Going Down Easy (Boys of the Big Easy)

by Erin Nicholas

  Gabe rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, looking frustrated but also a little resigned.

  “You must understand,” she said. “You’re doing everything with Cooper on your own, right?”

  Okay, yeah, she was fishing about Cooper’s mom, too. Totally.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t imagine that.”

  “Oh.” Addison chewed the inside of her cheek. How much did she ask here? Did she have a right to ask anything? She was trying to break up with the guy. A guy who she didn’t even really have a relationship with. Did it matter, at all, what his situation was with Cooper’s mom?

  But she suddenly wanted to know everything. Had they been married? How often did he see her? Had she broken things off with him or the other way around? How did he feel about her now?

  “I don’t know what I’d do without my mom. And Logan. And my friends. I have a lot of help. It really does take a village,” Gabe said. “Being a dad is hard. I hear you. I don’t think I could do it on my own.”

  Okay, red flag. He wasn’t the fully independent, I’ve-got-my-life-under-control guy she’d thought—or hoped—he was. Was he looking for a woman because he wanted someone to make things easier on him? “Your mom and Logan?” Addison repeated. “Where’s Cooper’s mom?” There. Might as well get right to the point.

  “Gone,” Gabe said.

  Addison gave him an eye roll. There was no way he actually thought that was a good enough answer. “Left or dead?” she asked.

  “Left, then died.”

  She blinked at him. Oh. “Sorry.”

  He shrugged. “She left when he was about one. She had never planned on having kids and didn’t appreciate how much a baby changed her life.” His look was pointed.

  Yeah, yeah, just like her. But Addison hadn’t left. She’d done the opposite of leave. She took care of everything in Stella’s life.

  “She took off,” Gabe said. “And then was killed in a car accident about a year later.”

  “Wow. That’s rough.” Addison wasn’t sure how to read his expression. Was he sad about that? Angry? Indifferent?

  “You can ask,” he said after a moment.

  “Ask what?”

  “If I was in love with her. If she broke my heart. If I miss her.”

  She didn’t love that he was reading her emotions that easily. “Okay. Were you in love with her, did she break your heart, and do you miss her?”

  “I was not in love with her. We were dating when she got pregnant but had only been together about three months. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant, I doubt it would have lasted much longer, actually. She broke my heart only in the sense that my son will never know his mom. And no,” he said with a sigh, “that probably makes me an asshole, but I wouldn’t say I really miss her. But I do miss having a partner in raising my son.”

  Addison realized that feeling relieved that he hadn’t been in love and didn’t miss the other woman was ridiculous. “You have your mom and Logan, I thought.”

  He just looked at her for a moment. “And you’re kind of judging me, right?”

  “For what?”

  “For having my mom help raise my son.”

  She shook her head. “Of course not. Everyone needs to do what they need to do. I’m the opposite—I don’t want anyone else involved. I think I can make the best decisions for Stella, and so I don’t make it a group project. But you have to do what you have to do.”

  “So you don’t think I can raise Cooper by myself?” Gabe asked.

  Addison raised her eyebrows. Wow, he’d been quick to jump to that. “I don’t think I really know you well enough to say that one way or another. And it doesn’t matter what I think.”

  Again, he just watched her for a few ticks before saying, “What if I told you that it does matter what you think?”

  Okay, that was a really good reason to get the hell out of here now. She didn’t want his opinion on how she was parenting, and he shouldn’t want hers. That went way beyond the weekend-hookup thing they’d had going. She reached down and grabbed her purse from the sidewalk at her feet. “I would say that you don’t know me well enough to care what I think about your relationship with your son,” she told him. “And if I didn’t know we were at the flower-sending stage, I definitely don’t think we’re at the stage where we give each other opinions about our personal choices.”

  He shifted forward and wrapped a big hand around her wrist. “Addison, don’t go.”

  “I have to.”

  “And I’m not going to see you at Trahan’s again, am I?”

  She shook her head, feeling tears pricking the backs of her eyes. Wow. She didn’t miss Stella’s dad even after having a true relationship with him and raising a daughter—at least for a couple of years—together. But she’d been with Gabe for only a few hours, really, and she knew she was going to feel his absence from her life acutely. She pulled her hand away. “I’m sorry I kept coming by. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  He gave her a long, intense stare and said, “Okay, I get it. But please, no matter what else, don’t be sorry for that.”

  She sucked in a little breath. Then gave him a nod. Then, on impulse, she bent and kissed his cheek before straightening and walking away without looking back.

  Gabe watched Cooper scoop mashed potatoes into his mouth and wondered if Addison made Stella mashed potatoes. And how did the little girl feel about fried chicken? Did Addison know how to make fried chicken? Did Stella eat green beans? He knew a lot of kids were picky about vegetables. Unlike Cooper. Cooper ate anything and everything.

  “Wow, who pissed in your gravy?” Logan asked Gabe, kicking the chair out next to him at their mother’s dining room table and settling into it with his own plate of chicken, potatoes, and beans.

  Gabe tried to relax his expression. He didn’t realize he’d been broadcasting the irritation he was feeling with all thoughts of Addison today. But it had been a week since she’d told him she wanted to end things, and he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Damn the woman. She’d always teased his thoughts when they were apart, but now . . . she was a mom. She had a little girl Cooper’s age. Her ex was completely out of the picture. And he’d thought she’d been damned near perfect before finding all of that out.

  “Language, bro,” Gabe said to Logan, for all the good it would do.

  Logan laughed and looked across the table at his nephew. “Hey, Coop?”

  Cooper looked up, his eyes the same coffee brown as his uncle’s rather than the light-blue of his dad’s. “What?”

  “Don’t say pissed, okay? It’s not nice.”

  “Okay,” Cooper told him.

  Logan grinned at Gabe. “There. All fixed.”

  Gabe sighed. “You can’t just watch your language around him?”

  Logan bit into his chicken. “Apparently not,” he said around the mouthful.

  “Hey, Coop?” Gabe asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “Just don’t do anything Uncle Logan does, okay?”

  Cooper looked at Logan. “Don’t do anything you do?” he asked.

  “I guess,” Logan said as if he wasn’t sure what Gabe was talking about.

  “What stuff do you do besides bad words?” Cooper wanted to know.

  “Oh, well, there’s a long list,” Logan said.

  “Logan,” Gabe said warningly.

  “No, I got this,” Logan said, setting down his chicken and wiping his hands on his napkin as he addressed Cooper. “I make my bed every morning, I eat lots of fruit, I exercise, I get all my work done, and I’m always helpful to Grandma. So I guess your dad wants you to stop doing all those things, okay?”

  Cooper frowned. “Really?”

  Gabe ran a hand through his hair. Were all five-year-olds this literal? “No,” Gabe inserted. “Not really.”

  “Uncle Logan doesn’t do those things really?” Cooper asked.

  Gabe sighed. “Well, yes, he does do those things.”

  “But you said I
should not do anything he does.”

  Gabe nodded. “I know. I was being funny.”

  Cooper blinked at him. “I don’t get it.”

  Logan laughed and dug into his potatoes. “He doesn’t want you to do the bad things I do,” he said. “I was just pointing out that I do lots of good things, too.”

  “What bad things do you do?” Cooper wanted to know.

  “I drink beer and say bad words and kiss lots of girls,” Logan told him. He took a forkful of beans.

  “Kissing girls is bad?” Cooper asked.

  Logan shot Gabe a grin. “Well . . .”

  “How come people get married if kissing girls is bad?” Cooper wanted to know, setting his fork down.

  Great. Not only a sticky conversation, but now dinner was going to take forever.

  Gabe barely resisted punching his brother in the arm. “Kissing girls is not bad,” Gabe said. And in spite of the fact that he’d kissed literally hundreds of girls in his life, the only one to flash through his mind at that moment was Addison. He gritted his teeth, then worked to unlock his jaw. “Kissing girls is actually really nice.”

  “Really nice,” Logan felt the need to add.

  Gabe kicked him under the table. “But you should only kiss girls when you care about them. Uncle Logan sometimes kisses girls just for fun.”

  “But kissing is fun?” Cooper asked.

  Gabe always tried very hard to be totally honest and open with his son. He wanted Cooper to ask him questions and expect honest answers. But he was five. And no way in hell was Gabe giving Cooper any kind of sex ed with Logan sitting right there.

  “Kissing girls is very fun,” Gabe said honestly.

  “So I can do that? And make my bed and exercise and do my work?” Cooper asked.

  “Yes,” Gabe said. “You can definitely make your bed and exercise and do all your work.”

  “But what about kissing?” Logan pressed with a shit-eating grin. “Can he do that?”

  “Of course,” Gabe said. He leveled a look at Cooper. “When you’re older.” The last thing he needed was a call from day care that his son had suddenly turned into a ladies’ man.

  “How much older?” Logan asked. “Like, how old were you when you first kissed a girl?” He took a bite of potatoes and chewed nonchalantly as he watched Gabe.

  Gabe narrowed his eyes. Logan knew very well that Gabe had first kissed a girl when he was ten. Her name had been Jenny and she’d initiated it and she’d been the one to tell everyone about it afterward. Including her older brother, who had given Gabe his first black eye and his first lesson in you-don’t-mess-with-your-friends’-little-sisters.

  Honestly, these were the moments when Gabe would agree with Addison—raising a kid would be easier alone in many ways.

  “What is going on in here?”

  Gabe looked up as his mother came into the room from the kitchen with a basket of rolls in hand. And he amended his thought to “Raising a kid would be easier without his brother helping.” Because honest to God, he had no idea what he’d do without his mother helping with Cooper. He loved his son with everything in him. He’d do absolutely anything to ensure Cooper’s health and happiness. And he’d realized very early on that making Cooper’s life steady and safe and happy meant moving back in with his mother and ignoring the stigma around that and dealing with the ways that was inconvenient and trying at times.

  “Gabe’s just telling Cooper how fun kissing girls can be,” Logan said with a tattletale tone.

  “We’re talking about kissing?” Caroline Trahan asked as she set the rolls down and gave Gabe a questioning look.

  “Logan started it,” Gabe returned.

  Caroline rolled her eyes and looked at her grandson. “What were they saying?”

  “That I should make my bed, do my work, exercise, and kiss girls,” Cooper reported. “Oh, and not drink beer or say bad words.”

  Gabe opened his mouth, then realized that Cooper had actually summed it up pretty well.

  Caroline shook her head and took her seat. “Well, I guess that’s not a bad list.”

  “It’s okay with you if I kiss girls?” Cooper asked, picking his fork up again.

  “Of course,” Caroline said easily, reaching for the bowl of green beans. “When you’re older, and if they want you to, and if you really care about them.”

  Cooper chewed a bit for a moment, then asked his uncle, “Do the girls you kiss want you to?”

  Logan kept a straight face and nodded solemnly. “Yes. Yes, they do.”

  “And do you care about them?”

  Gabe coughed, and Logan gave him the finger by running his middle digit up and down the side of his face away from their mother’s line of sight.

  “I like them all very much,” Logan said.

  “And you’re old,” Cooper informed him. “So it’s okay if you kiss them. You shouldn’t put that on the list with drinking beer and saying bad words.”

  Logan nodded, again without cracking a smile. “You know what? You’re absolutely right, Coop. Kissing girls should totally go on the other list. The one with my bed and exercise.”

  Gabe kicked him again. There was no way Cooper would get Logan’s insinuation, but Logan deserved the kick anyway.

  “And have you noticed how happy your dad’s been lately?” Logan asked, shifting away from the reach of Gabe’s foot. “I think it’s because he’s making his bed and exercising more.”

  Gabe sighed. Cooper wouldn’t notice the tone that made “making his bed and exercising” sound like something else altogether, but Caroline did. She shot Gabe a look.

  “I don’t think I realized there were changes in your bed and exercise routine,” she said, casually taking a bite of chicken.

  Gabe rolled his eyes. “Really, Mom?”

  She shrugged. “Just that I know you . . . make your bed pretty often, but your brother doesn’t usually feel the need to comment on it.”

  Logan snorted and finished off his potatoes.

  Cooper frowned. “Dad doesn’t make his bed.”

  Logan laughed outright at that and reached for more chicken. “Oh, sometimes he does, buddy. Trust me. He . . . tucks things in really tight.”

  And this time his mother snorted.

  For God’s sake. Gabe punched Logan in the arm. “How about we talk about something else?”

  Thankfully, his mother came to his rescue. “Yes, Cooper, tell your dad about the alligators.”

  Gabe looked at his son. “Alligators?”

  Cooper’s eyes had gotten round. “Did you know that Louisiana has the largest population of alligators in America?”

  “Nope, didn’t know that. I did know we have a lot.”

  “The most,” Cooper told him, again setting his fork down.

  Why the child couldn’t multitask was beyond Gabe.

  “And they lay eggs!” Cooper told him. “Like birds!”

  “That I did know,” Gabe said. “How many eggs do they lay at a time?”

  “So many,” Cooper told him enthusiastically. “They can lay fifty at a time!”

  “Wow, that is a lot,” Gabe mused. He loved when Cooper got into something. He didn’t multitask with his interests, either. When he was into something, it was 110 percent all about that one thing and nothing else. And Gabe always learned a lot. The interest might only last for a few weeks before Cooper would move on to his new obsession—though in the case of Star Wars and fire trucks, it had been for a few months each—but when he was interested in something, that was all he talked about, read about, looked up on the computer, and wanted to play with. It looked like Gabe might need to find some toy alligators soon.

  “And they breathe like birds, too,” Cooper told him. “It’s super weird.” But the way he said it and the expression on his face said that it was completely fascinating.

  “We were talking all about alligators today,” Caroline told Gabe. She gave him a little smile that said they had literally talked about them all day, and she wa
s ready for someone else to listen to alligator trivia for a while. “So, I was thinking maybe Cooper would like to go on one of those swamp boat tours. They take boats out on the bayou, and you can see alligators right where they live.”

  Cooper’s eyes got wide, and he looked from his grandmother to Gabe slowly, as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard this information correctly. “They do that?” he asked Gabe.

  Cooper had many interests—though, one at a time, of course—and he really did immerse himself fully in whatever the current one was, but he wasn’t an outside kid. That was the best way Gabe could explain it. Cooper loved reading about things and watching online videos and collecting toys and playing with them. But he didn’t have a lot of interest in the real versions. When he’d been into construction equipment—bulldozers and cement trucks and cranes—he read books and did coloring pages and played with miniature versions and watched a DVD called Diggers and Dump Trucks over and over and over. But when Gabe had taken him to a building site so he could see the equipment in action, he’d been scared and had wanted nothing to do with it all. Gabe had been disappointed. He’d arranged with the foreman to show Cooper around and had even gotten him a little hard hat. The same thing had happened with fire trucks. Gabe had taken him down to one of the local stations, and the guys had been happy to show Coop around, let him sit in the trucks, and give him a plastic firefighter hat. Cooper had buried his face in Gabe’s leg and hadn’t even touched one of the trucks.

  Cooper was just a quiet, bookworm type of kid. He loved to learn new things, but he didn’t really want to do new things.

  So Gabe had to ask him, “Are you sure you want to do that, buddy?”

  Cooper looked at his grandmother, who gave him a little nod. Then he looked at Gabe and nodded. “Yeah, I want to.”

  Gabe glanced at his mother, but Caroline was concentrating on her beans.