been so freaking angry because I’ve wanted to be an architect since I was little.”

  Her admission made my heart swell with pride. “You’d make an excellent architect, sweetheart.” Knowing her style and having seen her evolve in her drawing, I could easily picture her designing one-of-a-kind residential and corporate buildings. “If you want recommendations for an internship, I can make calls. Just say the word.”

  She sniffled and exhaled a laugh, but there was no humor in it. “You don’t get it. That’s the extent of the grudge I’ve been holding. I’ve been pissed for wanting to be what you are, because I don’t want to follow in your footsteps. Or I didn’t. You’re muddling everything now.”

  I nodded and stared down at my lap. “It makes sense.” As much as it pained me. “If I can say one thing, though. Don’t let anything I’ve done get in the way of what you want for your future. That’s not a regret you want to live with.”

  “Why do you think I’ve been stalling?” She rolled her eyes and wiped her cheeks. “I’ve had your stupid voice in my head saying all kinds of shit like that.”

  I pressed my lips together to kill the trickle of mirth.

  She blew out a heavy breath to calm down and traced a seam in the duvet with a finger. “You sold out when we moved here. You used to restore the most beautiful places with your designs when you had projects in San Francisco.”

  I furrowed my brow and disagreed with her. “I didn’t sell out, Grace. I love what I do now.” I had to work with what I had, too, and my field looked different in Chicago than it did in the Bay Area.

  She raised a brow. “If you love it so much, why didn’t you design your atriums and glass havens in California?”

  Oh, sweet child. “Because it’s an earthquake zone,” I explained patiently. “There’s very little demand for structures that might shatter at the slightest tremble.”

  “Oh.” She scowled and bit at her cuticle. “Yeah, I guess you’d know.”

  “I guess I would.” My mouth twisted up a little. “Is it possible you’re finding fault with me sometimes when it’s not really there?”

  She scoffed and treated me to another eye roll. Then she must’ve changed the direction of her thoughts somewhat, and she groaned and dropped her face to her hands again. “Maybe. Okay? I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “It’s all right.” I leaned over and gave her knee a squeeze. “We can take a break if you want. Perhaps eat some lunch? Oh wait, never mind, you weren’t hungry.”

  She made a face and turned a tad sheepish. “I could eat.”

  I grinned. “I’ll turn on the oven. Adam made us subs from our Thanksgiving dinner yesterday.”

  “Jeesh, Dad. Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam.”

  Well.

  Shit.

  Fuck.

  Oh, holy motherfucking shitballs.

  I was screwed. Ev was gonna kill me.

  I’d completely missed the fact that I had used Ev’s name.

  I scrolled through the comments on my phone and felt the panic rising.

  “Oh God.” I covered my mouth with a hand. How the hell had this happened? I’d only been gone two hours!

  Nausea crept up my throat.

  I’d just outed not only my relationship with Ev to the world, but the fact that he was dating a dude.

  Eleven

  Everett

  Grace and I spent the next few hours talking, carefully creating a foundation to build on.

  It was liberating and wonderful, albeit bittersweet and painful. She’d carried so many conflicting emotions on her shoulders for a long time, and sometimes it came out in a jumbled rush with tears involved. Other times, she clammed up and needed to process.

  We used those moments to talk about safer topics. We’d moved into the living room, and I’d taken out one of my sketchbooks, the safe one that didn’t have drawings of Adam.

  “You can see where you started,” Grace murmured. She flipped to one of the latest drawings, somewhere in the middle of the book. “And then here…”

  “I was a little rusty at first.” I nodded.

  “Eh.” She returned to one of the first ones. I’d been so foolish, thinking about Adam while insisting on drawing anything but him. I’d sketched the old man who sold hot dogs near my office, and I hadn’t gotten his ratty scally cap right. “I don’t have the patience you have,” she said distractedly. “I give up when there’re too many details, but you… I mean, I can see that the hat is leather.”

  “I didn’t get the shine right.” I cocked my head at the drawing, then moved on to a far more interesting subject. “Can you show me anything of your recent work?”

  “Sure.” She retrieved her phone from the pocket of her dress, and I grabbed my reading glasses off the coffee table. “That’s one thing you didn’t pass down to me, I guess. Your obsession with glass and windows.”

  I nearly choked on my own saliva.

  Sometimes, it wasn’t so much the window…

  “I love water instead,” she said. “This is what I’ve been working on lately.”

  Accepting the phone from her, I put two fingers on the screen and zoomed in. “Oh, wow.” I’d missed out on a lot. Christ, she was becoming a fantastic artist. “This is amazing, Grace.” I zoomed in farther and focused on the water gushing down from a fountain with a rounded edge. All done in pencil.

  “Can you give me some constructive criticism?” she wondered.

  I hummed and followed the water down to the next level of the fountain. Three tiers. Mexican-style—this fountain would fit in anywhere. Outside a hacienda, in a smaller plaza, in someone’s backyard.

  “Are you sure you don’t like details?” Because I couldn’t believe how well she’d developed in that area. “Here. This is stone. You give the water a bit too much contrast near the edges. The flow wouldn’t be so thick here because it would absorb into the stone.” I pointed to the edge where the water cascaded down. “That’s pretty much all I have to say. The rest is stunning.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, okay, I can see that. I’ve drawn it as if the stone is water-resistant.”

  “Or repellent.”

  “True.”

  We continued discussing art and architecture for another hour or so, until I realized it was getting late. It didn’t feel wholly comfortable bursting our bubble by having dinner with Adam and Bella, as much as I would’ve liked it, so I suggested we order in.

  Then I excused myself to go to the bathroom, where I could cancel my plans with Adam and tell him I missed him.

  I’d just locked the door to the bathroom when the screen lit up with a text, which revealed a whole slew of earlier text messages I’d missed.

  Goodness, there had to be over a dozen of them.

  Fuck, I hoped nothing had happened. I quickly unlocked my phone and scrolled up to the first message.

  Hope everything’s going well. Thinking about you.

  And then…the rest of the texts had arrived with little to no time in between.

  I was getting novellas too.

  I made a huge mistake. Call me when you can.

  Okay, I realize that sounds like the world is coming to an end, and it isn’t, but it’s urgent. And I think you’re gonna be pissed. I’m so fucking sorry.

  I’m guessing you put your phone on silent or something, so I’m just gonna lay it out there. I started explaining to Bella that you and I are dating like boyfriends do, and I never saw her reaction coming. It was so fucking hysterical that I had to film it. And then I thought, I’ll post it on Facebook because 1, I don’t have that many friends, and I trust the ones I have. And 2, I didn’t tag you or anything, so it didn’t give you away. I figured we’d go public together when you’re ready and we’ve talked shit through prop />
  *properly. Sorry, pressed send before I was done. Anyway, I posted the video, and one of my friends shared it. And he knows someone who evidently has a bigger following, and that fucker shared it too. I didn’t know this was happening, I swear. I was calming Bella down after all that screaming, and then we watched a movie. I came back and expected a handful of comments from my buddies. Instead, it’s almost going fucking viral. It had nearly 1000 shares and dozens of comments. Maybe not viral but it sure felt like it. Then I keep seeing people demanding to meet Ev, and I almost throw up. It’s all over. “We have to see Ev!” And I look at the video again, and I’d missed that I said your name. I’m sorry. I’m so goddamn sorry, Ev.

  The next few texts were just apologies. If he was waiting for a response, he’d have to wait a minute longer because now I had to see this video.

  How bad could it be?

  If there was anything I was anxious about, it was Bella’s reaction. Screaming had been mentioned, and that didn’t bode well.

  I clicked onto his Facebook profile and cursed the browser version. Yet, I refused to download the app. I wouldn’t, dammit. It was a gateway to worse things, such as mobile games and crystal meth.

  The video started auto-playing as soon as I reached it, so I paused it to read the caption.

  “Earlier this year, DT sat me down very seriously to discuss where she would one day open her restaurant. My suggestions were all shot down, and she decided Boystown would be perfect. Because then Daddy could visit her work every day and meet other boys who liked boys. Well. I actually met someone recently, someone fucking amazing, and today I told her that Daddy has a boyfriend. What I didn’t expect was my daughter’s reaction.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at Adam’s sweet words.

  Pressing play on the video and raising the volume just enough so I could hear, I was immediately treated to Bella screaming at the top of her lungs. She was standing in the hallway between her room and their living room, and she was livid.

  “Can you calm down, baby?” Adam asked behind the camera. Or his phone, rather. “I thought you’d be happy.”

  “I’m not!” she sobbed. “I’m not, I’m not, I’m not!”

  “Why not?”

  “I tolded you!” she screamed. “You won’t come to my work now!”

  Adam coughed quietly, sounding like he was hiding a chuckle. “Of course I will visit and eat the best food in the world.”

  “No, you w-won’t.” She wailed in despair and kicked the door to her room. “You gots your boyfriend now and he likes hot dogs, and I wanna pasta machine and make pasta and, and, and you don’t n-need Boystown now!” She wiped angrily at her tears and glared at Adam. “This isn’t funny, Daddy!” she shrieked. “Where will my restaurant go?”

  Adam cleared his throat. “You can still have your restaurant in Boystown. We will come by and eat all the time. This is a great thing, baby—and come on, you love Ev.”

  Bella whimpered and slumped down on the floor. God, she looked positively devastated. “Yeah, but can we train him to eat noodles? I will have fettuccine on my menu.”

  She became blurry on the screen, and it dawned on me that my eyes were filled with unshed tears. I sniffled through a small laugh and blinked, only to be disappointed when the video ended.

  My God, how I loved that girl. And her father…

  I took an unsteady breath and nearly dropped my phone. Sweet Jesus, I did. I’d fallen in love with him. My heart pounded at the realization, and I quickly wiped my cheeks and sat down on the closed toilet. When the hell had this happened? I loved him. I loved him so much. At some point, he’d become the highlight of my day. The one I wanted to share everything with, the one I saw in my future.

  I blew out a breath and checked the screen again.

  I wasn’t mad at all, and I didn’t know why Adam thought I would be. It was certainly an interesting way to make our relationship public, but now we were out there. Very out there… The top of the update showed Adam hadn’t changed the settings. He most likely hadn’t thought of the fact that he could change the video to private. Something he should consider for his entire profile.

  Either way, I wasn’t angry one bit, and I knew how to alleviate his fears.

  I responded in the comments and tagged Adam.

  Please tell the princess that I love pasta and can’t wait to try her entire menu with her wonderful father as my date.

  Before pocketing my phone, I fired off a text to Adam.

  My sweet man. I’m not mad. I replied on Facebook. (Do you know you can switch your profile to private and the video to friends-only?) As much as I wish to run over to you right now and kiss the worry from your face, I’m going to order in food for Grace and me. Things are going well, but it’s not the best timing to introduce the other two most important people in my life. Soon, though. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

  “How’re you feelin’?”

  “Bone-weary but happy.” My keys landed on the kitchen counter before I shrugged out of my coat.

  “There’s a dick joke there,” Adam chuckled into the receiver.

  I smirked and made my way through my dark apartment until I reached my bedroom.

  Grace had ended up staying with me until Sunday, and then we’d had dinner with Melinda downtown. There’d been plenty of hostility coming from my ex-wife. For me, it’d been easy to simply not focus on her. Our daughter was tired and wanted to see a sliver of peace between her parents, so I would do my best to give her that.

  After dinner, Melinda and I had taken Grace to the airport.

  Grace had hugged me and said we’d done a good job of working on our second chance this weekend, and I could admit I’d gotten a little emotional.

  I told Adam everything, and part of me wanted to go over to his place and spend the night there. I hadn’t seen him since Friday morning, and I missed him more than words could say. At the same time…it was Monday tomorrow, and I had to be up by five thirty to go to work. I also wanted to process my weekend with Grace, as well as a couple hints she’d dropped.

  We can’t take back the fact that we left the West Coast, but you know there’s always the option of returning.

  Dad…how can you stand the cold here in Chicago? If you lived in Berkeley or something, you wouldn’t face a blizzard every time you left the house.

  I didn’t tell Adam about that part, though. Grace had said the things in jest, and they’d been mainly digs at Chicago. But I’d still raised that girl, and I knew how she communicated. She was testing the waters and wondering what it would be like. She was trying the idea out in her head, and perhaps, one day in the future, she’d wish I lived closer to her.

  Having missed as much as I had, I was already jumping ahead and forcing myself to consider the possibility. Grace loved the Bay Area, and I couldn’t in a million years see her moving to Chicago after her studies.

  Would I be satisfied with seeing her only for holidays?

  Then there were Adam and Bella.

  I turned on the light in my bedroom and sat down on the foot of my bed. Adam was telling me about this morning when he’d found Bella in her room, working on a menu for her future restaurant. She couldn’t write very well yet, so she’d used the letters she’d known and filled in the rest with squiggly lines.

  My heart ached. That was what I’d missed with Grace. I’d been there. I’d gone through the motions every single day and listened to Grace’s stories about what she’d done in school and what her plans were for the weekend, and yet I hadn’t connected. I’d heard her but hadn’t listened. I’d looked at her drawings as if there’d been a glass wall between us. I’d missed that integral part of her personal journey through junior high and high school, and I was sick of it. I didn’t want to miss that with Bella too. I had to be there for everything. From squiggly lines to high school boy trouble.

  How quickly I’d fallen.

  A light was switched on across the alleyway, and I looked up to find Adam watching me in the windo
w with a faint smile and tilted head.

  I exhaled. There were no words to describe his beauty.

  “You look troubled,” he murmured.

  “You look fucking beautiful,” I said in return.

  He quirked a crooked grin.

  “I’m fine. I’m more than fine,” I reassured. “It’s been a long weekend, that’s all.” I paused. “Is it too soon if I take you out to dinner tomorrow? I have the strongest urge to be affectionate with you in public. Especially after reading some of the comments on the video.”

  There’d been quite a few men who’d announced that if I didn’t like pasta, they’d be happy to take my place and go on dates with Bella’s daddy in Boystown.

  I was glad when Adam changed his settings to private for all the selfish reasons.

  “Harder to find a babysitter on short notice now that Kell and Teresa are in Florida,” Adam said. “We’ll work something out this week, though, and we should spend the night together tomorrow. I miss the fuck outta you.”

  I sighed and nodded. “Me too. Lunch tomorrow?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll stop by your office with leftovers,” he replied. “We made the best turkey casserole today.”

  “It couldn’t possibly be better than those subs,” I said. “I almost stole Grace’s.”

  He grinned. “See for yourself tomorrow.”

  I would. Right now, I wanted him to keep shedding clothes. It was late, and he was probably getting ready for bed. He draped his tee over the back of a chair, then fiddled with the drawstrings of his sweats.

  “Keep going, please,” I said quietly.

  He smirked. “I think it’s your turn.”

  Fair enough. I put my phone down for a moment and shed my pullover as well as my T-shirt. Then I paused at my belt and hitched a brow in question to him.