by Marci Bolden
Damn. No wonder Jessica saw them as a family. Phil hadn’t really considered how much they acted like one. Mallory had slipped into their lives so seamlessly, he hadn’t even noticed how much she’d been there.
No. That wasn’t quite true. He was probably just as guilty as Jessica, obsessing about her from the time she left until the next time she showed up, smiling like the sun.
Dropping his phone, Phil traded the photos for the lukewarm beer he’d opened but had been too distracted to drink. He hadn’t slept the night before. He’d replayed kissing Mallory over and over in his mind. He’d tossed and turned and debated how far things would have gone if Lucky and Jessica hadn’t interrupted. He wondered if she’d have been willing to let things go all the way to the bedroom. He certainly had been.
And that was a mistake.
Everything about being with her was a mistake. Not because it was wrong but because it was too right. Too easy. She had a way about her that drew him in like a sunflower was drawn to the sun. She warmed him from inside in a way that he somehow felt he needed to survive. That was dangerous. Counting on her was dangerous. For him and for Jess.
If the heartbreak in Mallory’s eyes was any indication, this was too dangerous for her, too. They’d all gotten too wrapped up in each other too fast. This was for the better. Definitely for the better. He had to save them all from themselves.
“Daddy?” Jessica asked.
He closed his eyes, not sure if he was frustrated that she was up again or thankful that she’d pulled him from his thoughts. Probably a mixture of both. “Yeah, Punk?” he asked, setting his beer down.
“Can I ask you something?”
She appeared at his side, and he smiled up at her. “Sure.”
“Did you and Mallory fight? Is that why she left instead of watched a movie with us?”
Crap. Blowing his breath out, he shrugged. “Not a fight, really.”
“Are you sure? Because you’ve been cranky since she left.”
“Have I?”
Jessica nodded.
Patting the seat beside him, he waited for her to sit before kissing her head and snuggling her against him. “Sometimes grown-ups just have to have serious talks that aren’t much fun.”
“What did you talk about?”
Phil sighed as a memory of the hurt and confusion in Mallory’s eyes slashed through his mind. “Mallory and I are just friends, Punk. You know that, right?”
She didn’t respond.
“Friends who have fun together. Like you and your friends. We like to be around each other. But that doesn’t mean we’re ever going to…you know…be a family or anything like that.”
Jessica sat quietly.
“I like Mallory,” Phil said. “She’s really nice.”
“Is this because I asked you if you liked her liked her?” She looked up at him, and there was so much sadness in her eyes that his heart ached. He’d unintentionally hurt Mallory earlier, and now he was hurting Jessica. He just wished they both could see that he was stopping this now so Jessica didn’t get hurt much worse later.
“I guess in a way it is,” he said. “I don’t want you to think that we’re ever going to be more than friends.”
“But you could be. Mallory doesn’t have a boyfriend. I asked.”
He smiled. “I know she doesn’t.”
“So you could be her boyfriend.”
He swallowed the knowledge that for a few short days, he kind of had been her boyfriend. He’d certainly blown that. “I don’t want to be her boyfriend, Punk,” he said, knowing that wasn’t really the truth.
Her face melted as the hope in her eyes dimmed. “Why? What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Mallory. I think she’s great.”
“So be her boyfriend. She’d say yes if you asked, Daddy.”
“Jess—”
“I’ll ask her for you,” she offered, her eyes lighting up again. “I know she’ll say yes.”
“Jessica, I don’t want to be anybody’s boyfriend. Not right now.”
Her little lip trembled. “Why?”
He hugged her close. “Because I have everything I want and need right here. I have you and Lucky. And I have Grandma and Grandpa.”
“And Mallory.”
He nodded slowly. “And Mallory. As my friend.”
“But—”
“Jessica,” he said more firmly, “I don’t want a girlfriend right now. Okay? Grown-up relationships can be really messy. I don’t want messy right now. Things are really great, right? We’re doing great. We don’t want to mess that up.”
She wasn’t getting it. She wasn’t understanding. She was looking at him with the same confusion that Mallory had.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I know you want someone to be like a mom to you, and Mallory would be a good person for that.”
“She loves me,” Jessica whispered. “She told me so.”
He nodded. “I know. And I believe her. I believe that she loves you very much.”
“She would be my mom if you asked her to.”
“It’s too soon for that, Jess.”
Her eyes welled. Tears—big, fat, broken-hearted tears—fell from her eyes. “Mallory loves me. She told me so. I don’t care if you don’t want her to be my mom, I do.” She pushed herself up and stomped toward her bedroom.
“Jess?”
She didn’t respond.
“Jessica!” He started to follow her but dropped back when her bedroom door slammed. He didn’t have the strength to continue this conversation. Not tonight. He was running on fumes, and not just physically. He’d been emotionally tapped out since Mallory left. He couldn’t keep analyzing this situation.
Carrying his beer to the kitchen, he dumped the near-full contents down the drain and tossed the bottle into the recycle bin. The photo of him, Mallory, and Jessica dressed in silly costumes mocked him from where it hung on the fridge by a Batman magnet—the one Mallory had bought as a reminder of the day—but he resisted the urge to look at it. He refused to be reminded yet again how much life she brought into this house, but those reminders were unavoidable. The hollow feel of the house reminded him that she was missing. As did the quiet as he readied for bed and the emptiness of his bed as he slid between the sheets.
Somehow, even though she’d never stepped foot inside his bedroom, he felt her absence there. Something inside him—probably his mother—was telling him that his life didn’t have to be like this. His home didn’t have to feel so lonely.
But then he remembered how hurt Jessica looked at the idea of him and Mallory not being a couple. And that was before they even were a couple. He could only imagine how broken she’d be if he let them be a family, only to have that taken away from them sometime down the road.
No. It was better this way. Better to keep Mallory strictly in the friend zone so he and Jessica wouldn’t be shattered when things ended.
Things always ended.
Chapter Eleven
Mallory didn’t lift her eyes from the now-cold cup of coffee nestled between her palms when Annie eased into a chair at the break room table next to her. Mallory had tried to avoid her mother all morning, but she knew that only made Annie more worried. The maternal concern in the office seemed to rise by the minute. Not just Annie’s; her aunt Dianna had picked up on her melancholy mood, too. Even Marcus had asked her if she was doing okay.
She wasn’t. She hadn’t slept a wink the night before. She’d just kept rolling the last few months over and over in her mind, trying to figure out what she’d done wrong. Nothing, according to Phil, but that couldn’t be true. If that were true, he wouldn’t have kicked her to the curb.
Annie slid a chocolate-chip muffin into Mallory’s line of vision. “Wanna talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“Phil?”
Mallory pried her fingers from the cup and picked at the muffin, peeling off a chunk but then setting it aside. “You dated w
hen I was growing up, didn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“But I never met anyone. At what point would you have introduced me to someone? I mean, how deep into a relationship would you have had to be to let him get to know me?”
Annie nodded. “Definitely Phil.”
Dropping another chunk of muffin onto the table, she brushed her hands. “Do you think the only reason he let me get to know Jessica is because he isn’t attracted to me?”
“Wait. Can we take a step back?”
Mallory grated her teeth together. “Everybody wants to take a goddamned step back.”
Annie frowned. “I just mean, I’m not up-to-date on what’s happening. Can you fill me in?”
Sinking back, she explained, “Everything was great. Or so I thought. Jessica is great, she’s wonderful. Phil… I can’t figure him out. One minute he acts like we’re this perfect little unit; the next he acts like there’s no room for me in his life.”
“He’s always been very protective of Jess.”
“He’s not being protective, Mom, he’s using her as an excuse not to get close to me. Why would he do that? I mean, unless he just doesn’t want me around. Maybe I’m just too stupid to catch the clues he’s been dropping.” She pressed her hand to her forehead, discounting that idea. If he didn’t want her around, he wouldn’t have made love to her. Would he?
Annie squeezed Mallory’s hand. “I’m having a hard time keeping up here, sweetie. Can you tell me exactly what’s going on?”
“I offered to be his void-filler for Jessica.” Damn. Even she could hear the resentment in her voice. Closing her eyes, she took a breath and tried again. “Like you told me about a hundred times, Jessica needs someone, and I want to be that someone. I’m totally cool being that someone.”
“But?”
“But…I really care about Phil, too. Probably more than I should. He’s nice, Mom. Like the way Marcus is. Genuinely nice. He is such a good dad, and he worries about his parents, and he’s just…”
“Perfect?”
She rolled her eyes. “Not even close. He’s a big, stupid idiot.”
“Men tend to be that way.”
Mallory frowned deeply, creasing her brow with the confusion that kept overwhelming her. “Things were going great between us. We were getting closer, and then…”
“And then?”
She glanced up. Even if she was an adult, confessing to her mom that she was intimate with a man felt awkward, but Annie didn’t look freaked out that her little girl might have taken some of those steps with someone. She looked worried. “We went on a date and he shut down. I mean, like, he flipped a switch. Hot to cold like that.” She snapped her fingers to explain how quickly things had changed. “He told me we need to put some space between us because he’s worried Jessica is too invested in me.”
“He got scared,” Annie clarified.
“Scared of what?”
“Honey, you have to remember this isn’t just about you and Phil. This is about Jessica, too. It’s his job to protect her.”
“Not from me.”
“I didn’t mean from you. I mean from life. She feels things more deeply than most people.”
Mallory shook her head, refusing to believe that she would ever be capable of hurting Jessica. “No, this is about Phil and his damned insecurities. He acts like he’s the only one who ever had someone walk out on him.” She didn’t even know she was about to cry until tears filled and overflowed from her eyes before she could stop them. “He acts like I don’t know how it feels to have a hole in my heart. My dad left, too.”
Annie sighed. “Oh, Mal.”
Wiping her face, she blew out her breath, trying to get control of herself. “I know we were better off, Mom, but even knowing that, it’s always been in the back of my mind. I always felt like there was something wrong with me. That Dad—and I only call him that for dramatic effect—wasn’t there because of me. Phil grew up feeling that way, too. And now Jessica is feeling that way. I don’t want her to feel that way. It sucks.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“It is.”
“No, it’s not.” Mallory covered Annie’s hands with her own. “We were better off without him. Jessica is better off without her mother. But knowing that doesn’t fix what’s missing. For any of us. We’re all broken, and we could help each other if he’d just stop being such a…man.”
Annie stroked her hand over Mallory’s head. “I pushed you into this. I pushed you into being a friend for Jessica. I shouldn’t have—”
“No. You were right. Jess is great, and she does need someone. I’m going to be there for her. I just have to find the right balance so Phil doesn’t freak out.”
“Maybe he’s right. Maybe you just need to give him some time and space to realize that he does want you to be part of that little unit you three had created.”
“What about Jess? Is she supposed to sit on the sidelines until her dad pulls his head out of his ass?”
“I am very confident that you and Phil can figure out how to be around each other long enough to not leave Jessica on the sidelines. If Phil is worried that Jessica is getting the wrong idea about you and him, then it is up to you and him to remove that idea from her head. Without tossing her aside. You can still be there for Jessica and limit the amount of time the three of you are together.”
Leaning forward, Mallory put her hands to her eyes, hoping to stop the next round of tears. “This is so unfair to her.”
“Yes, it is. But that isn’t your fault. You did what he asked, Mallory. You did what Jess needed.”
Dramatically dropping her hands, she frowned at her mother. “I didn’t want to be this person for her, you know? I thought that it was up to Phil to find someone who could be there for her, but he’s never going to, Mom. You and Kara were right. He’s never going to see that by keeping her in this safe little bubble, he’s not protecting her. He’s keeping her from making connections that she needs. I don’t know how to make him see that.”
“You can’t.” Frowning, Annie shrugged. “Mallory, I’ll be honest. I had no idea you felt so hurt by your father leaving until you just told me. I should have known it. I should have seen it. But I didn’t because I didn’t want to.”
“I didn’t say that to upset you.”
“I know that. But I chose to believe that having your uncles involved in your life was enough. Even after all the times you’ve commented about Marcus being your dad now, I didn’t let it sink in.”
Grinning, Mallory lightly tapped Annie’s forehead, as she so often did to herself, and said, “You have brain damage. Remember?”
Annie chuckled and swatted playfully at her hand, but then she grabbed it and held it tight. “I didn’t know, Mallory. And I guarantee you, Phil isn’t seeing it in Jessica. I’m sorry. I wish I’d known. I don’t know what I could have done, but I do wish I’d known.”
“It’s okay, Mom. We were okay. We’re still okay.”
“Better now that you have Marcus?”
Mallory nodded. “Yeah. Except when he gives me a hard time about my cooking.”
“Well, sweetheart, you are a terrible cook.”
Giggling, Mallory tugged at Annie’s hand. “I got that from you.”
Annie’s smile faded. “If you want to find your father—”
“Marcus is my father.” She nodded solidly. “Marcus is my dad. Best dad I could have asked for.”
Blinking, Annie did a better job of stopping her tears from falling, but her eyes did get shiny from the sudden surge of dampness. “Be there for Jess as much as he will let you. She adores you.”
“I know. I adore her, too.”
Cupping Mallory’s face, Annie smiled. “I love you, Mallory.”
“I love you, Mom.”
“But know this. I’ll kill Phil if he makes you cry again. And I’ll get away with it.” She tapped her forehead and smirked.
Mallory laughe
d. But didn’t completely dismiss the idea.
Stupid jerk.
Phil scowled at his computer screen. He’d been working on a graphic design proposal for three hours and his screen was still blank. Empty. Just like his fucking life. Shoving his mouse aside, he cursed under his breath, giving up any notion of having a productive day.
“That was dramatic,” Harry said from Phil’s office door.
“I’m not feeling this account. Maybe someone else should take it.”
Walking into the small space allotted for Phil’s creative thinking, Harry sat on the edge of the desk. “I have a feeling it’s more than that. Want to talk about it?”
Phil shook his head. “Not really.” Looking up, finally facing his father, he sighed. “Jesus, Dad. You look like hell.”
“You don’t look much better.”
Frowning, he roughly ran his hand through his hair. “I…went on a date with Mallory.”
Harry’s brows show up. “Oh.”
“And then I told her to give me space.”
His brow creased. “Oh.”
“She’s done exactly what I asked. Not a single text or phone call since she stormed out on me yesterday.”
Harry didn’t seem to have much sympathy.
“Jessica’s mad at me,” Phil added. “She thinks Mallory should be my girlfriend, and when I told her I don’t want a girlfriend, she stormed off.”
Harry still didn’t show any pity for Phil’s situation.
“This is Mom’s fault.”
Finally, Harry responded. “I was waiting for that.”
“What?”
“You think everything is your mom’s fault, Phil. You always have. You never want to take any responsibility for your own choices. Every time you screw up, you blame your mother or your childhood. You never want to step back and see that sometimes, it’s you making bad decisions.”
