“I can work from home tomorrow so we can leave in the morning when you leave.” Mara glanced at me for confirmation, and I nodded. She was an administrative assistant for a small oil and gas company that allowed her to work from home whenever she needed to.
“Yeah,” Jussica exclaimed. “Let’s watchThe Proud Familyin my room.”
“Mommy still has to work in the morning, so two episodes and bedtime,” Mara said.
“I can give you a t-shirt and sweatpants or something to sleep in.” I offered, trying to prove my openness to change when all I wanted to do was to knock on Soraya’s door and wake up with her in the morning.
“Sure.” She shrugged and plopped down on Jussica’s full-sized bed.
“Daddy, you too.” Jussica pointed to the empty side of the bed and scrambled in the middle. “You can go to your room after I go to sleep.”
I blew out my breath and joined them on the bed. Mara and I looked at each other over Jussica’s head. She mouthed, “Thank you.”
Folding my arms and crossing my ankles, I settled in to watch a kids’ cartoon. I would see Soraya soon enough. Patience. Patience. Delayed gratification had become my middle name in these last few weeks.
The sound of my door closing awakened me. In the darkness, Mara became visible as she approached me, wearing one of my old T-shirts and shorts. Her dark eyes shone with lust as my vision adjusted to the dim light from the moon peeking out.
“What the hell, Mara?”
Mara stopped on my side of the bed. “Thought you wanted this?”
“What makes you think that?” I turned on the lamp and sat up, forcing her to step back.
“You asked me to stay tonight, and you’ve been calling more and treating me nice.” Her fingers crawled up my naked abs, and I pressed my hand on top of them.
“The way I’m supposed to treat the mother of my child. Jussica wanted you to stay because she wanted to stay, and I call you more because I have questions about the daughter I just found out about. I’m upfront. If I want a woman, she knows. I don’t play games or hint when I’m attracted.”
“Um…that weekend you couldn’t get enough. You must have a woman now.” She shrugged. “I won’t tell. Just wanted to have a little fun.”
Mara had been through it from our conversations, including a bad divorce and bouts of unemployment due to the fluctuating economy, and I didn’t want to add to her hurt, so I gently moved her hand from my stomach and squeezed it. “You and I aren’t a good idea. Even if it’s a little sex here and there. We need to bea united front for Jussica. Sex would muddle everything because all it would ever be is physical, and eventually you would want a relationship.”
She frowned. “What Jussica needs is her parents together. We’ve never tried to be anything.”
“For a reason. I had a good time back in Charlotte, but honestly, I didn’t think about you again. And if you didn’t get pregnant, you wouldn’t have thought about me. You were the married one, trying to get back at the husband you still loved.”
“That was the past. We’re here now. Neither of us is married. We owe it to Jussica to try.” Mara implored.
“The only thing I owe Jussica is to be the best father I can be, and that doesn’t require us to be together.” I released her hand.
“I saw how you checked me out in the pool.”
I shrugged. “Your point?” She wore a bikini, and I can admit I admired her body. “I don’t want to have sex with every pretty woman I see.”
Mara smiled triumphantly at my offhand compliment. “You’re letting your anger at me stop you from something that could be good.”
“You and I will never be good. I would’ve never slept with you if I knew you were married.”
Her chestnut brown face reddened. “Bullshit. Even if you knew, you would’ve still fucked me. One night was enough for me, but you convinced me to stay with you for the weekend, remember?”
“Trust me with all those willing women, the moment you said you had a husband, I would’ve kept it moving. I might do a lot of things, but I don’t knowingly cross those lines.”
She hissed. “You don’t get to judge me. I’ve been through hell and back ever since that weekend.”
“Oh, I do get to judge. All your choices led to you raising Jussica on your own. You lied to him and to me. I had to forceyou to tell the truth even after we saw each other again. Despite how much a part of me didn’t want to know the truth, I had to know because Jussica deserved that. Had to know because for whatever reason God placed me in that car with you.” My chest heaved up and down as I spread my arms. “You disrupted the fuck out of my world. I never wanted children. Never wanted a wife. Probably because my damn father didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Left my mother because of me. His cruel absence left a deep scar, and you were about to do that to that beautiful little girl in there with your secrets and lies. And I’ll be damned before I do to her what my father did to me. To take away her light…her joy because I didn’t take responsibility for my actions and love her with all I am.”
She waved her hand, annoyed. “Jussica would’ve been just fine. People grow up without their fathers every day. She had me, and I didn’t know without a doubt she wasn’t his until she was born. I remembered your birthmark. My ex was happy to be a father, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that she wasn’t his. I thought Jussica had a father, and when my marriage failed, I didn’t think you would accept if I called you out of the blue, telling you about her because she and I were doing just fine.”
“Fine?” I raised my voice. “Thought you just said you’ve been through hell and back? And why was my daughter in the car with you while you picked up strangers?”
