So I made the decision to let Emily go, and in the moment it had seemed like the right thing to do. Now I wasn’t so sure. Back when I was living five hours from her, it was easy, but now I was living in the same town where she lived and went to school, where Jen lived. I could run into her at any time. Our worlds could collide at any moment, and I wasn’t sure how I would ever explain to her that the guy she met over the summer was a ghost of who I really was. I couldn’t be him anymore.
Aside from that, I would have to tell her I’d been dishonest about the most important person in my life. There had been several times when I’d wanted to tell her, when I’d come so close to sharing everything with her, but I never could, and that felt like a betrayal to not only her but to Lily.
“No,” I said to Jen. “There isn’t anyone special in my life, besides you and Lily. You know that.”
“Zack, you need to get out there. You can’t be single forever,” she chastised.
“I’m good,” I said, smiling.
I’d been ‘out there’ enough for three lifetimes, and it hadn’t done me a bit of good. I didn’t plan on dating again until I found someone I could have a relationship with. I was done with casual sex and casual dating. Hell, I didn’t even want to put myself out there for dating at this point. I still felt like my life was in turmoil, and I needed to get settled before I took on something or someone else.
“You’re also a really good guy,” Jen said, giving me a knowing look.
I stretched out on the couch. “Yeah, tell that to all the girls I had fun with a few years ago. I’m sure they thought I was just stellar when I never called them again.”
Jen shrugged. “It’s in the past. Don’t beat yourself up over what you can’t change. You made some mistakes, but when it counted, you were there for me. You were there for Lily. You’re not that guy anymore.”
I was just glad she was finally realizing that again. Six weeks ago, when I’d hit rock-bottom, I knew she hadn’t seen me as a great guy. I was just glad I’d been able to prove her wrong.
“I know,” I sighed. “I’ll get out there again when I meet the right girl.”
Or when I see the right girl again, I thought, my mind flitting back to Emily. Was she who I wanted to be with? No, even if I wanted that, she’d never forgive me for what I did to her and what I never told her. I’d caused too much damage. It was too late.
“Oh, congrats on the show,” Jen said, changing the subject.
“What show?” I asked, knitting my eyebrows together in confusion.
“Your show in two weeks,” she said. “Andrew told me you got a gig playing some frat party at UNC. Frankly I’m a little pissed you didn’t tell me you guys were getting back together, but I’m happy for you nonetheless.”
“We’re not back together,” I countered, sitting up straighter and facing her.
“Um, according to Andrew you are. He said that Leo called him last night to see if he wanted back in. He said you were in and so was Derrick. Andrew said he said yes in under two seconds.”
I was going to kill Leo. I’d never agreed to get the band back together. What the hell was he thinking?
“I guess Kristin’s been updating the website all day today and working on getting the word out that Liar’s Edge is available for shows,” she continued. “I’m considering booking you guys for our office party in December. What do you think?”
Jen was eyeing me with confusion now, searching my face for signs of acknowledgement, as if I would suddenly remember I’d agreed to start playing music professionally again.
“Zack?”
“I have to go,” I said, shoving my things into my backpack.
“Zack, what’s wrong?” Jen asked, when I headed for the door without another word. “Shit, you didn't agree to this.”
Jen was the only person who knew the truth about why I’d left the band in the first place. She knew what a big deal it was for me to even be considering playing with Liar’s Edge again, and she knew my underlying fears of being back in the music world.
“No, I didn’t,” I said, opening the door and closing it behind me – stopping just before I slammed it because I remembered Lily was sleeping – before I hoped on my bike and sped off toward Devil’s Hangout, ready to kick Leo’s ass.
Chapter Eighteen
Emily
I sat on Jen’s couch reading for one of my classes. Lily had gone to sleep hours earlier, so I’d been capitalizing on my downtime to catch up on schoolwork. Then in the middle of taking notes, my pen had decided to crap out on me, and of course, I didn’t have another one. Knowing I couldn’t leave the apartment, even to run upstairs, I figured I could just borrow one from Jen.
I walked over to her desk which was tucked away in a little nook in the kitchen. It was one of those two tiered Pottery Barn desks that looked less like a desk and more like modified bookshelves, but it fit the space well. She had framed pictures, mostly of her and Lily, lining the top shelf, but there were some of her friends and family too. I could tell, even if Lily’s father wasn’t around, that the child was loved.
I grabbed a pen from the decorative mug Jen kept them in and stopped to gaze at a recent picture of Jen and Lily. They were both laughing, and the person who’d taken it had captured them at just the right moment. I wondered if it had been taken over the summer. I knew Jen had gone home to visit her parents for three months. They lived somewhere on the West Coast.
As my eyes scanned over the pictures, I stopped when I recognized the guy in one of them. He had blond hair like Jen’s, tattoos covering his arms, and the same cheekbones. I’d seen the picture before, and Jen had told me who the guy was, but that was before I’d met him. Back then he hadn’t been familiar to me. Now he was. I laughed a little to myself when I realized just how small the world was.
It was Derrick, the drummer from Liar’s Edge, who Rachel had hooked up with. He was Jen’s brother. Somberly, I also remembered that he was friends with Zack. I swallowed hard at that thought and wondered if Jen knew Zack, knowing she probably did.
Then I realized just how small the world truly was when I my eyes flashed to a picture of Zack holding Lily in his arms. Involuntarily, my stomach started churning. What was a picture of Zack doing on Jen’s desk? Why was Zack holding Lily? My heart clenched even more when I realized Lily was wearing the same dress in both the picture of her and Jen, and the picture of her with Zack. They were taken on the same day, and it had been recent.
From that point forward, my mind wouldn’t turn off. I imagined the absolute worst, of course, as my mind flitted back to what Jen had told me about her boyfriend. He was a guy she’d dated before, who was a musician, who she really, really liked, who she’d started seeing over the summer. Then I remembered Zack telling me about a girlfriend he’d had named Jennifer and things just seemed to come to a screeching halt.
God I hoped she wasn’t dating Zack.
God I hoped they wouldn’t come back to the apartment together.
Just then, Lily started crying, so I went in to see if she was okay, welcoming the distraction. She was usually a sound sleeper, but she must have had a bad dream. When I walked into the room, she was standing up in her crib, holding onto the side, and tears were streaming down her face.
“Mommy!” she cried, as she reached out for me, obviously confused in her post-dream state.
“Come here, Lily Lou,” I said reaching for her and pulling her into my arms.
Her crying continued as she gripped my shirt with her tiny fists and rested her head on my shoulder. I bounced her up and down as we walked through the apartment. I knew movement helped whenever she was restless.
“Mommy,” she said again, although it was weaker. Her cries were subsiding.
“Mommy will be home soon,” I said, looking at the clock in the kitchen. Jen was due back in about an hour. “Do you want some milk?”
“Miwk,” she mumbled into my shoulder, so I grabbed a sippy cup and filled it with the whole milk that Jen k
ept in the refrigerator for her.
When I handed it to her, she eagerly pulled it to her mouth and started sucking, so I continued walking her around the apartment, hoping she would get sleepy again. When we made it back to the kitchen, I realized she was wide awake, so I stopped in front of the desk, feeling potentially shameless, but a little desperate at the same time.
I pointed to the first picture of her and Jen, and said, “Who’s that?” It was a game Lily had liked to play in the past month or so as her vocabulary had increased.
“Mommy!” she said, excitedly.
Next I pointed to her. “Who’s that?”
She shrugged her little shoulders. “I don know,” she said in her baby voice, and I tickled her tummy.
“That’s you, you silly girl. Who’s that?” I asked, pointing to the picture of Derrick.
“Deck,” she said, and I realized she couldn’t yet say Derrick.
“Yeah, that’s Uncle Derrick. And who’s that?” I asked, pointing to the picture of her and Zack.
“Zack!” she said, clearly and obviously excited.
“That’s right,” I said, as I fought to swallow the lump in my throat. She knew Zack by name. She liked him.
Then I tried to rationalize what I was feeling. Just because Zack was in a picture didn’t mean anything. He and Derrick had been friends for years. Maybe he was friends with Jen too. It did not mean he and Jen were dating or that she was the Jennifer he’d dated before. Jennifer was one of the most common names in the English language.
“Okay, Lily Lou,” I said, staring down at the little girl who was still wide awake. “Do you want to listen to some music?”
She nodded vigorously, so I walked to my backpack to retrieve my iPod. I headed into her room and set it on the dresser, selecting a few songs I knew she liked that were more in the lullaby range, singing softly as I rocked her in my arms.
“One time, I met a handsome prince,” I whispered, and her eyes got wide. “And even though I’d never tell him, mostly because he’s a serious musician and he’d completely make fun of me, this is the song I listened to over and over again the night we met. Isn’t it a pretty song?”
Lily nodded. “Pwetty.”
“One day you’ll meet a handsome prince too,” I told her.
And hopefully he won’t break your heart and leave you without any explanation.
By the end of the third song, I could tell she was getting sleepy, her brown eyes starting to close.
As I set her down in her crib, she looked up at me and asked sleepily, “Emmy, where Daddy?” and it just about broke my heart as her little shoulders scrunched up in question. What the hell was I supposed to say to that? I had no clue where or even who her daddy was.
“Night, night, Lily,” I said, ignoring her question and kissing her forehead.
Luckily her attention span was sparse, so she just grinned and said, “Night, night, Emmy.”
***
“How was she?” Jen asked later that night when she got home from her date.
“Perfect,” I said, because Lily was a perfect little girl. “She got up for about a half hour – I think she had a bad dream, but that was it. I got her back down pretty quickly.”
“Good,” Jen said, as she kicked off her heels and walked into the kitchen. “Do you want a beer?”
“Sure,” I said, tucking my legs up under me on the couch.
“Here you go,” she said, coming back into the living room and sitting at the opposite end of the couch, facing me. “God, I have so much nervous energy. Hopefully this will help me calm down.”
“Good night?” I asked, taking a sip from my bottle.
Jen leaned her head back on the couch and turned to me. “Great night.” Then she grinned. “I haven’t really dated anyone since before Lily was born. My boyfriend and I sort of broke up during my sixth month, and after she was born it just was too hard to balance grad school and work and Lily, but now I think I’m ready to get seriously involved with someone again.”
Jen and I had never really talked about her past before, so I was surprised she was opening up to me. I knew very little of her history, especially pre-Lily.
“That’s awesome, Jen,” I said, smiling at her.
She grinned. “Yeah, he’s a really good guy, although he’s a musician, and I swore I wouldn’t date any more musicians, but like I told you, I sort of have a thing for them. Lily’s dad was one.”
My stomach took a dive as I wondered how Zack, the musician, who was in a framed picture in Jen’s kitchen fit into her history and her present. Was he her new boyfriend? Had he dumped me for her?
“Lily’s dad was a musician?” I asked, knowing I might be crossing a line with that question.
“Yeah,” Jen said, stretching her legs out in front of her and resting them on the coffee table. “We dated for three years, and I spent a lot of time at his shows. He was, is, really talented. I’m hoping Lily gets some of his musical abilities, because I can’t sing to save my life.”
“And you guys broke up before Lily was born?”
Jen looked over my shoulder, as if remembering the past. She shook her head and met my gaze. “No, it’s sort of a little more complicated than that. We broke up almost a year and a half before Lily was born. I was dating this other guy, and my ex and I had one night of bad judgment that turned into Lily, but I guess everything worked out for the best. Lily’s dad is a great guy, and the guy I was dating at the time, the one who left me because he wasn’t ready to be a father, is sort of an asshole, so I lucked out.”
“Does Lily see her dad often?” I’d never heard her mention him before. Lily had only ever asked for her mommy until that night. “She asked for him tonight, and it kind threw me. She’s never done that before.”
“Yeah, she does,” Jen confirmed, “but I guess she’s been seeing him more lately, which is great, because she adores him, however we’re trying to break her of this bad habit she’s picked up of calling him by his first name.” She shook her head and laughed to herself. “Zack thinks it’s cute, but I know he prefers it when she calls him ‘Daddy’.”
It was like things were moving in slow motion, all of a sudden, and I was having trouble processing what Jen had just said. I felt like I’d been socked in the stomach and had to swallow a few times to keep my beer from coming back up.
She’d said Zack. She had a picture of Zack in her house. That only meant one thing. Zack had a kid. Zack was someone’s father. Zack was Lily’s father – the little girl I’d been babysitting off and on for over a year. Never, as I’d been wondering how Jen knew Zack, had I even considered this option.
Holy shit.
Suddenly I realized he’d been right – I hadn’t known him at all.
Chapter Nineteen
Emily
“He has a what?” Rachel asked when I bombarded her with my news on Sunday morning.
“A kid,” I said clearly, perching on the end of her bed.
Chase, who had come back down for the second weekend in a row, was getting coffee, so I capitalized on the opportunity to have Rachel to myself so I could share what I’d learned the night before.
“Holy shit,” she said, pulling herself up to a sitting position and staring at me with wide eyes.
“Yes, and not just any kid – Lily.”
“Who?”
“Lily,” I said, exasperated that she wasn’t following me. Rachel wasn’t so good before she got coffee in her. “The little girl I babysit about twice a month. Jen’s daughter.”
“So he slept with Jen?” she asked, connecting the dots in the air with her finger.
“Uh yeah. Apparently at some point he and Jen slept together and she got pregnant, and viola, Zack has a kid. I’m not sure I want to know the specifics.”
Evidently she was the infamous ex-girlfriend who’d been afraid of his mom’s cancer, who he’d broken up with, and then apparently slept with again.
“And he never mentioned this?”
I gave her a pointed look. “Um, I think it would probably recollect if he’d told me he had a kid. I’m not sure that’s something I’d forget.”
“Who has a kid?” Chase asked, coming back into the room with two cups of coffee, one which he promptly handed to Rachel. I grabbed for the other one, but he held it out of my grasp.
“You’re the best,” Rachel said, taking a big sip from the steaming cup. “Ow, that’s hot. Zack.”
“Get your own,” Chase said to me, moving to stand by the dresser where I couldn’t reach him. “Zack what?”
“Zack has a kid,” Rachel said, rolling her eyes at my brother, as she handed me her coffee cup so I could share. I took a liberal sip and handed it back to her.
“Really,” Chase said, not as fazed as I thought he would be after hearing such epic news, but Chase wasn’t really the type to get emotional, so I guess the reaction fit.
“Yes,” I said quickly, trying to catch him up so we could continue the conversation. “The girl Jen, who I babysit for, her daughter is also Zack’s daughter.”
“No shit,” Chase said, blowing on his coffee before taking a tentative sip.
“Yes shit. There was a recent picture of him in the apartment, and Jen pretty much confirmed it for me.”
Rachel leaned forward. “Does she know about you and Zack?” she hissed.
I shook my head, grateful to be able to do so. I didn’t think I wanted Jen knowing about my summer with Zack. She was obviously tied to him in a much more permanent way, and without knowing the details of their relationship past and present, I sort of wanted to keep quiet about the fact that I’d also slept with him.
“So how did he look?” Rachel asked, switching tactics. “In the picture?”
Broken Fairytales Series Box Set (Broken Fairytales, Buried Castles, Shattered Crowns) Page 41
