“I’ll be there,” Paul says to her back. The door closes, and Paul sits down on his haunches in front of Hayley. “What did we say about that word?”
She hangs her head and goes into her room. She comes back with a quarter and holds it up. Paul takes it and puts it in a jar on top of the fridge. I give him a crazy look.
“The swear jar,” he whispers. “Every time she says a bad word, she has to put in a quarter. And if she catches me saying a bad word, I have to put in a quarter.” I see a ten-dollar bill in there. He laughs. “Sam paid in advance.”
“I’m going to go broke,” I say. I do watch my mouth around Hayley, although that’s really the only time I even think about what a potty mouth I have.
“Probably.” He laughs and sets the table. Hayley climbs in a chair, and he fixes a plate for her. We all sit down and have a really nice meal, and Hayley chatters with him about her week. I watch the two of them together, and my heart twitches and my insides do that melty thing they do when I’m moved by the awesomeness that is Paul and Hayley
“You okay?” he asks after we clear the table and put the dishes in the dishwasher. Hayley runs to play in her room for a few minutes, and we move to the couch. He sinks down beside me and drapes his arm around my shoulders. It’s nice, so I lean into him.
“I’m great.” We sit silently for a little while, and then I have a thought. “Can I show you something?” I wince to myself because I am not sure what he’ll do with this situation.
“You can show me anything you want after Hayley’s in bed,” he says quietly. My tummy drops toward my toes. He kisses the tip of my nose.
“No, it’s not that,” I say. Although I plan on showing him some of that later, too. Now that he’s not going to hold his love hostage, I’m ready to take him inside me. And I think he’s ready to be taken. “It’s something else. Are you up for it?”
He nods, looking at me curiously.
I go to my room and reach onto my shelf, taking down a small shoebox. My hands tremble as I lower it. I’m afraid. I’m terribly afraid. But I take it down, tuck it under my arm, take a deep breath, and go back out to the living room. I sit down next to him, and he eyes the box with a worried expression.
“What’s this?” he asks, sitting forward.
I remove the top off the box and take out a pile of pictures. I hand him one. “This is Jacob,” I say. My eyes fill with tears, and I don’t even try to blink them back. I let them fall over my lashes and onto my cheeks. Paul brushes them away, but I really don’t want him to. I want to feel all of this because I have forced myself not to feel it for so very long.
“This is when he was born.” I point to the squirmy little ball of red skin and dark hair. Paul looks from me to it.
“He looks like you,” he says.
I shake my head. “He looks more like his dad, I think.” These fucking tears keep falling. I’m not crying. It’s like someone opened an emotional dam in me and I can’t get it to close. I don’t want it to.
“What happened to his dad?” Paul asks.
“He died,” I say. I have to stop and clear my throat. “Drug overdose a few years after Jacob was born. I read about it in the paper.”
“I’m so sorry.”
I sniff. “I am, too.” I feel like I need to explain, and for the first time ever, I want to. “We were young, and we played around with marijuana and stuff. But I cut it all out when I found out I was pregnant with Jacob. He didn’t. He wasn’t able. It was really sad when I couldn’t be with him anymore. I didn’t have anyone else. But I didn’t really have him, either. The drugs had him, you know?”
He nods. I hand him more pictures, and he flips through them. I have looked at them so much that they’re dog-eared in places. He holds one up from when Jacob was about three. “You can’t tell me he doesn’t look like you. Look at those eyes! He’s so handsome.”
My eyes fill with tears again, but I smile through them. He is perfect. And I should be able to hear someone say so.
“Look at that smirk!” Paul cries when he sees the most recent one. “That is so you!”
I grin. I guess he’s right.
“Where is your family, Friday?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I tell him. I lay my head on his shoulder and watch as he takes in the photos over and over, poring through the stack so he can point out ways that Jacob looks like me. “They kicked me out when I got pregnant. Terminated their rights.”
Paul presses his lips to my forehead and doesn’t say anything.
“I thought I knew everything back then.” I laugh and wipe my eyes with the hem of my dress. “Turns out I didn’t know shit.”
“Do you ever think about looking for them?”
I shake my head. “No. Never.” I point to special pictures of my son. “His mom—her name is Jill—she sometimes sends me special milestone pictures. This is his first tooth he got and the first tooth he lost. And this one is from his first step. That wasn’t even part of the agreement. She just does it because she wants me to know how he’s doing.” I try to grin through the tears. “He’s doing so great. He’s smart. And they can send him to college and to special schools. He takes piano, and he plays sports. And Jill says he likes to paint.” My voice cracks, and I don’t hate that it does. I just let it.
“Of course, he does. You’re his mother.”
“I just wanted to do what was best for him, you know?” This time, I use Paul’s sleeve to wipe my eyes. I blink hard trying to clear my vision.
“That’s what parents do. We do what’s in the best interest of our children.” He kisses me softly. “Thank you for showing me these.”
“Thank you for looking at them.” I reach into the box and pull out the letters. “She writes me these long letters. Do you want to read them?”
He looks surprised. “Do you want me to read them?”
I nod. “If you want to.” My heart aching so fucking much right now, and I feel like I’m hanging out there on a tightrope, just waiting for a stiff wind to send me careening into a ravine full of vipers and alligators.
“I want to.”
He grabs my tightrope and steadies it, like I need him to do, with just a few simple words. I want to. “I’m going to go play with Hayley,” I say.
I get up and go to Hayley’s room, and as I turn the corner, I can hear the first envelope crinkle. I have read them a million times. I know every word by heart.
I don’t know why I wanted to share them with him, except for the fact that he loves me. And since he loves me, I want to let him inside. He promised not to tear down my walls, but he wants to come inside with me. And since he does, I’m going to let him.
His voice calls me back. “Friday!” he yells. He looks at one of the envelopes.
“What?” I ask, turning back to face him.
“Your real name is-”
“Don’t say it!” I cry. “I never want to hear that name again.” That person no longer exists.
He grins at me. “I’m just honored that I get to know the person you were.” His face softens. “And the person you are.”
I shake my head and flip him off. I can hear his laughter all the way down the hall.
“Hey, Hayley,” I say as I sit down and pick up one of her action figures. She has Barbies, too, but she would rather play with her Legos and building blocks. Maybe she’ll be an engineer one day. Or maybe she’ll be an amazing tattoo artist like her dad. I make her action figure kiss her Barbie, and she giggles. “I think they’re in love,” I whisper.
“Like you and my daddy,” she says back quietly.
I nod. And emotion clogs my throat again. I turn my head and cough, and then I dump a box of Legos on the floor. “I think Barbie needs a fortress,” I say.
She nods, and we start to build a plastic fortress together, because sometimes a girl just needs a fucking fortress.
Paul
I’m surprised to find that two hours have passed when I finally close the lid of Friday’s box o
f secrets and push it to the side. I rock my head back and forth and crack my neck, stretching because I have been sitting in one place for way too long. But once I started reading, I just couldn’t stop.
Jacob’s adoptive mother, Jill, had poured her heart out on the pages in more than one letter. There was no doubt about it: she wanted Friday to be a part of her son’s life. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have reached out to her with the heartfelt emotion that she did.
Jill had been married for ten years when she and her husband adopted Jacob. He was their first and only child. For years, Jill frantically reached out to Friday, begging her to come visit with Jacob. She wants Friday to meet him. She made no mistake at all in the words. Jill is his mother and she always will be, but she firmly believes that Friday can have a place in his life, too. I happen to agree with her.
I get up and go to check on Friday and Hayley, but I stumble to a stop when I turn the corner into Hayley’s room. They’re both asleep on the bed on their stomachs with an open book in front of them. Friday has changed into her pajamas and it looks as though she was reading to Hayley when they both fell asleep. But what kills me is that their noses are turned toward one another, so close they’re sharing breaths, and my daughter’s hand is tucked into Friday’s.
I take a mental picture, because I never, ever want to forget what this feels like. Click! Click! Click! I cement it in my head, because my heart is so happy it’s ready to burst, and I don’t want to let this moment go.
I don’t wake them up. Instead, I pick up some of the toys Hayley has left lying around the room. I put her dolls on the top shelf, and her trucks and matchbox cars go in the bucket at the foot of her bed.
I laugh when I see they built a big house out of building blocks and they put one of her male actions figures in there with Barbie. I look closer. Are their faces pressed together? It looks almost like they’re kissing. Leave it to Friday…
Friday sat and played with my daughter for two hours, and then she read to her and she fell asleep on her bed. I want to see this every night for the rest of my life. I want to wake Friday up and take her to my bed, but there’s something I need to do first.
There’s a possibility she’ll hate me for it, but it needs to be done. I go into the living room, pull out my phone, and search the web. It’s a huge violation of Friday’s privacy, I know, but I can’t help it. She has a son out there, and she needs to know him. And he needs to know her just as much. It only takes two wrong numbers before I find her.
“Hi, is this Jill?” I ask.
“Yes,” the lady says.
“Do you have a son named Jacob?”
“Yes,” she replies, but this time, there’s a question in her tone. “Who is this?”
“My name is Paul Reed, and I’m a friend of Friday’s. Well, she’s my girlfriend. I’m going to marry her if I can ever get her to say yes.”
The line goes silent.
“Are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“I was hoping that maybe we could talk.”
“Yes, I think we should,” she replies, and my fucking heart soars.
###
I hang up the phone and swipe a hand down my face. Either I just sealed my fate and made it so that Friday will never marry me, or I made her love me a little more. I won’t know which until tomorrow.
I go back to Hayley’s room and stare down at them for a little longer. They’ve rolled now so that they’re facing one another on their sides, and Hayley’s hand is still tucked in Friday’s. Click!
I bend over and run a hand down Friday’s hair. She stirs, her eyes opening slowly. She blinks up at me and smiles. “We fell asleep?” she whispers.
“Yeah.” I extricate Hayley from Friday’s grasp and slide my daughter under the covers. Hayley could sleep through a tornado as long as it’s still dark outside, and I don’t worry about waking her up at all. Friday leans over and presses her lips to Hayley’s cheek.
“I had fun with her tonight,” she whispers.
I jerk my thumb toward the big house they made. “I see you were busy.”
“We made a fortress for Barbie.”
That word makes me smile. “Did Barbie need a fortress?”
“All girls need a fortress. Barbie doesn’t have a dad, so she needed one more than most.” She shrugs. “Hayley and I discussed all this when she tried to convince me that girls with strong daddies don’t need big walls.” She lays a hand on my chest and looks up at me, blinking those green eyes. She’s so fucking beautiful. “You’ll always protect her heart. And if anything ever happens to you, you have four brothers who will do the same. So Hayley won’t need a fortress.”
I get it. I so get it. “You guys went that deep?”
She nods. “We did. It’s a kick-ass fortress, don’t you think?”
I kiss her forehead. “Badass. Just like you.”
She leans her head on my chest, and I palm the back of her head. “I’m not, though, Paul. I’m afraid every single day. I just hide it well.”
“Do I scare you?”
“Sometimes.”
“How about now?” I ask.
“I’m not afraid right now.” Her voice is so soft I can barely hear it.
I scoop her up, and she wraps her skinny arms around my neck.
“How about now?”
“Nope.” She grins at me.
We walk toward the door. “Light,” I say.
She flips the light off, and I carry her into my room.
“How about now?” I ask.
“No,” she says quietly. I let her legs drop, and she slides slowly down my body. “I want what you want,” she whispers.
I freeze. I take her face in my hands, and she stares up at me, my palms bracketing her cheeks. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
I kiss her. Kissing Friday isn’t like kissing any other woman in the world. She tastes like everything I’ve ever wanted, and I drink her in. She pushes back against me, wrapping her arms around my neck as she puts her tongue in my mouth and tangles it with mine.
“God,” I breathe out, and I have to set her back from me for a second so I can get a breath.
She smirks and pulls her pajama shirt over her head. She’s not wearing a bra, and it makes my mouth water. But before I can touch her, she’s shoving her pajama bottoms down, too. Then she’s naked, and I was right. She’s almost completely shaved down there but not quite.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, her eyes following mine toward her tiny little landing strip.
“You’re just so fucking pretty,” I tell her. “And I love you so fucking much.”
Her gaze drops for a second, and she climbs onto my bed, her round bottom up in the air for a second. I reach forward and slap it, and she squeaks in protest.
“I cannot believe you did that!” she cries, looking affronted.
“Oh, believe it.” I strut over to the bed and shove my jeans down over my hips. Her gaze goes to my dick, and she licks her lips. I came in her mouth this morning, and I want to come inside her this time. “Do I need to get a condom?” I ask.
“You think you’re going to get me more pregnant?” she asks, her lips tilted in a quirky grin that’s a-fucking-dorable.
“No,” I grunt out. “I just didn’t know if you’d be worried about other stuff.”
“I’ve seen your test results and you’ve seen mine,” she reminds me.
We work in a business where plasma sprays into the air, so we have to get tested regularly for everything.
“I haven’t done it without one in a really long time,” I admit. “I might not last for shit.”
She laughs. “Then we’ll have to do it twice.”
Hell yeah. “If you insist.” I chuckle as I climb over her and prop myself up on my elbows on each side of her head. I look down into her face and I know, inherently, in my soul, that I’m going to be with this woman for the rest of my life. I’m going to climb into her bed every day until I die. An
d when I’m too old to be able to fuck her, I’m going to hold her. And she’s going to hold me. Forever.
“What are you thinking?” she asks.
I brush her hair back with my thumbs. “Are you sure you want to know?” I’m not sure she’s ready for shit to get real.
But she nods. “Yes.”
“I was thinking about how I want to climb on top of you when we get old and do awesome things to you.” So, I edited. But who cares?
“What if I don’t want your old ass crawling on top of me?” she asks. I freeze, because I’m suddenly scared. But she takes my face in her hands and forces me to look at her. “What if I want to get on top, instead?”
I chuckle and bury my face in her neck. The scent of her almost overwhelms me, and I lift my head and kiss her. “You can get on top anytime you want.”
“Except today,” she breathes.
“You want to get on top today?” I ask. Hell, I’ll roll over and pull her on top of me. Won’t hurt my pride at all.
“No,” she whispers. “I want you to carry me away. Take me with you where you’re going.”
“Don’t want to go without you,” I say.
She points between us. “Then you better get busy, big guy. You got some work to do.”
God, she makes me laugh. I look down at her boobs, and she’s put her piercings back in so I wrap my lips around her left one and roll it with my tongue. She pants and palms the back of my head to pull me closer to her. My dick is sitting right at the apex of her thighs, and I can feel her heat all around me, so I notch it in her cleft, where my piercing will thrum against her clit, and she nearly comes up off the bed. I kiss her breast and lick over it and under it and around it, and goose bumps rise along her arms and neck, and I fucking love that I can make her come apart like this. She has fine lines up both sides of her stomach, probably from her first pregnancy, and I tongue them gently. I like that I get to see this part of her because it’s all the scars that make up a good part of who she is.
“Paul,” she says quietly.
I lift my head and look up at her.
“I’m officially afraid,” she says.