My heart clenched tight, but I told it to settle down. We needed answers, my heart and I, and I couldn’t let it run the show. “What does that mean?” I said, trying to sound indifferent, when I was anything but.
He bowed his head, looking at his hands. His hair swung forward and I literally sat on my hands so I wouldn’t reach out and push it back and away from his face.
“It means I really don’t know why I’m here, Lily. I know I messed up by not calling or texting, and of course I did that on purpose. And then yesterday, seeing you at the pool…” He looked up, and the pain in his brown eyes matched the pain I so desperately felt but so desperately wanted to hide.
“And then you left with Andy,” I reminded him.
“Yeah. Dick move, I know that. It was all a dick move, everything from Sunday on. And who knows—maybe coming here today is the biggest dick move of them all. Maybe I should just leave you in peace.”
This. This was the moment I needed to decide whether I wanted Lucas Kade in my life or not. A simple “I think that would be best,” and he’d leave, I knew it.
I did not want to be the girl who was perpetually played by a guy who treated her poorly, then let him back into her life with a few prettily done mea culpas. Isodid not want to be that girl.
And yet, when he looked at me, waiting for me to speak, all I could say was, “I want you to stay.”
His shoulders eased and I realized how tense they’d been. My body eased as well, but we weren’t quite there yet.
“So, why don’t you tell me what’s going on. Why all the shitty treatment, then showing up now?”
He relaxed a bit, settled in as if for a long story. He leaned back, putting his hands on the bed behind him. The plushness of my comforter seemed to swallow them up, and from my chair it looked like his arms just disappeared into the sea. He stretched out his legs, crossing his feet. If I turned just a tiny bit, my feet would brush his, they were so close. But I stayed where I was, waiting.
“Sunday morning, when Andy woke up, he asked what we were going to do that day,” he began. I nodded. It sounded like what any six-year-old boy would say.
“No, I mean, he asked whatwewere going to do. Him, me, and you.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Yeah, exactly. And you know what? My first thought was,Let’s call Lily and see what wearegoing to do today.”
“But you didn’t call,” I said, though of course he knew that.
He stared at me for a moment, his eyes searching mine. Then he broke contact, looking at his worn work boots. “No, I didn’t call. And I caught myself and didn’t say any of that to Andy. But God, I wanted to call, Lily. I wanted nothing more than to spend another day with you…and Andy.”
I waited, so still, not moving an inch. I thought about lying around with a hung-over Jane all day Sunday when instead I could have been with Lucas.
“But then, what?” he asked. “So we spend Sunday together. What? Like some family or something? You’re a college freshman. You just got out of your family unit. You’re supposed to be out partying and meeting new people. Not discussing the developmental growth of some townie’s kid brother.”
“I care about Andy.”
He looked back up at me. “I know you do. And I don’t want to take advantage of that. If it were just me? Well, it would still be selfish to ask you to hang with me instead of your new friends, but I’d do it.”
His voice dropped almost to a whisper, almost to a growl when he said “I’d do it,” and my heart, already racing from the moment I’d seen Lucas downstairs, started beating even faster.
“I’d do it in a heartbeat,” he said, and I wondered if he could hear mine. “But it’s not just me. And I honestly don’t know how long I’m going to be doing daddy duty with Andy.”
“I could—” He held up a hand, stalling my words. Which was just as well. I wasn’t certain what I was going to say.
“And to be honest, I hope itisfor a long time. Ilikebeing with Andy. It’s good for me, and I hope it’s good for him. I know it’s better for him to have my mom, when she’s…healthy. But, we’re not really sure when that’s going to be, or for how long.”
“So you think it’s permanent?”
He shrugged, then returned his hand to the sea. “I’m trying to find a cheap lawyer to discuss my options. CPS has been really good about me being with him, him staying in the home and all that. But I want to know what the options are, long term, in case my mom isn’t…capable.”
“What’s CPS?”
“Child Protective Services. See? That you don’t know that totally symbolizes what I’m trying to say. We—our situation—are totally out of your world right now. Hell, most likely you’d go through your whole life and not need to know what CPS stands for. Me? I knew it when I was five.”
“I agree, I’m not ready to play stepmommy to a first grader, but I do like kids. And I like Andy a lot. I mean, I teach kids’ swimming lessons. I was a lifeguard at the club pool the last two summers. Ilikekids.”
