Worth the Fight (Accidentally on Purpose)

by Davis, L. D.

“She recorded the whole damn thing,” Ted said with a growl. “It was like an episode of fucking Cheaters. She invited half the women in the building to watch it.”

  She released my tie and sat back in her chair and looked at Ted with a big grin of satisfaction. He didn’t look as angry as a guy in his position should have looked. He looked back at her with something like respect.

  “Wow,” I breathed when I realized that was what my lungs were for. Breathing. “Remind me to never cross you…err…whatever your name is.”

  She picked up her cheeseburger that was almost as big as her head and winked at me.

  “Emmy,” she said.

  Emmy. It was a name that would change my life.

  *~~~*

  I sat in my office chair, daydreaming about the past instead of focusing on the tangled web of shit on my desk. I don’t know why my mind took me back to those first days when I met Lucas’s Mom. Those days didn’t mean anything to me anymore, but the dull ache in my chest begged to differ.

  Ignoring the aching in my chest, I let out a long sigh and threw myself into my work. I had to be in court right after lunch. I didn’t have time to focus on my personal problems. I moved a few things around on my desk so I’d have some space to work and tried not to lose my temper at the mess. Granted, most of the mess was my own, but it was only because the office was in such piss poor shape. No one seemed to have the time to make it all come together in the beginning, and now we had more clients than we did time or resources. I knew I’d have to crack down on Kacey and our paralegal Craig to start actually doing their jobs, but Kacey was kind of scary and I was worried she’d have a temper tantrum and leave, which would not help matters. Craig was the only paralegal we had and he was already being stretched in too many directions in my firm, getting paid much less than he deserved or what he could make in another firm. It was important that I appreciated that they both showed up to work every day and not push them, but something had to give.

  After a stressful afternoon of court, I couldn’t wait to get home and unwind with Lucas. No matter how busy my schedule was and no matter how many nights I needed to work late, I always went home to see Lucas first. I never missed a bedtime even if it meant that I had to work later into the night. I never could have imagined the attachment I have with my son. In those first few moments of meeting him I was unable to fathom how much his existence meant to me. My history with his mother was heartbreaking and there was a time in my life that I wished I had never known her, but then I wouldn’t have Lucas. Lucas was the only reason I had to be thankful for ever knowing that woman.

  Usually when I walked in the door in the evening after work, a homely scent wafted out from the kitchen where Lucas’s Mom was usually elbow deep in cooking a good meal. There were some things I could give her credit for, like being an excellent mother. The first thing I wanted to do when she moved in was find fault in her parenting skills, but even matched up against my own mother and my sisters, Lucas’s Mom was a phenomenal mother. Some of the other things I gave her credit for will sound sexist, but it isn’t my fault she rocked at these things. She could iron the hell out of a pair of slacks and my dress shirts were always wrinkle free, clean, and smelled great. The apartment was never more than a few minutes from clean and always smelled the way I imagined the clean homes smell in those commercials for cleaning supplies. And this woman had cooking skills that could bring a man to his knees. It almost did the first few nights, but stubbornly, I didn’t want to give her that pleasure of knowing that she had done something well. Yeah, I’m an asshole sometimes, like I’ve told you before.

  After my rough day, I was secretly looking forward to coming home to a home cooked meal and spending time with the best kid in the world, but there were no homely smells coming from the kitchen. There was nothing coming from the kitchen but silence and I immediately figured out why when I saw the pair dozing on the couch. I put my briefcase down by the door and shrugged out of my coat before walking into the small living area. Lucas’s Mom was lying on her back, knocked the hell out with Lucas sleeping on her chest. Even sleeping she looked like she was sick. Her nose was red and her cheeks were rosy and she sounded congested as she lightly snored. There was a box of tissues on the floor beside the couch and several discarded tissues nearby.

  Careful not to touch her too much, I took Lucas from his mother’s arms so I could put him to bed. She sat up, startled at the loss. When she saw me, she looked relieved and fell back on the couch with exhaustion. I carried Lucas into the bedroom and put him in his bed. I stayed with him for a few minutes, just enjoying watching him sleep. When I came out of the room, his mom was picking up her dirty tissues.

  “I'm sorry I didn't cook dinner tonight,” she said through an obviously stuffed nose.

  “It's okay. Don't worry about it,” I said as I loosened my tie. I collapsed on the now vacant couch.

  “I can make you something,” she said, picking up Lucas’s toys.

  “I'm fine, thank you.”

  I just wanted her to leave me the hell alone. It wasn’t a requirement for her to make my meals. The fact that she did was appreciated, but I didn’t want her under the impression that this was some kind of amicable arrangement. I was tired and grumpy and I wanted her to just go in the bedroom like she always did when Lucas was in bed, even if it was a little earlier than usual. For a few damn minutes, I just wanted my own apartment back, but since I couldn’t have that I had to settle for her slithering into the other room.

  “Are you sure I can’t make you anything?” she asked after carrying a couple of dishes into the kitchen. “It’s not a problem.”

  “I said no!” I yelled. “My god, it's not like you're my wife, Emmy.”

  Even to my ears that sounded harsher than she probably deserved for just trying to be nice, but I wasn’t about to apologize for it.

  She stood in front of the bedroom door for a moment, frozen and hurt by my outburst.

  “Okay then,” she said in a wounded voice. She closed herself in the bedroom and I congratulated myself on being a big jerk.

  *~~~*

  The slightly chilly autumn was soon drifting into the short days and long nights of winter. I was still seeing Claire once or twice every two weeks, but that was beginning to not be enough for her, but I was extremely busy in my busted office and if I wasn’t there then I was with Lucas.

  Not much had changed between his mother and me. She moved about the apartment like a scared stray, skittering out of my way when I came anywhere near her, always with her eyes cast down. The only time I saw her animated was when she was with Lucas or when her mother came into town for the holidays. She barely left the apartment most days, unless it was dinner every other Sunday with my family, trips to the grocery store or other small errands; however, when Sam came into town, Lucas’s Mom found any excuse to get away. I swear she made up errands. I was pretty sure I had never seen the woman touch Jell-O, but I once heard her say that she had to run to the store for some. She didn’t come back for three hours.

  My rough days at work were getting rougher. While the office was slowly coming together, it still looked and operated rather unprofessionally. The few resources we had weren’t being properly utilized. We were still turning away clients and Kacey was still scary – and not the good kind of scary. We had to do something and fast before everything fell completely apart.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said to Lucas one evening as I dropped my suitcase by the door and threw my jacket over the back of a chair at the table. I swept him out of his pack and play and planted a manly kiss on his forehead. “How was your day, little man?”

  I did what I did almost every evening when I got in from work. I put Lucas in his high chair and spoiled him with a jar of banana custard. His mother always had him fed before I got in, but I always felt he was entitled to a little dessert. I could tell by the look on her face that she disapproved, but she never objected. I had missed doing this with him the night his mother was sick.

 
“This stuff is gross,” I said to Lucas when we were nearly finished the jar. “I don’t know how you eat it.”

  He scrunched up his little nose and grinned at me as if to say “Good! More for me!”

  When he was all finished, his mother brought my dinner out to me along with a glass of homemade sweet iced tea, another thing she was really good at making. I thanked her, but that was the end of our conversation. She never sat down to eat with me and I never asked her to. I wasn’t sure when and where she finally ate her own meal, but I guess I didn’t really care. I appreciated what she was doing, being useful, but it didn’t change anything. Even if the damn lasagna she just made almost made me cry with joy.

  As usual, Lucas’s mother swept him away for a bath while I ate my dinner. By the time I was finished dinner and watching the evening news, Lucas was bathed and ready for bed. At this point, without acknowledging words, I did my usual and put him to bed after reading a short book to him. As a family – if you want to call it that – we had easily fallen into a regular routine without much discussion on the matter. Even the mutual silent treatment had become routine, especially after that night when Lucas’s Mom was sick. After Lucas was asleep, I came out of the room and settled down on the couch with my briefcase and turned on Family Guy while his mother busied herself in the kitchen with cleaning up dinner and putting away the leftovers. A more recent development was packing a lunch for me to take to work, I supposed in an effort to get rid of the leftovers. She probably would have made an excellent wife if she wasn’t a cheating, lying, deceiving bitch.

  She exited the kitchen sometime later, turning the light off behind her.

  “I’m going to go do the grocery shopping,” she said meekly as she hung near the bedroom door with her hands folded in front of her.

  Despite the obvious personality changes in her that I didn’t necessarily care about, I was still a little stunned when she behaved so submissively. Maybe to any other man, this would have been a turn on. In fact, sometimes the unbidden desire to see her submissively on her knees as she orally pleased me came into my head, but then the knowledge that she was obviously a very scarred person always shattered that idea. Regardless of what she was to me, no person with such obvious demons should ever be put in that position. It just seemed…wrong.

  “How much do you need?” I asked, reaching for my wallet.

  I insisted on paying for all of the groceries and household items we needed on a regular basis, even the things that she needed. I was well aware that she could pay for her own shampoo and body wash and feminine products, but if nothing else, she was still Lucas’s mother. She was Lucas’s mother and she was living in my home, caring for my son. It was my responsibility to see that her needs were met. She was permitted to spend her own money on makeup or clothes for herself or similar luxuries if she wanted to, but I did not want her paying for anything else. I had to come up with a better system than making her come to me every time she wanted to go to the store. All of this extra communicating rubbed me the wrong way and only served to put me in a pissy mood.

  “I’m not sure,” she said, looking at the floor.

  I took my ATM card out and got up to hand it to her. “I am going to add you to my account so you can have your own card. Then you won’t have to wait for me every time you need to go to the store.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” she said, taking the card from me. She still had not met my eyes after all of these weeks of cohabitating. Not that it really mattered.

  “It is necessary,” I said, angry that she said that it wasn’t.

  “I will have to plan better,” she said with a small shrug. “Then I can give you a heads up instead of springing it on you as I’m about to walk out of the door.”

  “Or,” I said roughly. “I give you your own card.”

  “Whatever is easiest for you,” she said and turned away from me.

  I went back to my place on the couch.

  I could think of a million things that would make this life ‘easier’ for all of us, but that would require a time machine, and as far as I knew, the world was sold out of those.

  Chapter Six

  I felt the condom break just as my orgasm began. What fucking luck.

  I pulled out of the writhing blonde with a curse and finished on her pretty blue bedspread under us, even though I knew that I had not really pulled out in time.

  I cursed like a trucker that used to be a sailor that was the son of a trucker and sailor couple as I made my way to the bathroom to take off the remaining pieces of the useless rubber.

  “It’s no big deal,” Claire said behind me in the bedroom. “I’ll go to the pharmacy in the morning and get that Plan B.”

  “That’s not a guaranteed preventive, Claire,” I growled.

  “Nothing is a guaranteed preventive,” she said.

  I laughed without humor. “How about abstinence?”

  “Well…yeah, but you don’t have any intentions of being abstinent.”

  I turned around and walked back into the bedroom without answering her. I started picking my clothes up off of the floor and putting them on.

  “You’re not seriously considering not being intimate with me anymore,” she said in disbelief.

  “I don’t know,” I said, feeling highly aggravated. “All I know is that I do not need this shit right now.”

  “I told you I’ll take care of it,” she said as she got up from the bed.

  “Yeah? What if that doesn’t work?” I questioned as I pulled my pants on.

  “Then I’ll take care of it,” she said, glaring at me from the bathroom doorway.

  I stared at her, surprised by what she was implying. “I can’t even believe you are suggesting that,” I snapped at her.

  “If I was Emmy, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation,” she snapped back. “You’d probably be glad to knock her up again.”

  Patiently, I pointed in her general direction. “Don’t. Go. There.”

  Her demeanor immediately changed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I promise this isn’t a problem, okay? I’ll go to the pharmacy tonight if you want. Chances are the timing is all wrong anyway.”

  I ran a hand through my hair and let out a frustrated sigh. This thing with Claire had its high points, but more recently I begin to realize it wasn’t really the arrangement I wanted, especially with her. Despite our agreement to keep our relationship as friendly as possible, she was still clingy and jealous, often calling me during my time with Lucas or trying to get me to meet her more often than what I was giving her. Apart from all of that, my work load was threatening to crush me and my associates. Whatever time I had left at the end of each day or during the weekends when I wasn’t tied up with work was reserved for Lucas and my family.

  “Luke,” she said my name in a small voice.

  “I can’t do this anymore, Claire,” I said, meeting her eyes. “It’s not you, but I just…I just don’t have time for this relationship right now.”

  “I won’t push so hard,” she rushed. “I’ll take whatever time you can give me.”

  “Any extra time I have right now should go to my son,” I said to her and picked my sneakers up off of the floor. I sat down on the edge of the bed to put them on.

  “What about time for yourself and your own needs?” she asked.

  “Someday, hopefully under the right circumstances, you are going to have your own child and you will put your own needs aside, and you won’t regret it. I don’t.”

  “That’s like saying you don’t regret giving me up,” she said, looking horrified at such a prospect.

  “That isn’t what I am saying, Claire,” I said, getting to my feet. “But you look at it how you want to.”

  I knew she was about to cry and I didn’t want to see that. I got off of the bed, grabbed my wallet off of the nightstand and turned away from her. I stopped in the doorway and spoke to her over my shoulder.

  “I still care about you, Claire, but you want much mor
e than I can give you, and you should go find someone willing to give it to you.”

  She didn’t follow me out and I was thankful for that.

  I went straight home after Claire’s. I felt badly for leaving her like that, but honestly, I was more worried about the broken condom. The last thing I needed was to have another baby – with another woman – when my relationship with Lucas’s Mom was so damn broken. I felt like my whole life was turning into an episode of Maury.

  In the living room, I stripped out of my jacket, sneakers, jeans, and sweater. I left everything in a heap on the floor by the coffee table and fell wearily onto the couch. I usually slept on an inflatable mattress, but I didn’t feel like going through the motions of moving furniture out of the way, blowing it up and covering it with a sheet. I really missed my bed, and I was sure if I asked Lucas’s Mom to switch for a few nights a week she would meekly agree to it, but I didn’t want to have to ask her for anything.

  I was just beginning to relax when I heard a muffled cry from the bedroom. In dad mode, I automatically got up off of the couch to go take care of my son. There was no regulation on who got up with Lucas on what nights, but since she was sleeping in the same room with him she almost always got to him first, but sometimes I would come in and take over. She never argued, but simply went back to bed.

  I pushed the door open just after another cry. I walked over to Lucas’s crib, but was surprised to find him fast asleep and completely still. I scratched my head like a cartoon character. Was I really that freaked out by the condom thing?

  And then she stirred on the bed behind me and I realized just as she let out something that resembled a sob that it was never Lucas crying. It was his mom.

  I don’t know why this floored me and literally made me immobile as I watched her hands shoot up as if blocking a blow.

  “Please stop,” she said in such a heartbreaking, pathetic, soul crushing voice that it knocked the breath out of me. “Stop it!”