Do Over

by Serena Bell

  I make my voice calm and say, “Okay. Now time for sleeping.”

  “I’m not sleepy.”

  I take a deep breath, rebuild the wall holding back the wave of anger. “It’s bedtime, bud. You need to lie down. Here. I’ll put the radio on.”

  I reach over and dial his radio until I pull down an a.m. station that’s broadcasting a basketball game. He settles onto the pillow, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Sleep tight, bud.”

  “G’night, Daddy.”

  I kiss his forehead.

  In the living room, Maddie is standing by the fireplace.

  “He down?”

  “I think. He was tough. He didn’t want me to leave.”

  Maybe he doesn’t want to leave.

  I don’t want him to leave.

  I don’t want you to leave.

  “Maddie, about the apartment.”

  She turns an agonized face to me. “Jack, please.”

  “Maddie, I don’t think you should take it. I mean, things are…” I cast around for a way to say what I’m feeling. “This thing between us. It’s not—”

  It’s not just sex.

  It’s not like anything I’ve ever experienced.

  It’s not something you can walk away from or throw away.

  “It’s not over yet.”

  That wasn’t right. That wasn’t what I was trying to say. I open my mouth again, but she breaks in.

  “Jack, we agreed. We said this was just until I got an apartment.”

  I want to reach out and haul her into my arms. Kiss her until she gives up resisting and says the thing I’m trying to say but can’t. That we need to give this time. That we need to give each other another chance.

  “Maybe we were wrong.”

  “Jack, I can’t do this again. It hurt too bad the first time. I can’t put my heart out there again and feel hopeful and then have you decide you’re not this guy. That this isn’t a thing you can do or commit to. That you’ve got an itch to scratch—”

  I open my mouth to tell her. To tell her how fucking wrong she is, about everything. My head and chest are full of words, scrabbling to get out.

  “Daddy, I can’t sleep.”

  All the words I’d been trying to corral, the ones swirling around, clawing for purchase, gather themselves into one dark funnel cloud.

  Jesus Christ, Gabe, for fuck’s sake, you are supposed to be in bed! How hard is it? Just get your ass down the hall—

  I am so frustrated with him I’m shaking. And in that moment, I foresee it. I glimpse myself turning on my son, getting in his face, unleashing the ferocious emotion that feels twice as big as I am. I feel the words gather and fling themselves out of my mouth in the direction of the small figure who has appeared in the door of the living room. They will come out of my mouth in my father’s voice, they will sail on a mist-cloud of spit, the droplets hitting him in the face, my breath and my words and my spit and my anger an assault on his tiny toddler form.

  He’ll cry, because he’s still little enough not to be ashamed of his tears. (By the time he’s six, he’ll know that tears will just bring more angry words raining down.)

  My fists are clenched. My whole body is clenched, holding back the words like the last wall between me and what I’m meant to become.

  “Jack,” Maddie says quietly. “I’ve got this.”

  She reaches out a hand to touch the muscle at the corner of my jaw, which throbs from how hard I’ve locked it down.

  My fists unfurl. The anger goes out of me.

  But it was there.

  He’s there, inside me.

  And she saw it.

  Not that she needed to see it. She’s always known it was in there.

  With one quick glance at me, Maddie hustles Gabe out of the living room and down the hall.

  I stand in the living room, my arms limp by my sides. My mind is blank, except for one thought. My mother used to do that. Try to keep me out of my father’s hair so he wouldn’t, couldn’t lash out at me.

  Maddie comes back in. “If he comes out again, I’ve got him.” She looks at me warily, the way you watch a strange dog. “You okay?”

  I nod.

  “It’s frustrating, right, trying to get him to bed? It can make a saint crazy.”

  And you’re no fucking saint, Jack Parker.

  “Maddie.”

  She gets this look on her face, like she’s gearing up for another fight.

  “I know you’re right.”

  Her eyes are big with surprise. That wasn’t what she thought I was about to say.

  “It’s better this way. It’s better if you guys move out now.”

  She hesitates, as if she’s about to say something.

  When she opens her mouth, what she says is, “Okay.”

  Chapter 33

  There’s a soft knock at my door.

  “Come in.”

  I know it’s Jack. And I’m both surprised and not surprised that he’s here. The way things ended earlier this evening—it didn’t feel finished. He agreed it had to be over between us, but—

  I knew we still needed to say goodbye, somehow.

  He looks uncertain. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him look like that, not even when he was doing something for Gabe that I knew was outside his comfort zone. Even then he was all bravado, like Facebook evidence to the contrary, I’ve got this Dad Business down. But right now he just looks tentative.

  “Hey,” I say, and I reach for his hand.

  “You have the new place. I wasn’t sure if this was still allowed.”

  It makes me laugh, but it also humbles me. Jack is a guy who’s never in his life hesitated to push the limits of what’s allowed. And here he is, asking me if this is okay. And I understand that he means that if it isn’t, he won’t try to convince me or seduce me. He’s never taken anything from me I didn’t want to give, and I’ve tried my hardest never to ask anything from him that he couldn’t give. I guess that’s what makes us such good friends, when all is said and done.

  I feel such a wave of warmth and affection for him right now. It’s so much quieter than the sexual heat that usually steers us through these situations, but in a way, it’s much more intense, too. Like when someone speaks softly in a loud room and everyone quiets down to hear.

  “We made the rules,” I say. “So we say if this is allowed.”

  He still hesitates, so I kneel up, tug him closer to the bed, and draw his head down for a kiss. The kiss is like the way I feel: quiet and intense. It resonates in the smallest parts of me—a quivering where I’m put together.

  “Maddie,” he says.

  He kisses me again, his tongue delicately searching me out, his breath warm on my lips, the scent of his skin and the heat of his body inches away as strong in my senses as his mouth on mine.

  He says my name again. And each time it’s like a measurement, a notch up from where we were, the heat and excitement mounting in my body while we keep on kissing like there’s nothing frantic going on in the air molecules between us. Except my body keeps drifting closer to his, until my breasts touch his chest and he groans like I’ve burned him and slips a hand behind my knees and my shoulders and slides me down onto the bed, covering me. And then he keeps on kissing, but now his weight is on me, his thick erection between my legs, and I think I am going to dissolve. I am dissolving. But he’s holding me together with kisses and touches, defining the edges of my body so I can’t lose track of it completely, and I feel this surge of wild gratitude that makes absolutely no sense.

  I pull at his clothes and he pulls at mine, and we have to get a hold of ourselves and stop the yanking and cooperate so we can get them all off, bit by bit, sinking back into the bed, back into each other, skin now bare along our lengths. So much skin touching, so hot, I’m luminous all over from it. My breasts feel tight and tender between us and I find his hand and bring it up, bring his fingertips to my nipple, and he makes a raw, broken sound and slides down to take the nipple in
his mouth. I moan and arch, and his fingers find me slick between my legs, teasing lightly. Then he replaces his fingers with his cock, gliding it through my sex and over my swollen clit. I gasp, and he does it again, a slow, luxurious back-and-forth that makes me whimper.

  “Inside,” I beg.

  He obliges, with that same slow tease I’ve come to know so well now: just the head, while he watches my face, then a little more, until I arch my hips up and take the tease away from him, thrusting to take all of him in one good stroke. His turn to groan.

  He props himself on his arms and gazes down at me, face soft, eyes dark. It’s a different way he’s watching now, though, than before. Like he’s trying to understand something in a language he doesn’t quite know, like he’s trying to read something behind my expression. More tender than intense. His hand comes up and touches my cheekbone, soothing, smoothing, so gentle that tears spring into my eyes. Where we’re joined below he thrusts rhythmically, slowly, pressing so deep the tension tugs tight and I ruck up against him, a fist of tension forming in my lower belly, drawing inward on itself. And then, still reading my face, he slows down even more, and I feel myself start to come, a long buildup like falling and falling and falling into the brilliant center of pleasure.

  “Oh,” he says. Just that. And closes his eyes. He rests his cheek against mine, and he thrusts deep one more time and holds still, his body rigid, his breath faltering. “Ohhh. Ohhhhh.” As if it’s too good for words, fine and smooth and perfect, this one last time.

  I don’t let him see the tear that rolls down my face and slides quietly into my hair.

  Chapter 34

  If I keep myself busy enough, I won’t be able to think.

  Or feel.

  If I work all day, cook dinner for Gabe and me, pack our stuff, and fall into bed exhausted, I won’t be awake long enough to lie there, wondering. Wishing.

  Or that’s the theory, anyway.

  The reality is that it’s 1 a.m. on Friday night, the night before our move, and I’m not asleep. I’m wide awake, and I’m hyper-tuned to the sounds in the house.

  Last night, Jack went out with Henry and Clark. He didn’t even come home from work. He just texted to ask if Gabe and I would be okay on our own and to say that he had plans with the guys. I texted back, We’re fine. And of course we were. Gabe and I made spaghetti and had a delicious meal together, followed by a lovely, peaceful storybook bedtime.

  Gabe only asked me about ten thousand times where Daddy was. And each time felt only a little bit like a barbed arrow in my heart.

  Despite the psychic pain, I wasn’t at all tempted to change course. My sadness only made me more convinced that I was doing the right thing, because the longer Gabe and I live under Jack’s roof, the harder it will get to say goodbye. And the harder it will get for Gabe to understand that this situation is only temporary, that it has to be temporary.

  Of course, Gabe can’t really understand, but maybe someday when he’s older I can explain. Not that I have any idea what I’ll say. It’s heartbreak city, no matter how you spin it. I just have to have faith that in the end, Gabe will know he has a mother who loves him more than anything and a father who, even if he will never be a TV-perfect dad, loves him too.

  I don’t doubt that Jack loves Gabe, not at all. I’ve seen it in his face and his actions, in the time Jack has spent with Gabe, the way he’s learned the little details of the bedtime routine and improvised some of his own. In the photos he texts me, the way he leapt into action the other day at the aquarium, his willingness to cook with Gabe and get down on the floor and play with Legos.

  I don’t even doubt that Jack loves me, in his own way. I just know that it’s not the way that he needs to in order to want to blow up his bachelor existence for us. And in my own way, despite my sadness, I totally get that.

  Still, I am lying in bed right now thinking about what Jack’s doing, and it’s making me crazy. I’ve pictured him and the guys in Jack’s truck on the way to O’Hannihans, plotting their approach. I’ve pictured him jumping down from the driver’s seat, striding into the bar with his alpha-confident swagger. Turning heads as he walks in. Catching someone’s eye. Buying her a drink, chatting her up, making her feel like she’s the center of his universe. And she probably is, for those few minutes—or even days or weeks.

  The woman I picture, the one who catches his eye, is Lani, of course. Wearing something outrageous, raven hair down around her shoulders, greeting him with her beautiful wide smile.

  Have you ever noticed how the absolute worst jealousy is what you feel toward people you genuinely admire? So I’m basically just torturing myself by imagining him with her, because who could blame him? She’s fun and gorgeous and sexy and smart and I hate her right now and I hate myself for it.

  I understand why people talk about being “consumed” by jealousy, because it really does feel like some big monster has me in its slobbery jaws and I’m propping them open and trying to keep my head out in the air while the digestive process works on my feet. Or something. That metaphor died.

  I know that no matter what I do, I won’t be able to stop wishing Jack were here with me instead of out with—whoever.

  Only time will cure that.

  I know that no matter what I do, I won’t be able to stop loving him. Probably even time won’t cure that, but it will blunt it, and maybe I’ll find someone else I genuinely care about. For the time I was with Harris, I didn’t miss Jack so much. Sure, I compared them, even if I didn’t want to admit to myself that I was doing it, and even if sometimes I outright lied to myself. Like, Harris is such a dependable guy. If I’d gotten pregnant by someone like that, things would be different. Sure, there wouldn’t have been so much passion, but there also wouldn’t have been so much drama. And that’s good, right? Less drama. That’s what adult women should want in their lives.

  I know I’ll meet someone else eventually.

  I also know, deeper than bone, that it will never be like it is with Jack.

  I glance at the clock, at the numbers that now say 1:11, and resign myself to being okay with that.

  Chapter 35

  I don’t know how to describe Saturday.

  It’s like nothing’s changed and everything’s changed. Like we go through all the same motions we always do, but the guts have been scooped out. Like my own guts have been scooped out.

  I make pancakes, to fortify Gabe and Maddie for the move. And Gabe stands on his stool and helps. Maddie comes in and smiles at us, but it’s a hollowed-out smile. I smile at her, but it’s only on the outside of my face.

  The last two nights I’ve gone to O’Hannihans and drunk a lot of Jameson. I’ve listened to Clark and Henry sling bullshit over my head and been grateful that they haven’t demanded to know what the fuck is wrong with me.

  I’m pretty sure they know. And like the excellent friends they are, they haven’t said a word.

  Meanwhile, I’ve worked hard to not be an asshole, because right now all I want to do is sulk and lash out. But I’ve been pretty good. I haven’t yelled at my crew or spewed nastiness at my boss or gotten in a fight with my friends. I haven’t driven while under the influence. And I haven’t taken advantage of anyone, not even the twenty-something who draped herself across my lap last night and asked if I could give her a ride home. I peeled her off me, called her a cab, and didn’t feel a pang of regret.

  I’ve also tried hard not to sink into self-pity, because this is the bed I made, and if I had to do it over again, I’d make it the same way. If I’d wanted it to be different, I sure as fuck could have made different decisions.

  When I looked through the peephole five years ago and saw Penelope Mills standing on my doorstep, I could have not opened the door. A better man would not have opened the door.

  After Maddie saw Penelope leave my apartment with her shoes and bra in her hand, I could have chased after her and begged her to forgive me for not being a better man.

  But neither of those things would
have actually made me a better man.

  After the pancakes, we load Maddie’s car and I follow her in the truck to Seattle, where we unload Maddie’s and Gabe’s few possessions into the new place. It’s a solid apartment, nothing special, but sturdy and well-kept, in a good neighborhood, and just the right size for them. I tell her she did good, and she smiles, but only with the outside of her face.

  Gabe dances around the apartment. He clearly loves it. He loves the window seat in the living room the most. I bet he’ll come up with a million great games to play there.

  Not that I’ll be around much to see them. But you know.

  Maddie and I stand awkwardly in the nearly empty living room. As nice as the place is, it feels blank and echoey because she doesn’t have furniture. Part of me just wants to walk away, because it’s not going to get any easier to say goodbye. But this other part of me can’t leave them here, my people, without doing something about the emptiness and the echo. So I offer to follow her and Gabe to Ikea so they can use my truck for a shopping trip. I know Maddie was able to save a little bit by staying with me, so I figure she has enough to buy at least a few things for the apartment.

  And that’s weird too. The three of us out in public, doing a thing that families do, buying furniture for an apartment, but that’s not how this is. It’s not how it will ever be.

  We go back to the apartment and haul the stuff—a couch, a table and chairs, two beds, and a night table for Maddie—into the elevator and up to the apartment. I lay the boxes out in the middle of the living room and we stand there awkwardly, and then she says, “Jack. You can go.”

  “You’re going to need some help with the assembly,” I say.

  “I can read Ikea instructions,” she says darkly.

  “It’s easier with two people,” I say.

  I expect her to fight, but she lets me help. And it’s fun, in a hollowed-out way. All the parts laid out on the floor, passing the instructions back and forth, tossing the Allen wrench over the wreckage between us, laughing when we fuck it up.