“I think I heard that,” I said. “He’s a funny guy.”
Aspen laughed. “Yeah.”
“You want me to sit with you until you go to sleep, or do you want to go back in on your own?”
“I can go on my own,” he said, still huffing from his crying spell. “I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you too, sweet pea.” With a big hug and a couple of kisses, he was back to bed, snuggling in next to Harper.
I padded downstairs, looking for the door to Jack’s backyard. He looked up as I came outside. “Hey. Aspen okay?”
I took in the setup: a nice outdoor furniture set complete with one of those tables with a fire pit recessed in the middle. Flames danced over a few logs, their light flickering across his face. He sat back, completely at ease, feet propped on the table’s edge.
I sighed. “Yeah, just misses his dad.”
Jack sucked air through his teeth. “Is he around at all?”
I shook my head. “If you consider Nepal ‘around.’”
“Oof.” Jack sat forward, asking his next question like he knew it would hurt. “Is he coming back?”
I slumped onto a rich people wicker couch with a nice firm cushion and a soft outdoor pillow that I perched under my back. “I used to think so, but now not so much. He decided to go ‘work on himself’ and apparently, that doesn’t involve fathering either of his two children.”
“Asshole,” Jack grumbled.
My laugh was sardonic. “You know what’s funny? What you said to him about the tape was the beginning of his spiritual awakening. He took it that you were some messenger sent to tell him to stop taking everything so seriously.”
Jack scoffed. “I was just telling him not to be a shithead to his family.”
“Yes, well, he assigned a higher meaning to it,” I said with a wave of my hand to the heavens. “Then he started getting more into woo-woo shit, and talking about how he needed to purge his past self.”
Jack set his jaw. “I’d gladly purge his ass off a cliff.”
“Yeah, if he ever comes back from Nepal, will you kick his ass for me?”
“With pleasure,” he said. “On that note, want a drink?”
I settled in, enjoying the feeling of being waited on for once. “Whaddya got?”
“Seltzers, probably a THC water in there somewhere, beer, bourbon, whiskey, tequila, vodka, gin?—”
“So, every single kind of liquor?”
He laughed, turning his lip up weird since it was healing from his fight earlier in the day. “I think that’s about all of them.”
“Drinking sounds fun, but I have to be careful. A seltzer’s good.”
“Any favorites? I have kind of a lot. I don’t drink much either, fully stocked bar cart aside. Just a beer with the guys here and there.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Let’s see how fancy you get with your fizzy water. Topo Chico lime or grapefruit is the shit. They’ve got those perf?—”
“Perfect bubbles!” he finished, and I was surprised by one of Jack’s rare excited moments. “Right? Alright, I’ll be back. I put an extra pair of socks there in case your feet are cold, and there’s a blanket next to you until the fire gets going.”
My throat got tight and I forced a swallow. “Oh. Thanks.”
He just nodded like it was nothing, but the truth was, no one had taken care of me or anticipated my needs like that since . . . well, I couldn’t even pinpoint when that stopped with Bryce. He put on a patient front when I took longer to recover than expected after having Aspen, and acted like it wouldn’t be a big deal if we had another baby. But then once Hazel arrived and my body was in even worse shape, he grew tired of caring for me. He told me I was lazy and that I just needed to work out more. That I didn’t want to recover. That I needed to quit whining.
It’s easier to look back once you’re out of something and see how bad it was. It’s almost impossible to see it when you’re in it.
