Her eyes catch on the gift bag, though, and she drops her ponies in favor of grabbing it. “Here! Your present! Open it!” She shoves it into his hands and starts pulling out the tissue paper sticking out of the top. “I made you some pictures.”
With a laugh, I pull her out of reach of the tissue paper. “When you give someone a present, you’re supposed to let them open it, not open it for them.”
Her lower lip pokes out in a pout.
“It’s okay,” Aaron says. “I’m happy to have help opening my present.”
I release Maddie, and she zips over, hands outstretched to grab the rest of the tissue paper off the top. Aaron sets the bag on the floor between his legs and reaches inside for the sheets of paper first. He looks at each page full of colorful scribbles and shapes one at a time. “Thank you, Maddie. These are beautiful.”
My heart melts. He might not have experience being a dad, but he’s nailing it already. She beams at him. “I drew an M. For Maddie.” She points out the M, and he makes appropriate sounds of praise.
Watching them interact, I can’t help wondering if I made the wrong choice five years ago. Depriving both of them of the chance to know each other.
There’s no going back, though. All we can do is move forward. Together.
Chapter Eighteen
Aaron
“There’s more! There’s more!” My daughter claps her hands together in delight and excitement, visibly restraining herself from reaching in the bag and getting out the rest of my gift. Sam’s clearly done a good job. She only had to admonish her once to keep her from opening my present for me.
Is it normal for four-year-olds to be able to write? I can’t remember. But damn if I’m not proud of her for knowing her name starts with an M and being able to write it to sign her pictures.
That she drew for me.
Almost reverently, I set them aside, careful to place them where they won’t get rumpled or accidentally stepped on. I plan on hanging them up somewhere, giving them a place of honor.
Smiling at the anticipation vibrating through Maddie’s body, I hook a finger in the bag to tip it closer and peer inside. My face goes slack for a second, then a wider grin splits my face as I pull out two packages of Fudge Stripes cookies, a small composition notebook, and a pack of the roller ball pens I always had with me in high school.
Sam clears her throat. Her hands are clasped between her thighs, and she shifts in her seat, her eyes trained on the things in my hands. “I wanted to get you something, but I have no idea what you might want or need now. And I don’t have a huge budget for gift giving. Those were always your favorite cookies, although you probably have more expensive taste now. And you always had a notebook and one of those pens on you. I figured even if you don’t need one right now, you’ll be able to use them eventually.”
My smile goes lopsided at her babbling and obvious nervousness. “Thank you, Sam. They’re great. I haven’t had these cookies in …” I screw up my face, trying to remember the last time, but give up and shake my head. “I don’t even know how long.”
The cellophane crinkles as I open one of the packages, the sound and the smell bringing back potent memories of sharing packs of cookies just like this with Sam all those years ago.
A little hand lands on my arm, and I look into gray eyes that mirror my own. “Can I have a cookie? Pwease?”
“Of course,” I say immediately, and as I hold out the package for Maddie to take one, I realize that I maybe should’ve checked in with Sam first. And when I look up at her again, her brows are drawn together and her mouth is open like she might want to protest, but Maddie already has the cookie in her hand and then her mouth, like she knows her mom wouldn’t normally let her have a cookie right now so she’s scarfing it down as quickly as she can.
Sam closes her mouth and meets my eyes. It’s on the tip of my tongue to apologize, but then I realize that Maddie’s my daughter too. I have the right to give her a cookie if I damn well please. Who gives a fuck if it’s barely after ten in the morning? I’m eating cookies. One cookie isn’t going to stunt her growth or ruin her for life.
So instead of an apology or even a halfway apologetic shrug, I act like it’s not a thing at all. Because it isn’t. Or it shouldn’t be. And if she wants to make it a thing, that’s going to be all on her.
I raise an eyebrow and turn the package toward her. “Want one too?”
Maddie turns around, chocolate and crumbs already clinging to her face. “They’re yummy, Mommy! Have one!” Everything out of this kid’s mouth is an exclamation. Is that just because she’s hopped up on the excitement of being in a new place, getting a toy, and now cookies? Or is she always this way?
Eli, Danny’s son, is a little ball of energy.
Good lord, what am I getting myself into? Maddie’s bouncing up and down again, pony in one hand, crumbling cookie in the other. When Sam swoops in with a wipe which she seems to have pulled out of thin air like a magician, I’m extra grateful for her presence.
Part of me was annoyed at her initial insistence on being present for my first few visits with Maddie. At least the first few. Emphasis hers. Meaning she fully expects to have to be around for more than just the first two or three. Meaning she doesn’t trust me to take care of my own kid.
But when I watch how deftly she manages to clean up the mess Maddie’s already making, wiping the chocolate off her face and fingers and then efficiently trapping the crumbs from the coffee table with the wet disposable cloth, I realize how much more equipped she is. Maddie probably would’ve covered all my furniture in chocolate smears and cookie crumbs if it were up to me to take care of her.
Sam makes a face at the rug, which I notice has more than a few crumbs too.
“I’ll get it later,” I assure her, standing too. “Don’t worry about it. Cookie?”
Her eyes meet mine, deep and open and impossibly vulnerable. “Um. Yeah. Sure.”
She pulls one out of the package with two fingers, and then I do the same thing. We bite into them at the same time, holding each other’s gaze, trapped in the infinity of our connection that encompasses the past and present and somehow the future too.
Huh. I never expected this woman to be part of my future. But we’re irrevocably connected.
We always have been. I’d felt that way when we were eighteen. I had no idea how true that would become.
She drops her gaze, and Maddie’s clinging to her leg, then grabbing onto my jeans, demanding our attention. And it’s a stark reminder that while we might be connected, it’s not at all what I once imagined a future with Sam might look like.
Now we’re forced into each other’s lives again, bound together by a child we didn’t intend to create.
She doesn’t want to be here.
She doesn’t want me to be part of their life.
She made that clear by keeping Maddie from me all this time.
But she doesn’t get to be in charge of my decisions anymore. I know what it is to have a dad and then have him taken away. I’m not having a child of mine grow up without one. Not when I’m healthy and here and willing to take on the job. Even if it won’t look anything like my relationship with my dad on the outside, I’m determined to make the best of it.
Starting now.
Chapter Nineteen
Samantha
Seeing Aaron regularly is harder than I expected. Being around him. Watching him with our daughter. Aching for what we once had. Wishing things could be different, but constantly reminding myself that I’m the reason we’re strangers now. I’m the reason for all of this.
He’s sweet and patient with Maddie, spending their first few visits together playing with her toys on the floor with her. Reading to her. We go over every other day in the evening. He buys or makes us all dinner, which at first has me feeling guilty, but he just acts like it’s the most normal thing. He always has some kind of treat for dessert—pudding cups, those fudge stripe cookies that were his favorite when we were teena
gers, mini Drumstick ice cream cones.
I don’t think he’s trying to bribe our daughter to like him, but it’s certainly working. Treats like that are relatively rare at our house. And she still has tons of candy from my parents filling her stocking for Christmas. I ration it hard, letting her only have a piece or two at a time. And then only if she remembers to ask. At this rate it’ll last even longer, since on nights we go to Aaron’s she gets whatever dessert he’s purchased so candy’s not even a possibility.
Every time we go over, he has more toys for her, though these are ones that live at his house. When we arrive for the second visit, he brings us into the spare room that he’s getting decorated for her. He’s already had a decorator come over who’s going to make it a little girl’s dream room. A dollhouse complete with dolls and a million tiny pieces of furniture occupies one corner. It’s bigger and nicer than the one my parents bought her for Christmas. A deluxe kitchen play set sits in another corner. “The decorator said she’d get a child-sized table and chairs in here too so Maddie can serve food at her own table and play restaurant.”
Maddie squeals and claps her hands in excitement, forcing us to sit on the floor while she takes our order and makes us food that Aaron pulls out of the plastic packaging for her. I force a smile and work hard to tamp down the jealous frustration swirling inside me, telling myself that he’s trying to make her feel at home at his house. Not trying to bribe her away from me. He doesn’t know that the toys here are nicer than the ones we have, even the ones she just got from Santa.
Nearly a week later he surprises us all with an electric piano. Maddie climbs up on the bench and starts banging away on it. He scootches her over and sits down next to her, calmly and patiently showing her how to plunk out “Mary Had A Little Lamb” and then “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”
“Turning our daughter into a musician already, huh?”
He casts a sheepish grin at me over his shoulder and shrugs. “Why not? It’ll give us something to bond over.”
I let out a disbelieving chuckle. “As though you don’t have enough already? She thinks you’re better than Santa Claus. Every time she comes over here, you have a new surprise for her.”
His brows draw together, his face troubled. “She’s my daughter. I should have toys for her and a place for her to sleep. It’s not my fault that I have to get it for her all at once when she’s four instead of acquiring it slowly as she’s grown up.”
Guilt steals my voice and my breath with a punch to the solar plexus, leaving me with my mouth hanging open as he turns back to Maddie, gently placing her little fingers on the right keys to play “Mary Had A Little Lamb” again.
I don’t think he was trying to put me in my place. Aaron’s never been vindictive or petty. But he’s always been honest. Straightforward.
It isn’t his fault that I robbed him of the last four years with his daughter. Her birth. Her birthdays. Christmas. Even this Christmas, when he already knew she existed, I didn’t let him see her on the holiday. I made him wait until the day after.
And now he feels like I’m scolding him for making his house a welcoming place for his daughter.
Tears prick my eyes, and I stand quickly, mumbling some excuse as I head to the bathroom, needing a minute to compose myself.
There are moments where we feel like a unit. A family. Eating dinner together. Playing with her new toys. Exchanging glances over Maddie’s head, melting over some cute or funny thing she says or does. We’ve even engaged in a few trips into our shared memories, a look or a turn of phrase bringing back an inside joke or talking about funny things that happened our senior year.
But other moments, other comments—like this one—highlight how far apart we are. How far apart I’ve made us.
Because we would be a family of some sort if I’d told Aaron that I decided not to terminate the pregnancy. Maybe we wouldn’t be together. I still think he would’ve come to resent me for keeping him from the life he’d planned for himself. For trapping him in this small town with few opportunities, especially for a talented musician. He’d be stuck teaching piano lessons to little kids, which we both know he never wanted to do. Not as a career. Much as he might be happy to teach Maddie some basics, that’s only because she’s his daughter. Not because he has a deep, abiding love of teaching young children.
He’d probably have had to get some kind of crappy job to help make ends meet. He definitely wouldn’t have joined an up-and-coming band looking for a new keyboard player when theirs bailed. Wouldn’t have become a huge success like he is now.
No, I made the right choice. We might all be suffering the consequences, but I can’t bring myself to regret it. We’d be different people for sure. And maybe Aaron would hate me even more than he already does if I’d told him.
It’s true that it’s my fault that he hasn’t been able to acquire things for her slowly. But it’s equally true that he wouldn’t be who he is if I’d given him that chance.
Kami nudges me in the side, interrupting my conversation with Kyle. “So how are things with the baby daddy?” It’s the end of the day, and I’m trying to get the last of my paperwork squared away so I can go pick up Maddie to take her to Aaron’s place. Kami’s favorite time to seek me out.
Kyle’s face telegraphs his annoyance at her interruption. Which is silly, because he basically just asked the same thing. “Do you mind, Kami?”
She looks at him, blinking her innocent eyes. “Of course not. I’m sure Samantha’s okay with you hearing the answer. It’s not like you don’t know about it already.”
I have to fight back a smile when she turns to me, completely oblivious to the way Kyle’s cheeks and the tips of his ears are turning pink with suppressed rage. He meets my eyes over her head, his lips clamped shut.
With a shrug, I answer the question for both of them. “It’s going well. We’re all adjusting, of course, but Maddie’s mostly stopped calling him Mommy’s friend and just calls him Aaron now.”
Kami gasps. “She doesn’t call him Daddy or Dad?”
I shake my head. “No. We’re letting her work up to that on her own. This is all new for her. She knows he’s her dad and that he’s going to be part of our lives now.”
“How does he feel about that?” Kyle’s deep voice sounds almost … smug?
I give him a quizzical look, but he returns it with a bland face. “He’s handling it. It’s not like we have deep conversations about our feelings, so I can’t say for sure. He doesn’t wince when she calls him by name like he did when she called him my friend as though that were his name. I’m sure he’d like her to call him Dad. He refers to himself that way when he talks to her. Eventually I’m sure she’ll come around.”
Kyle studies me with his dark eyes, his bland face giving way to a cross between satisfaction and concern. “Are you still going over there with her? Or are you dropping her off now that she’s more used to him?”
My eyes narrow fractionally, trying to suss out why Kyle’s questioning our visitation arrangements so closely. “Not that it really concerns you,” I draw out, “but I’ve been still going with her.”
Kami nudges me again. “Oooh. Playing house with your baby daddy? Sounds like fun.”
Kyle gives her a death glare that she either doesn’t notice or ignores.
I just roll my eyes. At both of them. “It’s not like that at all.” Even if part of me wishes it could be like that. But even though he hugged me and kissed me and acted interested in me when I saw him backstage at his concert, since I told him about Maddie he’s kept his distance, focusing on her when we’re all together.
Which he should. I mean, the whole point of us going over there is for the two of them to get to know each other. So I keep a firm grip on the feelings of wishing he would look at me with even a fraction of the affection that he gives to her. It’s stupid. And not gonna happen. So what’s the point in wishing? I learned a long time ago that it’s better to face the reality in front of me than to wish for thi
ngs to be different.
Shaking off my thoughts, I refocus on Kami and Kyle. “Anyway, they’re actually going to spend the evening on their own tonight.”
Kami brightens. “Really? That means you’re free tonight.” She latches onto my arm. “We need to have a girls’ night. It’s been too long.”
Laughing, I shake my head. “It hasn’t been that long. We went to the concert only like a month ago.”
“Exactly. It’s been a whole month. And you’re free and don’t have to ask your parents to watch her for extra time, which I know you hate doing. Come on. Let’s go out!”
“Not tonight, Kami. I’m wiped. I’m planning on spending the evening in PJs watching movies I can’t watch with a four-year-old in the house. But with Aaron here for a while, I might be free more often. Next time, okay?”
Kami gives me an exaggerated pout, but accepts my refusal at last. “Fine.” She points a finger in my face. “But I’m holding you to that promise. The next time you don’t have the tiny terror, we’re going out. Got it?”
Laughing, I push her finger out of my face. “Got it.”
I watch her head back to her desk, aware of Kyle’s eyes on me still. Once she’s gone I turn to him, eyebrows raised. “I know you wanted to chat just with me, but did that mostly answer your questions?”
Crossing his arms, he opens his mouth and looks away, drawing in a breath and letting it out before facing me again. “Do you want company for your movie watching? I could bring takeout or a pizza.”
“Aw, thanks. I’ll be good, though. I’m looking forward to spending time all by my lonesome for the first time in …” I laugh, shaking my head. “I can’t even remember how long. Too long, for sure.”
He gives me a wan smile. “Alright. Let me know when you’re done, and I’ll walk you to your car.”
Everything I Want Page 11
