“I missed youso much!” Emily sighed happily. “Can we go home now?”
“Soon. You look so pretty. Did you dress up to see me?”
“Mmhm.” Emily kissed his shoulder. “Grammie helpded me pick it out. Do you like it?”
“I do.”
Emily made a sound of delight and hugged him harder. “Did you have fun when you were gone?”
“I did.”
“Did you make lotsa new friends?”
“So many.”
“Did you get a boooyfriend?” Emily pushed away from his chest and grinned at him impishly.
Matthew choked on his own spit. “What?”
“Did you get a boooyfriend?” Emily repeated, biting down on her lip as she grinned wider yet. She leaned in and whispered scandalously, “Did you hold his hand?”
It was official—his kid was trying to kill him. Matthew’s only saving grace was that she was too young to be able to see through his terrible poker face. In the hopes that he could distract her, he arched a brow comically and fixed Emily with an overly inquisitive look meant to make her giggle. “What makes you think I’d do such a silly thing?”
“Cuz in the princess movie I watched with Grammie and Violet, the princess didn’t have a boyfriend, but then she found one and it made her happy. You don’t have a boyfriend, so I think you should find one, too, and then you can be happy.” Emily’s grin grew. “I wanna help.”
There was so much to unpack in that statement. Too much. It was better to throw out the whole suitcase than get caught up in untangling that big of a mess. “I don’t need a boyfriend to be happy. Besides, why would I want a boyfriend when you and I are best friends? We’re too busy having fun and learning for me to want to spend time with anyone else.”
“A boyfriend is different.” Emily pointed across the room at where Matthew’s father and Alex stood, locked in a hug that sandwiched Violet—their daughter—between them. Clarissa stood not all that far off, chatting about something the girls had done while they were away. “If you get a boyfriend then he’ll play dolls with us, and take us out for ice cream, and maybe you can evenkiss him.And when you wanna kiss him a second time, then you’ll be husbands and I’ll have another Daddy just like Violet does.”
The suitcase bursting at the seams with issues exploded. Emily might not have cared where her other father was—which was a blessing Matthew was grateful for every day—but at just shy of four, she was starting to realize that her family didn’t look like the ones she saw in her favorite cartoons and movies. While she lived in a home where her father and her grandfathers doted on her, she’d pieced the clues together and realized her situation was different.
“Sweet pea, there’s nothing wrong with having just one mommy or daddy. There are all kinds of families out there, you know? Look at Parker. He has three daddies.”
“Then he can share one with us.” Emily beamed. “Can we have Ev-rhett as my new daddy? I like him. He’s nice.”
Matthew wished, very much, that Emily would have picked a day on which he hadn’t flown across the world to have this conversation. “Sharing is a good thing when it comes to toys, but it doesn’t work with daddies.” Well, for the most part, but Matthew wasn’t going to get into the concept of open relationships with his almost four-year-old. “Tell you what—how about we go home and have some dinner, and once you’ve had your bath and are all snuggled up in bed, we’ll read some stories about how kids just like you have different kinds of families.”
“But I wanna help you catch a boyfriend,” Emily sighed. “We can go to the park and I’ll catch him with my net and then I’ll force him to date you.”
Her confidence in his love life was astounding.
“He’ll be the bestest boyfriend,” Emily continued as Matthew set her down and took her hand. “He’ll be the nicest, and the smartest, and the handsomest.”
And apparently vulnerable to butterfly nets. What a winning combination.
“What about if I catchyoua boyfriend?” Matthew joked. He grinned at her, hoping that his over-the-top enthusiasm masked how draining he found the conversation.
“Eww! No!” Emily yanked her hand away from his and fled across the room, taking shelter behind Matthew’s father. She peeked around his leg and puffed her cheeks. Matthew puffed his in return.
What Emily didn’t know—and wouldneverknow—was that the thought of finding a boyfriend made Matthew want to run and hide, too. He’d already found the bestest, nicest, smartest, and handsomest man, and he wasn’t interested in finding a replacement. The memory of his time with Damien stuck with him. The scratch of his stubble, the firmness of his lips, his strong, certain touch… Matthew knew that what they had wouldn’t last forever, and that before long, distance would tear them apart, but it didn’t change the way he felt. After years of only seeing himself as a father, Matthew could imagine himself as a lover, too.
That night after dinner, he curled up on the couch with Emily and Violet and watchedFinding Nemoin the hopes the girls might glean from the story that while not all families were the same, they were all equally valid. Matthew, meanwhile, came away from his viewing with a much different insight—with enough determination, distance meant nothing. Compared to Sydney, New York wasn’t all that far away.
20
Matthew
Tell me all the good things you did today, baby boy.
