“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I shouldn’t have called you today, and then—”
He tilted his head my way, his warm, brown eyes snapping to mine. “Yes, you should have. I’m exactly who you should have called, and I’m glad you did.”
Jesus, why did that make the guilt grow?
“No, it’s not okay. I’m a single mom now. I’m going to have to start figuring these things out for myself. I can’t expect everyone around me to put their lives on hold because I’m having some kind of mental breakdown.” My nose stung, but I took a sip of the wine to hide the tears.
At what point did I get to stop crying all the damn time?
“You’re not having a mental breakdown, Bree. You lost your husband and your best friend a month ago. Give yourself a little grace. You’re allowed to have bad days. You’re allowed to be overwhelmed. You don’t have to keep it together twenty-four-seven just because you have kids.”
“It shouldn’t bleed over into your life too though. You lost your wife and your friend too. You have a child of your own to focus on. Eason, you missed the meeting for your new job because of me tonight.”
He suddenly sat up, planting both feet on the ground. “And thank you for that. I’ve been dreading taking the job all fucking week. I hated it there when I quit ten years ago, and I’m pretty sure I’m not going to feel any differently about it now. Honest to God, I was having nightmares about playing ‘Sweet Caroline’ again.”
“What?” I gasped. “You told me you were excited about getting back behind a piano.”
“Bree, I’m a thirty-four-year-old man living rent-free in my best friend’s pool house—with my daughter. Beggars and choosers and all, I needed that job.”
I set the wine on the edge of the firepit and turned to face him, curling my leg on the cushion between us, anxiety creeping into my voice. “Right. And now you don’t have it because of me.”
“I didn’t lose it. I can still go fill out the paperwork tomorrow if I want.” He dropped his head but looked at me from the corner of his eye, a playful smile twitching the side of his mouth. “Or you could reward me for wrestling Madison into a pair of pajamas tonight by not kicking me out for another week so I can search for a job that doesn’t require me to play Ginuwine’s ‘Pony’ every time a bachelorette party comes through the door.” He punctuated it with a sly smile that somehow defied the laws of grief and guilt by making me laugh.
“I’m not kicking you out.”
“You should. I’m a terrible freeloading tenant who punched a hole in your bathroom wall last week.”
“What!” I laughed again.
He shrugged and took a pull of his beer before replying, “Apparently my bad days come with slightly more aggression than yours.”
“Mmm.” I nodded with understanding. “I get those too. I just scream into my pillow.”
“I’ll give that a try next time. Probably safer considering I’ll need two hands to play the incessant dueling of the Georgia and Georgia Tech fight songs.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t take the job, Eason. Find something you want to do. You and Luna can stay here as long as you need. Or want. Or any combination of the two.”
“Honest to God, I don’t know how I would have made it through the last month without you.” He blew out a ragged breath. “And the kids.”
“Well, that makes two of us.” My chest warmed as I lifted my glass in his direction.
He met it halfway with a clink of his beer.
Madison stirred on the screen of the monitor, momentarily stealing my attention. She had rolled to her side, fussing for a brief second before falling back asleep pressed up against the wooden slats. But that wasn’t why I leaned in close to the small screen.
Pink-and-white-striped pajamas covered her arms, but the rest of her body was secure in a zip-up sleep sack. Her crib was empty—the blanket and two stuffed animals that were strictly for decoration had been removed, and her princess castle nightlight illuminated the corner of the room. The glow of her cool mist humidifier next to the bed let me know it had been turned on, and with a single stroke to turn up the monitor’s volume, her sound machine whooshed in the background.
I hadn’t told Eason to do any of that. Not once had I mentioned she stripped naked at night without the sleep sack. Or how the blankets and pillows were a suffocation hazard, so I removed them every time I laid her down. I didn’t explain to him how she’d been congested recently, so I put the humidifier on to help her sleep, and the nightlight made it easy for me to check on her. Nor did I tell him that, without the sound machine, Asher woke her up in the mornings.
While I had been sitting outside, lost in a sea of pain and reliving flashbacks of the night of the fire, Eason had done it all. He was a good dad who had a daughter of his own; it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he knew how to put a baby to bed.
Madison wasn’t his daughter. Though he loved her and cared for her as if she were.
I clicked the button and switched the screen to Asher’s room. He wasn’t reading. A dozen action figures surrounded him while a fireman and dinosaur fought so fiercely that it would have made Tyler Durden proud.
He wasn’t crying that he missed his father as he’d done so many times over the last few weeks. I was unsure what questions he had asked about Rob in heaven, but whatever Eason had answered quelled his curious soul at a time when I was so distraught that I hadn’t even been able to soothe my own.
Eason hadn’t dropped everything and raced up to Prism that day when I needed him the most out of responsibility or duty. He was there because, whether I realized it or not, Rob had been right.
Eason was one of the best.
I set the monitor on my lap and turned my attention to the man casually sipping his beer beside me. “What do you want to do with your life?”
Twisting his lips, he shifted his eyes from side to side. “Is that a serious question?”
“Completely.”
“Music,” he stated, those two syllables lighting his entire face.
“Yeah? I noticed you haven’t replaced your piano yet.”
He chuckled. “Pianos aren’t cheap. Right now, I’m focused on the little details like a job, a place to live, furniture, and maybe buying more than a funeral suit, three pair of jeans, and a pack of shirts.” He pointedly smoothed down the front of his plain black tee.
I took another sip of my wine and then twirled the stem of the glass between my fingers. “And what if I could take care of three out of four of those things for you?”
His mouth tipped in a wry smile. “As nice as it sounds, I think I’m going to take a pass on more handouts. I’m all maxed out.”
Resting my arm on the back of the cushion, I turned my upper body to fully face him. “Things at Prism are worse than I thought. Nobody knows what the hell is going on. We have no product. No reliable manufacturer. Suppliers I’d had in my back pocket before stepping down to raise the kids won’t even return my phone calls.”
“Damn,” he breathed. “You have enough on your plate. That’s not the kind of shit you need to be dealing with right now.”