However, this just no longer feels likemyjourney.
33: Evan
Ibounce Leo on my lap on the bench outside the stadium after a gruelling training session. My entire body hurts, and so does my mind.
Flo’s been gone a week. Seven whole days—that’s all. But it feels like a lifetime already. The house is too quiet without her, the mornings drag, and the evenings are predictable. I once thought that predictability I had in my life was calming, something I enjoyed, but I crave back the unpredictability that Flo brought. I keep expecting to hear her giggle from the kitchen, or look out my window to see her working on a creation on the porch steps, but she’s gone.
My heart feels off-beat, and my coffee doesn’t taste the same. It’s bitter—which was its flavour all along—but now that the sweetness I didn’t know I needed in my life has come and gone, the taste is no longer something I enjoy.
The only thing holding me together is Leo, but guilt hits me square in the chest whenever I have to drag him out ofthe house to the stadium because I have practice, and I still haven’t settled on another nanny.
I’m trying, though. Flo isn’t Leo’s nanny anymore, so this is the only option I have.
Bennett joins us on the bench and pinches Leo’s cheeks, who’s busy playing around with my phone. He leans over my son’s shoulder, makes him laugh by pretending to press some buttons on the device at the same time he makes ‘beep, boop’noises, and then turns to me.
“How are you, man?”
“I’m fine.”
Bennett makes a loud "ergg" sound, like a buzzer. “Wrong answer. Try again. How are you, really?”
I scrub a hand down my face. “I… don’t know, Bennett.” My eyes slice to Leo, who’s now off my lap and entertaining himself with a few bugs on a bush beside us—his mission this week has been to try to catch a butterfly—still clutching onto my phone. “I knew Flo was going to leave. We both did, and I knew it was going to suck. But… I didn’t realise I could miss somebody this much.”
“She was one in a million,” Bennett sighs lowly, and I shoot him daggers, which makes him hold his hands up in defence and say, “For you, Evan. Calm down.”
“I know she’s probably having a great time, and it makes me feel like a complete asswipe for wanting her to be missing me as much as I am her, and come back. It’s selfish. I need to try to get used to life without her.”
Evan West doesn’t open up like this. He’s straight-faced and shrugs things off like nothing can touch him, but I’m a new version of myself now. Flo McKenna brought it out of me, and even though these newfound emotions are irritating, I don’t want to change. I don’t want to go back to who I was before her. She’d be so disappointed.
“Wow, you got it bad, boy.”
I blink at Bennett. I’m so messed up without Flo that even a blind cat could sense it.
“Remember the advice you gave me a little while ago, about feeling like you can see that something isn’t right for someone?”
I nod. “I still want to know who that was about, by the way.” Although I’m sure I already know, I’d like to hear it come from Bennett’s mouth.
“Stop trying to change the subject. We’re talking about you and your midlife crisis right now.”
“I’m not middle-aged.”
Bennett scoffs, eyes shifting to Leo for a second, and then to the phone. “Might as well be. Now listen, if I’m honest, being without Fo isn’t right for you, and I can tell you now that she probably feels the same. You’ve changed since she came along, Evan. You’re more relaxed. Less hard on yourself. I asked Flo all about the trip before she left, and she gave me nothing. There was no excitement there. No drive, or passion, but when she looks at you and Leo, that’s when the determination comes out of her.”
“She made me feel like I was a good father, but also like I was more than just that.”
“And that’s what I’m talking about.”
A crease forms between my eyes. “Why are you yelling?”
My friend chuckles, swiping a confused look on his face, before mumbling, “Sorry. My ears are blocked.”
“Bennett, as much as I want that woman back in my arms, the press would eat this story up.”
“And since when does Evan West care about what the press says? You’re already in the news every month, so people would probably assume it’s a load of pisswaddle anyway.”
“What the fuck is pisswaddle?”
Bennett’s large shoulders rise. “No idea, it just sounded right in the moment.”
