by Serena Bell
The more I think about it, the more I realize I can’t remember the last time Harris spent any time with Gabe.
No wonder Gabe doesn’t feel like he’s going to miss him.
Thank God, I think. Thank God this happened now and not four years from now, when Harris and I were married and Gabe was heavily invested in him.
I may feel like absolute crap, but I haven’t ruined my kid’s life.
Chapter 7
At the last minute, Maddie tells me I can’t come with her to Harris’s. She wants me to stay with Gabe.
“I think it’s going to be upsetting to him, seeing me pack all our stuff up,” she whispers. We’re in the living room. Gabe is in his room with his huge tub of Legos, castoffs from Sienna’s and my childhood, open on the floor. He’s humming happily to himself while building.
“He can handle it,” I scoff. Maddie and I have different ideas about some aspects of parenting. I think she babies Gabe when it comes to emotional stuff. As you know, the man card is important to me, and it starts right now, with her not treating him like he’s fragile.
She hesitates, and I realize: yeah, she’s worried about Gabe’s feelings, but there’s more to it than that.
She bites her lower lip, one pearly white tooth digging into the soft flesh. “It might be awkward. If Harris has anything he wants to say.”
Holy shit, she actually wants to have a conversation with Harris. She’s going to listen to his bullshit explanations and apologies.
The thought bugs the shit out of me. I didn’t think he deserved her in the first place. For fucking sure he doesn’t deserve two spare minutes of her time after what happened. She should get in there, take whatever stuff of hers and Gabe’s she wants, and get the hell out, with as little fanfare as possible. I originally told her she should go when she thought Harris wouldn’t be there, but the idea of accidentally walking in on another cozy scene between Mia and Harris was too horrifying to her; she had to text him to let him know she was coming so there was no chance of that happening. Okay, I get that, but I am not down with her actually conversing with the guy, for lots of reasons.
“You’re going to let him try to talk his way back into your pants,” I blurt. Sometimes stuff just falls out of my mouth. It’s not my best trait, but there you have it.
“I’m not,” she insists, but she doesn’t quite make eye contact. “I just think—it’s going to be too weird if you’re there.”
“Who cares if it’s weird? The guy had his face in your best friend’s p—” I successfully manage not to finish that sentence. “He doesn’t deserve for it not to be weird.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not that.”
“What is it, then?”
She won’t look at me.
“I should come with you,” I say. “Gabe and I should come with you so you don’t have to deal with him alone. That’s what you said you wanted last night.”
Of course, there were other things Maddie wanted last night, too, but those also evaporated in the light of day.
Shut up.
Just saying.
She gets this look. Squinty, uncomfortable.
“Idon’twantyougettingintoitwithhim.”
Takes me a minute.
“I’m not going to ‘get into it with him.’ ” I cross my arms.
Although I’m not completely sure this is true. I’m still having vivid fantasies of introducing his face to my fist. And that’s without seeing him however he’s going to be—smug or unapologetic or sniveling or—
She’s staring at my hands, which seem to have clenched themselves so tight that my knuckles are white. “I rest my case.”
Okay, yeah, I hate his fucking guts.
I very slowly release my hands from their fists.
“What if I promise?”
She gives me the side eye.
So I resort to shame. I’m a bad man. If you haven’t realized that by now, I’m not doing a good job of telling this story. “Don’t flatter yourself that I would mess up my hands over your ex-boyfriend.”
She winces.
Too much. Shit. But I can’t take it back now, especially because just behind that wince I can see her relenting. I’ve convinced her I’m not going to beat the crap out of Harris. So I shrug and say, “I’ll hang back with Gabe. I won’t even open my mouth. We’ll be good. We’ll just be there for moral support.”
“Why do you care so much about being there?” she asks, which in light of the stupid thing I just said to her is a perfectly reasonable question.
Since I’m too surprised by the question, I don’t have enough time to come up with some tossed-off nonchalant answer. The best I can manage is the truth. “I don’t like the way he treats you. Never have. And I don’t want you to go back to him. I don’t want you to be tempted to.”
It’s just a statement. It’s the kind of thing that one friend might say to another. In fact, Mia might have said the exact same thing to Maddie. If, say, Harris had been caught with his face between someone else’s legs and Mia had been the one Maddie had run to.
(I’m glad that it didn’t happen that way, that Maddie ran to me. Which is sick and wrong and makes me a dick, but there you have it.)
Maddie is staring at me like she’s trying to figure me out. With a weird uncertain look on her face. And it’s making me fidgety.
“I’m your friend, right?” I say. “That’s what friends do. They don’t let friends make the same stupid mistake twice.”
“Right,” she says, smirking.
Damn it, walked right into that one.
—
In the end, Maddie and I compromise. I go with her to Harris’s, but she leaves Gabe at my house with his babysitter, who drives from Seattle to watch him. She has a whispered conversation with the sitter, I guess to tell her the gist of what Big Dick did and why she needs someone to watch her kid on a Saturday so she can move out.
I have a very specific image in my head of babysitters, left over from my own preadolescence, so I am disappointed to find that this one is fiftyish and graying, with a potbelly. She’s great with Gabe, though—you can tell right away. She’s down on the floor making helicopter noises before we’re out the door.
Maddie and I stop at U-Haul and buy a bunch of small boxes.
On the drive, she makes a list of all the stuff she wants to make sure she gets from his house. “So I can get in and out fast.”
“Good plan.”
She gives me a look.
“What!?”
“It sounded dirty.”
“Then you have a dirty mind.”
She squints at me, then gives up. “It’s mostly clothes, shoes, jewelry, personal stuff. My music’s on my phone. My books are on my Kindle. I got rid of the few pieces of furniture I had when I moved in with him. They didn’t fit with his stuff.” She sighs. “Maybe I should have taken that as a sign.”
We drive to Mukilteo, a suburb north of the city, which, like Revere Lake, has been getting more developed since Google and Amazon and the rest of Silicon Valley invaded Seattle. Harris lives in a brand-new condo building with views of Puget Sound. Aside from the view, which is awesome, it’s the most sterile, soulless building you can imagine. It reminds me of this bumper sticker you see a lot in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, where development has surged since the tech boom started and tons of pre-WWII houses have been demolished to make way for condo buildings: Ballard Welcomes Our New Condo Overlords.
We ride the elevator up. Maddie hesitates outside the door. “It’s so weird,” she says. “I’m about to knock on my own front door.”
“Use the key,” I say.
She shakes her head, raises her hand, and knocks.
Harris opens the door. He’s taller than Maddie but shorter than me, lanky, with black hair that needs a cut. It makes sense in a weird way that Maddie would end up with a guy like him. He looks like all the other nerdy uptight losers that she dates, including the one she was crying over the night Gabe was concei
ved.
“Hey,” Harris says.
I’m already needing to use a lot of restraint not to just plant my fist in his face. Because he says it in that super-soulful, super-personal way that makes it clear he’s trying to get her to look into his eyes and hear him out. And we haven’t even stepped through the door yet.
“Just can the crap and let her get her stuff,” I say.
Maddie glares at me. We haven’t even made it in the front door and I’ve already violated the agreement she and I made that I wouldn’t interfere.
I shrug. I didn’t actually ever intend to keep my mouth shut. I just said that so she’d take me with her.
Harris takes a step back, looking uncertain, but then he says, “I’d like a chance to talk to you, Maddie. Without—him.”
He says it like I’m something she dragged in on her shoe, but whatever—I don’t give a shit what this moron thinks of me. I just want to make sure he doesn’t mess with Maddie’s head. “That’s not going to happen,” I say.
“What are you, her bodyguard? This isn’t any of your business,” Harris says.
My hands clench of their own accord. Harris and I have never exactly gotten along. We are civil to each other for Maddie’s and Gabe’s sakes, but you already know what I think of him, and I’m pretty sure his opinion of me is more or less like my dad’s was.
I force myself to stay calm. “I beg to differ. When the mother of my kid shows up crying in the middle of the night, it becomes my business.”
I don’t think I’ve ever used that phrase before—“the mother of my kid.” Maybe “baby mama” a time or two, mostly in jest. “Gabe’s mom,” for sure. But not the mother of my kid.
I didn’t think it would feel so—weighty.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Maddie says. “Just let me get my stuff.”
Atta girl. Harris catches my triumphant smile and gives me a death-laser look, but there’s not much he can do about it. He steps back and she steps in. I follow her into the condo.
It’s like something you’d see in a magazine. Walls of windows, metal and black granite everywhere, built-ins. Furniture that has the clean lines of the stuff you find at Ikea but looks like it’s a hell of a lot more expensive. I still think it’s soulless.
Harris follows both of us down the hall and tries to cut past me to get closer to Maddie, but I edge him out. I block the door of the master bedroom and he’s reduced to standing in the hallway, peering around me, watching as she pulls a suitcase from the closet and begins throwing clothes into it.
After a while, Harris drifts away. I feel victorious, although all I’ve done is lay claim to the doorframe. I go into the bedroom, thinking I’ll sit on the bed and keep her company, but that feels too fucking weird, sitting on the bed she and Harris share. Shared. So I just watch as she fills the suitcase, trying not to stare at what she puts in there—filmy-thin nightgowns, lace panties that don’t seem to contain enough fabric to cover the crucial bits, and—
She shoves the item into the suitcase before I can make out much other than a few black leather straps, but I swear it was some kind of bodysuit.
“What was that?”
“None of your business.”
“Was that clothing?”
“None. Of. Your. Business.”
I shut up, but not before I have time to think, I might have to make it my business to find out what that was.
As if she can tell that I have too much idle time to make trouble, she says, “Will you go pack Gabe’s toys for me?”
Gabe’s room here doesn’t even feel like a kids’ room. It’s navy and burgundy, and all the toys and games and stuffed animals are neatly hidden away in boxes and cabinets and on shelves in the closet. It’s like Maddie has been trying to make Gabe inconspicuous in Harris’s life. Which makes me really mad all of a sudden. Why get yourself in a relationship with a woman who has a kid if you don’t want a kid? I at least know myself well enough not to do stupid shit like that.
The whole process doesn’t take nearly as long as you’d think. We’re packed up within an hour and a half, nothing left of Maddie or Gabe in the condo. We’ve removed her from Harris’s life as if she and Gabe were nothing more than a splinter in his flesh.
Mia can move in this afternoon, I think bitterly, and wonder if she’s thinking the same. She’s put on a brave face this whole day, and I’m proud of her.
Harris reappears as we’re carrying boxes and suitcases down to the car.
“Maddie. Can we talk, please? Just five minutes.”
I can see her resolve wavering. “You don’t have to, Maddie. You don’t owe him anything.”
“Dude. Not your fucking business.”
Harris is really pissed now, arms crossed, a storm-cloud expression on his face, which makes me happy. “Five minutes, Maddie.”
“You don’t deserve five minutes of her time,” I tell him.
“What is your fucking problem?”
“You cheated on her.”
“Jack,” Maddie warns.
Harris stares at me, challenging. “Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”
My right fist knots, and before I can summon anything remotely resembling self-control, it has landed itself across Harris’s jaw with a satisfying thud.
Chapter 8
We drive to my mom’s apartment—vacant while she visits her friends in San Francisco—because even though Harris for sure got the worse end of the stick, Maddie doesn’t want Gabe to see me until the swelling at my cheekbone goes down a little.
I let us in with my key, and she raids the freezer and fills a zip-close baggie with ice. She finds a clean dish towel, wraps it around the bag, and presses the bundle to my cheek.
I flinch, but she doesn’t ease up.
She’s pissed at me. She spent most of the car ride here telling me what a colossal dick I am. She told me I’ll be lucky if Harris doesn’t send the cops after me. She said she’s never listening to anything I say again, because I lied to her when I said I wouldn’t get into it with him.
But despite all that, I’m feeling like I ran a marathon and saved a city and whatever clichés of heroism and super-heroism you can think of, because let’s face it: Maddie’s putting an ice pack on my face. Everyone knows the winner of the fight gets the woman with the cool hands and the first aid kit. And even though she only stopped yelling at me about thirty seconds ago, I think she’s secretly pleased that I punched him. I’m sure she wanted to.
“Sit,” she says, pulling out a kitchen chair. She’s shorter than I am and it’s awkward for her to hold the ice on my face. So I sit, and she stands next to me and leans in to examine the damage. Which isn’t much, because Harris is a wuss.
Okay, that’s a lie. Harris landed a decent punch. It hurt a lot, but it was worth it, because I heard Maddie gasp when Harris’s fist made contact. I’m pretty sure she didn’t gasp when my fist hit Harris’s face.
Taking the punch was definitely worth it. Maddie leans closer, her breath brushing my forehead. Her teeth nibble at that incredibly sexy, full lower lip. My face is an inch from the swell of her breasts, maybe less. She’s wearing a pale pink long-sleeved T-shirt made of a soft fabric that clings to her curves and leaves very little to the imagination. Definitely not the fact that her bra is made of lace. Or that her nipples are hard under the lace.
So I do what any guy would do in this situation, amped up on adrenaline and enjoying the spoils of battle: I lean forward so I can tease my lips across the tight peaks of her nipples. And when she groans, I tangle my fingers in her hair and pull her mouth down to mine so I can fully taste my victory.
She makes a small whimpering sound that burrows itself straight into my groin, and just like that, I’m hard. Harder when her mouth opens and her tongue strokes mine, harder still when she makes that noise again.
And then it’s over. She pulls back and straightens up.
Her lips are already swollen, her face is flushed, and it makes me imagine ho
w the rest of her body is responding: nipples tightening, pussy plump like her lips, the moisture pooling, ready for my touch. I reach for her again but she backs away, shaking her head.
“Jack, no.”
“Maddie, yes.”
“No. I can’t.”
“Tell me you don’t want it. Tell me I imagined that sexy little moan. Tell me you’re not wet right now.”
I apparently didn’t imagine it, because she moans again. But then she takes another step away from me and says, “We can’t do this.”
“Why not?”
She takes a deep breath. “I’m not going to try to deny that I want it.”
“Good. Because I know you do.”
Her mouth softens, just enough for me to see. “Jack, you’re making it worse.”
“I think your ‘making it worse’ is my ‘cutting the bullshit.’ ”
“Jack, I’m a mess. My life is a mess. My boyfriend cheated on me with my best friend. I just moved out. I have no place to go. I’m feeling incredibly lucky to have somewhere I can crash and someone who’s in my corner. You may not want the title, but at this point you’re basically my only friend in the world. And there’s no way I’m going to risk that over sex.”
She finishes and crosses her arms, hiding further temptation from my view.
I’m honestly speechless. I was totally prepared to run roughshod over any of her objections. And—maybe because socking Harris made me stupid and cocky—I was pretty sure I was going to win this one. I was pretty sure I’d have her kissing me again inside of five minutes, one of those tight nipples bare and caught between my fingers inside of ten.
It’s that thing she does. Call it whatever you want, but she can turn me upside down faster than anyone. In this case, it was what she said about being her friend. It shouldn’t have come off as anything other than pathetic. But instead it sobers me up, and it makes me remember.
