Do Over

by Serena Bell

  We build Gabe’s new bunk bed first, and he’s like an explosion of little-boy joy, watching and “helping” us, and beside himself with excitement as we finish. I build him a fort on the lower bunk, and he takes his Legos in there, and you can hear him humming contentedly.

  Next we work on Maddie’s bed, and we’re like a well-oiled machine now, barely speaking as we wordlessly translate the pictures on the instructions to the parts in the real world. We’re in the zone, from a technical perspective.

  But it still feels that same way, like something missing its soul.

  I start to wish…

  I start to wish I were this other guy. The guy who belongs here. The guy whose job it is to tighten the cams and hoist the slats into the bed frame. The guy who’ll be sleeping on this bed tonight.

  The better man.

  And then we’re done.

  “You don’t have to stay, Jack. We’ve got this. Gabe and I are going to be fine. It’s a nice place, right?”

  She’s not quite looking at me as she says it.

  “It’s a great place.”

  My voice is too hearty.

  “So—can you take him next weekend?”

  “Yeah,” I say. I almost say, Do you want me to stay? Just tonight? To make sure everything’s okay? But what wouldn’t be okay? It’s just an apartment, and she’s a competent adult human. She can handle anything that happens. And I don’t really want her to say no.

  I don’t want to hear her tell me they’re fine on their own.

  So I hug Gabe goodbye, and then Maddie and I stand facing each other awkwardly. I don’t hug her. Because—we don’t hug. Too complicated. Too much water under the bridge. You know. Like I said, originally.

  And I leave.

  Chapter 36

  Gabe watches as Jack goes out the front door, and then he turns to me with a question on his face, but before he can ask it, I say, “Help me cook dinner!” in one of those hyperexcited voices that adults use when they’re trying to distract kids.

  I don’t want him to ask whatever he was about to ask, because I have no idea how to answer.

  “Yeah!” he says.

  I pull one of our new chairs over to the counter. “I left the step stool at Daddy’s house,” I tell him apologetically. “I’ll get you a new one tomorrow.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why you leave it at Daddy’s house?”

  “So you can use it when you visit Daddy there.”

  We’ve talked several times over the last few days about what was going to happen, that Gabe and I were going to move into the new apartment together and Daddy was going to stay in the house at Revere Lake. That Gabe will keep visiting Daddy on the weekends the way he always has. And Gabe has taken it more or less in stride, asking some questions but not getting upset. It’s not unlike how he was about leaving Harris behind, and I thank God again that four is such a resilient age.

  Dinner is one of those healthy frozen lasagna dinners and a bunch of cut-up raw veggies, which we eat at our new kitchen table. Gabe talks a mile a minute with his mouth full of chewed-up cauliflower, totally in love with his new bunk bed and the fort Jack made for him. After dinner, he tells me, he’s going to play more Legos in the fort.

  I’m glad he’s happy and doubly glad he’s so chatty. It fills the big emptiness of our new surroundings. Not that they’re actually physically empty. We do still need more furniture, especially in the living area, but it’s not half bad. Maybe a coffee table and a couple of floor lamps, an end table, a bookshelf—but basically, it looks like a real apartment now. No, the emptiness is more that it feels like someone’s missing. I don’t mean to sound like I’m being coy or in denial—I know the someone is Jack. I just also know that there’s nothing I can do about it, except wait for time to take away the sense of absence.

  After dinner I do the dishes, and Gabe helps again. He’s actually getting pretty good at soaping and rinsing. The kitchen looks only a little bit like there’s been a tsunami.

  Then we do pj’s and teeth, and it’s surprisingly easy to convince Gabe to get in bed because of the bunk-bed fort. I crawl behind the hanging blanket and snuggle with him in the cave. It’s very peaceful in there. I totally understand why he loves it.

  I get him all settled—he’s so sleepy that his eyes are already doing the long-blink routine—and I’m easing myself out of the fort when he says, “Where Daddy?”

  A feeling like the dentist’s lead X-ray apron settles on my chest. “He’s at his house. In Revere Lake.”

  “Why?”

  No. No, please don’t do this. Not now.

  “Because that’s where Daddy lives.”

  “We live there too?”

  I bite my lip. Hard. I think I taste blood.

  “No, baby, we live here. In this apartment. This is our new apartment.”

  “Why?”

  “Gabe, honey, it’s late, and you need to go to sleep.”

  “Why dis our new apartment?”

  I can’t. I can’t comfort him about this, can’t explain this to him, can’t talk to him, or anyone, about this while it’s so raw and fresh for me. But I have no choice, do I? He’s here and I’m here and he wants to understand.

  So much of parenting is about doing what needs to be done even when you don’t believe you have the strength to do it, because you have to. You have to have enough strength for yourself and your kids.

  “Your mommy and your daddy both love you so much. But some mommies and daddies can’t live in the same house. They’re not—”

  I almost said, They’re not friends. But Jack and I are friends.

  The truth is, Some mommies and daddies can’t live in the same house because the daddy will never love the mommy as much as she wants to be loved by him.

  “We only lived in Daddy’s house to give us time to find a place to stay, remember? And Mommy found a place, so now we have a place to stay, this wonderful apartment with your new bunk beds, and this is our new home. This is where we belong. And Daddy belongs in Revere Lake.”

  “He come here? Say g’night?”

  Gabe’s eyes are big, his lower lip beginning to quiver.

  My chest clenches and tears fill my eyes. “No, baby. Not tonight. You’ll see him in six days. That’s not very long.”

  Gabe thinks about that hard, his little brow furrowed up. For a moment I think we’re going be okay.

  Then his whole serious, thoughtful face dissolves. He starts to cry. “Now. Daddy come now,” he wails.

  “Oh, buddy,” I say, and all my inner walls come crashing down.

  That’s how Gabe and I end up in the fort that Jack built, curled up together, while tears stream down his face and I try to hide my own.

  Chapter 37

  Oh, shit.

  It’s Thursday morning. I’ve just arrived at my work site, and there’s a scrum of people outside the project super’s trailer. That huddle has trouble written all over it. The super, Kevin, is there, and the clients, and—this is the part that raises my blood pressure—Mad Max, the project developer. Max is a college-educated prick who got greedy and tried to cash in on the building boom in Revere Lake even though he doesn’t know shit about construction. Part of Max’s sucktastic management style is to be hands off even when a royal edict would prevent bloodshed, so the fact that he’s here can’t be good.

  “Jack,” Max calls out. “Over here.”

  They’re all standing there with arms crossed. It’s the work-site equivalent of facing a firing squad, but there’s nothing I can do besides walk over and join them.

  Max looks ostentatiously at his watch and then raises his eyebrows at me. Asswipe. I’m, like, maybe three minutes late.

  “We’ve got a problem.”

  Max means, You’ve got a problem.

  My eyes flick to the clients. She’s a rich California transplant with a huge entitlement thing going on, and he’s—well, let’s just say I’ve barely heard him utter a word in hi
s wife’s presence. Which is fine, except if—when—his wife is being a total and complete asshole and he’s just standing by quietly, which keeps happening.

  The wife meets my eyes with a glare. The husband won’t look at me. Typical. “You installed the wrong molding for the main floor ceilings,” she says.

  My blood is already starting to boil. In the past, I’ve hesitated to go toe-to-toe with her, but all that’s gotten me is my pay docked to pay for mistakes that weren’t mine.

  “No. I installed the right molding.”

  She draws a hiss of breath. Not sure anyone’s said no to her in her entire life. But I’m not going to back down this time. You know why? Because I know I’m right. I know I’m right and I have paper to back it up—notes from my conversation with Kevin and receipts from the order that I ran by Kevin right after I placed it, to double-check.

  What I don’t have is the original spec, signed off on by the client, because this whole project is a management clusterfuck.

  Still, I’ve got enough to know that whatever went wrong, it wasn’t my fault.

  And the reason I have that backup? Because of Maddie. Because of what she said to me:

  This is about you thinking you’re not smart enough to do it. But that’s bullshit. The only reason you think you aren’t is because you grew up being told over and over you weren’t. But it’s not true.

  I didn’t want to hear her when she first said it, but the words stayed in my head. They echoed around every time I was at work, and they made me feel surer about certain things. They made me feel certain I was right about Max’s incompetence and that Kevin’s way of doing things sucked. That we needed to do things more carefully, more officially, more efficiently. Altogether fucking differently, actually.

  Most of all, Maddie’s words convinced me that I didn’t have to take Kevin’s bullshit just because I’ve always felt like I basically deserved whatever crap people threw in my direction.

  “The only words I need to be hearing out of your mouth right now are an apology for fucking this up,” Kevin growls in my direction.

  Excellent. My supervisor has sold me out again.

  “Seems like we all agree about that,” Max says, smiling at California Girl with a submissive tilt to his head, like a whipped dog.

  Any faint hope I had that Max was planning to stand up for me vanishes. So it’s going to come down to my word against the clients’ and Kevin’s.

  For a long moment, I weigh my options. I can see the writing on the wall and cave. Or I can keep going down this path that Maddie has sent me down, and see where it leads.

  “Can you hang on a minute?”

  The paper trail to sort this out is in my truck. I dash over to the truck, dig out the folder I’ve been keeping, and bring it back. I pull out the notes and the receipts. I unfold them and hand them to Max.

  He looks them over, and then he looks up at me.

  Then he crumples the sheets tight in his fist and says, “Look. Jack. Leave the administrative stuff to me, hey? Your job is to hold a hammer. This is way above your pay grade.”

  Sometimes you just have these moments where everything aligns. Like, all of a sudden, I get this sharp visual flash of that day when we were playing Wiffle ball in the streets and my dad chewed me out about the wreaths. About the order form I’d fucked up. Another asshole, another piece of paper, another ball-busting.

  But that crumpled paper in Max’s hand, those pieces of paper, say I did right. I did okay.

  I stand there, my arms dangling by my sides even though they all still have their body language tight and accusatory. I think about going home and telling Maddie this story, telling her what happened and what I did next.

  Two things happen. My chest gets tight with grief. Because I’m not going home and telling Maddie this story. She’s not at home, and she won’t be, not ever again. Every day this week, I’ve been reminded of that fact when I walk in the door and am greeted by my silent, empty house. And no matter how much whiskey I consume at O’Hannihans, no matter how late I stay out, it’s just as silent later, too.

  The second thing that happens is that I realize how I want this episode with Kevin and Max and the clients to end. I understand exactly what story I would want to tell Maddie, if I could.

  Calmly, I open my palm, and after a moment of hesitation, Max restores the crumpled paper to me.

  “My job was to hold a hammer.”

  I say it quietly.

  I say it to California Girl and Asshole Kevin and Mad Max.

  I say it to my dad.

  And most of all, I say it to Maddie and Gabe, who make me want to be a better person.

  “I quit.”

  Chapter 38

  I’m meeting Sienna for drinks at a bar a couple of blocks from my new place. She had to talk me into it because I felt weird about making her come all the way into Seattle, but she said she wanted to get a peek at the apartment, and besides, it was easier for her to come into the city than for me to leave it.

  When I show up at the bar, Cucumber, Lani’s there, too, sitting at a table for three with Sienna.

  My stomach gives a weird little skip. I don’t mind hanging out with Lani, but I don’t think I’d be able to stand it if she actually started talking about Jack, or if it came out that they’d hooked up again.

  This has been a really tough week. As much as I tell myself I’m doing the right thing for myself and Gabe, there have been tears at every bedtime, and I don’t mean Gabe’s. He’s actually doing okay—after that first night when he and I cried together, he seems to understand the lay of the land, though he keeps asking when he’ll get to see Daddy again. It was wonderful, this morning, to finally be able to say “tomorrow night,” since this is Jack’s weekend, Friday and Saturday nights.

  I’m dreading it, though. The hand-off. The old awkwardness, back in force. Driving away from Gabe and Jack when all I want to do is hole up with them.

  Sienna stands and gives me a huge hug. “Hey, sister.”

  The words tug on a barely scabbed-over wound. In a different version of the world, we would have been sisters.

  Lani rises, too, and hugs me. “Don’t be mad.”

  “Why would I be mad?” I pull back to give her a quizzical look.

  Sienna puts a hand on my arm. “We have something to tell you,” she says, biting her lip. “I thought Lani should tell you herself.”

  “Um, okay?”

  “Just, sit down. And we ordered you a drink. Here.” Sienna pushes something pink across the table, and I pick it up and take a sip. Meanwhile, my mind is racing, trying to figure out what the heck could be going on. My instincts tell me it has to have something to do with Jack…and then suddenly I know. Lani’s going to tell me she and Jack are together.

  And I’ll be okay with that. I have to be, right? He never promised me anything, and I knew from the very beginning—the first very beginning—what I was getting myself into.

  So why does it feel like I can barely breathe?

  “Just tell me,” I manage to eke out.

  “You might be angry at us at first,” Sienna says.

  At us? What does Sienna have to do with it?

  Lani gives me a pleading look. “It’s my fault. I made her tell me.”

  What? What’s going on?

  “Sorry. We’re confusing the shit out of you, aren’t we?” Sienna asks.

  I nod and take a big ol’ drink of my pink goodness, because I am really baffled now.

  “Start at the beginning,” Sienna instructs Lani.

  “Okay. So, Jack’s been—”

  “He’s been impossible,” Sienna blurts. “Like, won’t talk to anyone, drinking like a fish…”

  “Grumpy as hell,” Lani confirms. “And not in a needs-to-get-laid way. And I don’t mean I was trying,” she says, so quickly she almost trips over the words. “I wouldn’t do that to you. Friends before men.”

  I’m honestly shocked to hear her say that. And a little, well, distrustful. Becau
se why would this woman, who barely knows me, put loyalty to me before a guy she’s known since high school? Touchily, I say, “Jack and I are over. If we ever even were.”

  “Oh, you were,” Sienna says fervently. “You definitely were.”

  I’m starting to realize that whatever they want to tell me, it’s not the kind of bad news I was anticipating. I take a cautiously hopeful breath.

  Lani crosses her arms. “He’s a fucking disaster. I’ve never seen him like this, Maddie. And I’ve known him a long time. A long time. I won’t lie to you. That boy makes the rounds. So I feel like I speak from a place of extensive knowledge when I say that he has never tanked like this.”

  Sienna nods ferociously. “Cosign. He’s a wreck.”

  “So, after a couple of days of watching him look like the grim reaper, I finally asked Sienna what the fuck was up. And she told me she was pretty sure it had something to do with you. Which, I will honestly say, I was not surprised to hear. I thought there was something pretty fishy about how he’s been ever since you moved in—”

  “I didn’t move in.” My voice has, once again, come out testier than I intended. “I—I was just crashing.”

  “Whatever.” Lani waves her hand. “He’s been a freak since you moved in, and I was starting to get the feeling something was going on, and so when Sienna told me the two of you were sleeping together, I was actually relieved—like, okay, he’s not dying of cancer, or whatever. But then when she told me that you’d moved out, I was all, like, what the fuck?”

  “So I told her what you told me,” Sienna says apologetically. “I’m sorry. I usually am good with other people’s secrets, but before you decide you don’t want to be my friend anymore—”

  “—or mine—” Lani adds.

  “—just hear Lani out.”

  “So she told me your story, and right away, I was like, oh, I bet that woman, with the shoes and the bra, that was Penelope Mills. She had the hots for Jack that summer. She spent, like, the whole summer trying to get into his pants, and she was bullshit when she found out that he was with you—”