She drops to the blanket. I lose my clothes and watch how with every discard of my shirt, my shoes, my pants, her eyes fill with a desire to have me, and let me take her.
Falling gently beside her beautiful frame, I trace a finger down her stomach to her sex. Rubbing her clit, I watch as her eyes close and she lets out a moan before I enter two fingers inside her.
“Noah,” she says with urgency. “I need you. Inside me. I want to feel you. I’m too close and you’re…” she trails off as my fingers curve and stroke deep inside her sex. Her body quickly starts nearing climax. Her wetness grows. Her pussy tightens. I pull fingers free and climb on top of her. She looks up at me and whispers, “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I say as I enter her heat slowly. She moans out as I fill her completely.
“Show me how much you love me,” she says, as her eyes fill with tears. Tears of happiness. Of love. Of a bond that can and will never be broken between us again.
I begin to move and get lost in her eyes. In us.
“I’ll never stop fighting for us for as long as I live,” I whisper as her climax approaches. “I promise.”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Noah
The sounds of laughter fill my ears as I exit the car at Becky’s parent’s house. An eerie feeling of deja vue comes flooding back. It has been almost two years since I have been here, yet somehow it still feels like yesterday. The harshness of her parent’s hatred towards me stops me in my tracks as I come to the back gate. The only thing separating me from the party on the other side. A party I am not yet ready to walk into, but know I have no choice.
My meeting with Becky and Bentley the other night went according to plan. Just the three of us, I found myself trying my hardest to get along with Becky as she walked me around her place and showed me all kinds of pictures and artifacts of my son’s first year of life.
But I still felt so detached.
Even worse, the boy looked nothing like me. He looked much more like his mother. I tried to play with him - tried to pick him up, but he just cried. Finally, I succumbed to sitting on the couch and watching him play on the floor. Occasionally I would pass him a toy or two while I listened to the endless chatter of Becky’s stories, but that was it.
Nothing. No feeling. No tug at my heart like I thought would be there when I first laid eyes on the boy, which only serves to make me feel like a bastard.
I tried telling myself that it was normal, that only chicks got that motherly feeling. But yet, I couldn’t help the nagging thought that I am not parent material, or some shit. That something is wrong with me because I did not get any kind of fatherly tug on my heart after spending time with him.
Jolene said it would come, but all I can hope is that it comes this afternoon at this party. Otherwise, I am scared to death of trying to find feelings I should naturally have for my own flesh and blood.
Pushing open the gate to the backyard, I come face to face with complete chaos. A scene taken straight out of how best to spoil your child unfolds in front of me. Bounce houses line the back fence, a clown is making balloon animals, a small petting zoo sits off to the right. Kids are jumping in and out of a pool in the center of the yard. A large buffet table sits to the left, and although I know Becky’s parents have more money than I could ever dream of, I can’t help but wonder why a one-year-old needs this at his birthday party.
“There you are,” Becky’s annoying voice comes closer. She struts up to my side and slings her arm through mine. I pull away and she lets me go briefly.
Grabbing me back, she tugs me forward into the party. My feet get heavy the further I walk. I almost come to a complete stop when I see her father look up at me across the way. I never said anything to Harold before leaving town. I never showed up, never called, and never talked to his daughter again. After all that has happened between now and then, I suddenly feel incredibly small the shorter the distance becomes between us.
“Daddy, you remember Noah, don’t you?” Becky says when we reach her father.
He doesn’t say a word. Just sticks out his big chest, and puffs on his cigar. I am immediately reminded why I hate this family and everyone in it, except my son - wherever he is. I scan the party trying to make out a glimpse of him, but fail and look back at the man standing in front of me.
“Good of you to come, Noah,” Harold says. “About time you did the honorable thing. But I guess you can’t expect much with the last name like Stewart, can you?”
I stand a little taller and prepare to meet his disapproval head-on. “Nice to see you again, Harold. Excuse me please, I’m looking for my son.”
As I turn to leave, Becky’s dad releases a disapproving snort. I try and let it roll off my back. Becky grabs my arm again as she waves across the party to some girl I don’t even know. Pulling me along with her, she starts the process of greeting everyone we pass and telling them who I am. Her son’s father, she says, who made it home in time for his birthday. Made it home from where? I don’t know. It’s surely one of her numerous lies, and so I don’t even bother to figure it out.
“Where is Bentley?” I finally ask after I have been ushered past the sixth or seventh person.
“Oh, momma just put him down for his nap,” she says as she waves her hand like a pageant queen to someone off in the distance. “You’ll see him soon enough. But, now, I want you to follow me. We have some people to meet. Time to get you better acquainted with your new role as Bentley’s father.”
“I’m in his life, Becky,” I correct her. “Not yours.”
She rolls her eyes and continues dragging me forward and into a past I never thought I’d see again. I’d give anything not to be in my own shoes right now. I’d even go back to Los Angeles and love it. I’d bask in all its chaotic glory if it meant not having to be with Becky and schmoozing our way across her parent’s backyard and back into a life I’m only now realizing I felt so free getting out of the first time.
* * *
After almost an hour and a half, my brain is swimming from all the hands I have shaken and all the new names I was told are required to be remembered. Bentley had been brought back out from his nap about thirty minutes ago, and for a brief moment, I held him and felt a small connection that was missing the other night. As he played in my arms, it almost felt natural to hold him. To be with him and be a father.
