The Best Thing

by Zapata, Mariana

  I wasn’t going to hold my breath that he wouldn’t change his mind. As much as I wouldn’t have minded insulting him by reminding him that he didn’t have the greatest track record, I kept that to myself. At least for now. He could have that much.

  This was about Mo. She was young, and if he bounced in the next few weeks, she would never remember. I was fine with giving him a shot now. Better now than later. Because he wasn’t going to get another one if he fucked up, and I’d warned him.

  “Come on,” I said, thinking we needed to go ahead and get over him meeting Grandpa Gus.

  I wasn’t sure how it was going to go but... tough shit.

  He nodded as he got up, following me as we headed back to the living room. All three of them were still there, except Peter had made his way to sit on the floor where I had been, and he was watching her roll from her back onto her stomach and bouncing her butt, hands slapping the floor. She was going to crawl any day now, I could feel it. And that made me smile, even though the silence was stifling.

  There was no way I was the only one who sensed the tension in the room.

  But there was a reason why I loved Peter and thought the world of his morals and, unfortunately, a reason why I had liked Jonah so much.

  “Mo! Say hi!” Peter said. “Hi!”

  I could see Mo’s eyes widen either at Peter’s tone or at the man who was then standing right next to me as she moved her head to look in our direction.

  I wanted to keep looking at her but decided to focus on the dumbass who had participated in creating this beautiful, perfect child. This child who was going to take ten years off my life but that I loved so much. So fucking much.

  Jonah’s eyes went wide, which didn’t surprise me. But the hard swallow he had to take sent something I wasn’t going to inspect too closely straight to my gut. If that wasn’t an emotional gulp, I didn’t know what was. I noticed right then that he was carrying the little stuffed bear and holding it against his thigh.

  But the Still an Asshole swallowed hard again as he asked, “Can I… can I touch her?”

  I had to settle for answering him with a nod since I didn’t trust myself.

  Jonah was still staring at the baby who had stopped trying to roll over to watch him instead, as his voice’s volume took a nosedive, and he said something that had me side-eyeing the fuck out of him. “It’s been a bit since I’ve held a baby, but I suppose it can’t be too difficult to remember, eh?”

  Ugh. It wasn’t going to work. This innocent bullshit.

  “It’s not that hard,” Peter responded to him. I was pretty sure he was side-eyeing him discreetly too. Measuring him up or something.

  I held my breath and forced myself to be decent. For Mo. Damn it.

  “I’m sure Grandpa Gus dropped me on the head a few times while he figured things out again, and I turned out all right,” I got myself to say, but only Peter looked over with a smirk that was still tense.

  Grandpa Gus grunted though—not taking the bait he would have been all over normally over me being dropped—his eyes glued to the man I still hadn’t introduced him to standing in his living room.

  Peter lifted Mo up, and I could only watch as Jonah set the bear he’d brought on the side table, took a step forward and then another, before those big hands went to that not-so-small but still growing and fragile and soft body, and he took her. Hands curled under her little armpits as her feet dangled in the air, looking smaller than usual in comparison to the biceps barely flexing as they held her up for inspection.

  Ten fingers. Ten toes. Dark haired. Adorable as fucking shit. I’d wiped her down after speaking to Jonah on the phone and put her in her pajamas: a long-sleeved onesie with the Cookie Monster on the chest.

  Jonah took Mo… his daughter… and he said, very softly, very gently, and with just the slightest hint of a tremble in his voice, “Hello, Mo.”

  The happiest baby in the world smiled before she replied in her own language.

  * * *

  She passed out in Jonah’s arms.

  I wasn’t overthinking it. Mo didn’t know a stranger. She loved being fawned over and didn’t give much of a fuck who paid her attention as long as someone did, which according to Grandpa Gus was exactly the opposite of how I’d been. He claimed I came out of the womb bitch-facing people and had clung to him for dear life like someone was going to try and steal me away. It was only Peter that I had taken to immediately.

  But my little nugget had passed right out in her father’s arms thirty minutes after meeting him. Totally and completely out. Peter had taken her then, settling her right back down when she started to fuss at being moved, and headed up to her bedroom. To give me a chance to talk to this dipshit, I guessed.

  “When can I see her again?” Jonah asked me as we stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching Peter go up, slowly, shh-shh-shhing the entire time.

  It only hurt me a little to answer that. “Whenever you want.”

  He nodded, and I could hear the deep breath he took before he turned and lowered his gaze to me. I was five foot eight, but he was still a lot taller than I was.

  Not that it mattered. I didn’t know shit about tackling, but I had a purple belt in jiu-jitsu. I had learned a long time ago not to be intimidated by people bigger than me. I wasn’t about to start now. To be fair, his expression as he looked at me was probably almost as intense as the one I’d given him when he first showed up, but I didn’t even think about getting all meek or anything.

  He didn’t either apparently. “We need to talk.”

  I didn’t want to talk to him, but I nodded. If he was committing, that was one thing. It didn’t change the fact we were going to have to figure out the details of making this work as we went along.

  “Have lunch with me tomorrow.”

  No.

  But for my girl, I would, so I nodded.

  “What time are you available?”

  I shrugged and heard the distance in my voice. “Whenever.”

  His eyes moved back toward the living room, where my grandfather was sitting, more than likely shooting daggers dipped in poison at him with his eyeballs. To give him credit, after Mo had smiled at him, Jonah Collins had shaken Peter’s hand and officially introduced himself. Peter had been polite, but I could tell it was just manners and compromising. For us.

  But Grandpa…

  He’d taken one look at the hand that Jonah had extended toward him and didn’t move an inch to take it, despite the blatant-ass cough that Peter had aimed at him. Jonah had tucked his hand back in after realizing he wasn’t going to get a handshake and still told him it was nice to meet him with a nod. Grandpa didn’t say a fucking word.

  All in all, for my gramps, that hadn’t been so bad.

  “Thank you for letting me see her,” Jonah Collins said, still watching me with those clear light brown eyes that were so striking on his tanned face.

  I wanted to dislike him, I really did. I wanted to think he was full of shit, but honestly, I didn’t know what to think about his reactions all day. Maybe he was telling the truth or maybe he wasn’t. I was willing to put it aside and just steep in that in private. But at the same time… fuck him. Obviously he didn’t feel that guilty over shit, so why should I spend the rest of my life bitter over someone who hadn’t cared about my feelings in the first place?

  Once I thought about it like that… well, since when did I give anybody that kind of power? I was going to live my best life for me, not for somebody else. It made me mad just to think that I’d do otherwise.

  I was not going to waste my life being pissed off at someone. I had better shit to do. People didn’t give enough credit to what not giving a fuck could do for you. It was freedom.

  “Uh-huh.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “I’m off tomorrow. If you aren’t here by one, I’m not going to wait to eat.”

  He nodded tightly.

  We made it to the door before he called out over his shoulder, “Lenny.”

  “What?” I ask
ed, reaching around his hip to undo the lock and ignoring the side of the tight, high butt inches from my forearm as I did it.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  My hand froze for a second before I brought it back to my side. “Okay.”

  He turned around then, aiming that annoyingly intense face at me, looking down in a way that had me wishing for maybe the first time in my life that I was taller. That he didn’t have the ability to have that tiny advantage over me. Once upon a time, I had liked how jacked he was.

  But that had been once upon a time.

  And I remembered now that I had never been crazy about fairy tales in the first place.

  And even with those thoughts, I still wasn’t prepared for all that size and mass focused solely on me as he said in a voice that had lost all traces of uncertainty and choking emotion, “I didn’t mean to leave like that. I swear. I didn’t know.”

  I didn’t say a word. I wasn’t going to brush this off and make it seem like him leaving or not knowing was not a big deal. But I didn’t need to bring it up every three seconds either, I realized. You didn’t help an injury by aggravating it constantly. And it wasn’t like I was ever going to forget what happened.

  Maybe he knew that… maybe he knew it was the best thing to let me keep my silence… because he opened the door then and stepped out. It wasn’t until he turned around and reached inside to grab the handle while I stood there that he said it again, “I’m not leaving, Lenny.”

  I wasn’t holding my breath, and I was pretty sure he knew that.

  Chapter 8

  “You are genuinely pissing me off now. I made it back to Houston, not that you give a shit, but I still need to talk to you. (pause) It’s Lenny.”

  I woke up the way I hated the most: jolting myself awake.

  One minute, I’d been totally out, and the next second, bam! I was wide awake, staring straight up at the ceiling and listening.

  Based on how much sun was coming in through the windows, it had to be at least nine in the morning. Three hours later than I usually woke up. Well, it was more accurate to say it was three hours later than General Mo, the Hungriest Baby in the World, woke me up to feed her. Rolling my head to the side, I peeked at the baby monitor that lived on my nightstand, even though I didn’t need it. Mo might not cry often, but when she was hungry, she was hangry.

  She got it from me.

  There was no ignoring her or mistaking her usual kitten cries for you better feed me now, lady.

  But the baby monitor wasn’t on the nightstand where I knew without a doubt I had left it. That in itself wasn’t weird. Peter and my gramps would creep into my room while I was sleeping to take it sometimes. I never slept with my door closed anymore. Neither did they, at least not all night.

  It didn’t take me long to go to the bathroom, do my business, and then drag myself down the stairs, passing by the empty bedrooms in the pajama shirt I had been able to start wearing again since Mo wasn’t breastfeeding anymore and I didn’t have to whip out a boob on call. As comfortable as nursing bras were, I’d been wearing sports bras for so long that nothing else compared to the comfort they brought me. I’d missed them. It wasn’t until I reached the bottom of the stairs with a giant yawn that I knew something was different.

  There were noises coming from the living room, which on Sunday was totally normal. Sunday breakfast was the only time we all managed to eat together in the morning. Peter was usually at Maio House by six, and Grandpa tried to sleep in while I got Mo ready for the day and spent some solo time with her. He usually didn’t crawl out of his coffin until after seven.

  But it was the familiar but unfamiliar voice I could hear speaking in the living room that had me pausing.

  I didn’t have to look at my phone to know it was nine-fifteen in the morning, and I didn’t need a DNA test to know the voice I could hear belonged to the fuckface.

  What the hell was he doing here?

  We’d agreed to lunch, but I figured that would be around noon.

  Four steps later, I stopped at the edge of the wide opening that led into the living room and peeked.

  On the floor, two brown-haired men, one with more salt than pepper in it and the other with a fade cut, were kneeling, surrounding a baby kicking two chubby bare legs in the air but also somehow trying to roll over at the same time. A baby that wasn’t wearing a diaper. Beside her, was the stuffed animal that Jonah had brought over the night before but hadn’t gotten around to giving her.

  “It’s easy, but you have to be fast now that’s she rolling over.” It was Peter, the smaller one of the two, who spoke as he pulled a diaper out of nowhere like a magician. “You lift her bottom—” He held two feet together and lifted said butt in the air an inch before sliding the opened diaper beneath the bare butt. “—spread it out, fold the front over, and put the tabs back down, and you’re done.”

  Jonah, I couldn’t help but notice, was watching him like a hawk as he kneeled beside what looked like two balled-up baby wipes right by his right knee.

  “She’s eating real food now. That gets messy, but it’s still simple,” Peter said as he helped Mo sit up.

  “How did you learn? With Lenny?”

  “No, she was using the bathroom on her own by the time we met.” I watched Peter’s nearly black eyes flick toward the man beside him and saw the protectiveness hidden in them even from across the room. “We took a class and watched some videos to learn how to do everything.”

  Jonah made a subtle startled face. “Videos?”

  “Yes,” Peter confirmed, stealing another quick glance at the other man before looking back down with a frown. “Len couldn’t sleep much at the end—in the last trimester. We looked up everything then to be ready. We learned together.”

  Something flashed across Jonah’s face as he gazed down at the baby. Regret? He might have been faking that too. How the hell would I know?

  Peter kept talking though, his gaze shifting back to Mo so that he couldn’t see what I was seeing. But that fiercely protective look on his face didn’t lighten up. It didn’t go anywhere, and it made my heart grow a few sizes. Maybe this other idiot hadn’t liked me enough to even keep being my friend, but Peter would always have my back. Our backs. Always.

  “If you’re planning on staying,” Peter said, “you’ll figure it all out. It’s easy. Madeline won’t get mad if you do something wrong. She doesn’t have anything to compare to, and she doesn’t know a bad mood unless she’s hungry. She’s a good girl. She’s tied with her mom for being the best two girls in the world… aren’t you, Mo? Aren’t you good and special and smart? Just like your mama.”

  “I didn’t know Lenny was… pregnant. If I had, I wouldn’t….” He swallowed and seemed to struggle for a second to find the right words… or the right lies. “I would have been here. Or maybe… maybe Lenny would have been with me, I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I still can’t believe she… exists.”

  Me be with him. Ha. Something that could have been anger or sadness swirled around in my chest.

  He continued talking quietly to Peter. “I’ve missed out on heaps. I know it doesn’t change much, but I want you to know that I wasn’t avoiding my… her… Mo.” He closed his eyes for a moment before gluing them back down on the figure on the blanket. His expression startled and nervous and just… heavy. “Wish I could take back the mistakes I’ve made.”

  I had no right to let those words make me feel nauseous. I knew that.

  I had no right to imagine what those mistakes were—him disappearing for months and having sex with a ton of women, him doing drugs, having another child somewhere, getting married, getting involved with the wrong people—but I ran through all those possibilities in my head anyway.

  I hadn’t looked him up in months. The only information I had been caught up on was how his rugby team had been doing over the season, and that was only because of the articles that every so often popped up on my home screen page… from all the previous stalking I�
�d done before Mo.

  I had no idea what he’d been doing with his life. Because it wasn’t any of my business. Because I wasn’t going to look it up.

  Jonah and I hadn’t exactly been in a relationship. We had been friends. Who liked each other a lot. Who were attracted to each other, at least I had thought.

  But I hadn’t been his girlfriend. I had never been anyone’s girlfriend.

  If he had done something after we’d gone our separate ways, it wasn’t like he had cheated on me.

  For the most part, I’d always thought I was a logical person. But if I was going to be totally honest with myself, when I had been super pregnant, I would lie in bed and cry over the idea of him being with someone else while I gained weight and my boobs hurt and I couldn’t poop and got irritated by everything even more than usual. I had thought about him spending every night with someone different… even if he had told me before we’d done it that he rarely had sex too. Can’t trust anyone, sweetheart. Hope I don’t bugger this up, he had laughed while he’d taken my clothes off that first time, slowly, letting those big hands linger in all the bare places he came across. And I had laughed and told him I hope you don’t either. And we had both laughed some more after that.

  There had been a reason it had been him. Because he had seemed so nice and fresh and honest and good and not at all like the horny assholes I had known who slept with everyone. Or the guys I knew too well to be attracted to. There were good guys out there; of course I knew that. But most of them had girlfriends, and the ones who didn’t were like Jonah—except I felt nothing for them. They knew who they were, they weren’t addicted to sex, and they were particular about who they let into their lives and their beds. And there was nothing there for me.

  Some of the most successful men I knew were almost abstinent. Because they knew what it was like for people to want them for all the wrong reasons. You didn’t find real things by looking, usually.

  And that’s why I hadn’t second-guessed too much Jonah’s insistence that he was out of practice. He had seemed too real. Too himself. For a while there, he had given me the idea that maybe he could have been mine if we had been together long enough.