I say baby, but Mara informed me that Hazel was fourteen months old. Anything before preschool is basically a baby. Until they can wipe their own butts, it’s pretty much baby. Unless you’re like Jace and you resist potty training for poop and make a regular occurrence of shitting in your pants.
Sydney swore if I hadn’t “quit her” Jace would be fully potty trained. She said I upended his sense of normalcy by leaving her, and that’s why he wouldn’t shit on a toilet. I said it was him being three and a boy, something a simple Google search confirmed.
Sydney could shove it up her ass, along with all her other sniping about me.
At least it was cut in half after we signed the papers and she walked away with half of everything somehow. I’d rather her take the stuff. My peace was worth it.
But how did it work that I was doing more than half the parenting and she was still getting half the moneyandchild support? Explain that one.
Legally, it was supposed to be 50/50, but she somehow always found a way to shift the schedule so I had the kids more. I didn’t mind—I was just petty and didn’t like having to give her half my money.
It was bullshit.
Then with the twenty-five percent of the time I did actually get a break, I was mostly on the road. Part of me wanted to get laid during that time, but I was gun-shy. Sydney had jumped on me so quickly after we fucked that it was just a few months before we were married. I was sucked into her charm, and the way she made me feel like we were the only two people who mattered in the world. And then, I couldn’t even recognize the man I became.
What if the next one did the same? Blinded me with love and stole all the things that made me, me. Would I see it coming, or would I make the same mistake twice? I hooked up a lot before Sydney, but finding someone who wanted to stick around, or who I wanted to keep around for that matter, was damn near impossible to find.
Let’s put it this way: I wasn’t the first hockey player someone goes for. As a center, I’m shorter than most of my team despite being a respectable 5’10”. I was also known for my assholery, which, yeah, probably. I don’t soften my personality for anyone, and I don’t care much for social norms. Basically, I had to make nice if I wanted to get laid on the fly. Usually by the time a game was over, I didn’t have it in me like my younger teammates did. And everyone close to my age was happily married and gaga with the love of their lives. Fuck ‘em.
I sat down in a pool chair and put Hazel on my knee, extracting the puffs from the diaper bag. She did that cute thing of clapping with her whole body, her little ruddy cheeks spread wide in a grin.
Mara made a cute kid. Okay, two cute kids. Wonder where her ex was?
Again, why did I care?
Hazel snapped me back into action, whining at me to hand over the puffs.
“Right, right,” I said. I opened the container and held it out to her. Once again, she looked at me like I was an alien. “What, you want a plated meal?”
I must have made a face, and faces and puffs were the only things keeping this kid happy around me. I guess she liked when I was a dick.
In short, I could get along with this kid. Anyone I could be myself around was a winner.
“Ay, kids,” I called out. “What can you eat for dinner?”
“Can we have dino nuggets?” Jace asked.
“And mac and cheese!” Harper added.
I usually tried to put on a well-rounded meal, but I was suddenly in charge of four children from toddler to kindergarten. This was survival mode. “Sure.”
I pulled out my phone to see if Mara answered my food allergy question.
Mara O’Connell
My kids don’t have food allergies. Thx for asking
They doing ok?
She’d sent that over an hour before. I needed to get back to her. I held out my phone. “Smile for Mama, Hazel.”
I kept my usual straight face until I saw how Hazel was looking at me. Not at the camera, but just looking at me. I turned to face her right as she bopped my nose. I snapped the picture and sent it off to Mara.
Never better
FIVE
MARA
