“Unca Sawyer jump out of planes?”
Crush’s interactions with his daughter are priceless as he sits down next to her, and I follow suit, sitting across from them.
“Yeah, he helps to protect our country. Remember me telling you this?”
“Oh, yes.”
It’s not a surprise to find he’s a Navy SEAL, and it suits him. “But yeah, he’s happy. And the baby of the family, Jesse, is in medical school.”
Getting the rundown on the Colton family makes me almost forget the many years I’ve not been a part of his life. “Mom and Dad will be here in a couple of weeks for Brooklyn’s birthday.”
At the mention of her birthday, her eyes widen. “You come to my party, Ryda? I turns five.”
How could I ever say no to this little princess, and I don’t when I reply, “Of course, sweetheart, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” This is when I silently pledge to Crush I’ll never not be a part of his life again.
“Pops, I need wata,” she calls out five minutes after Crush reads her a story. A frustrated huff leaves his mouth as he grabs her cup on the end table and walks heavy, in aggravation to her room.
He’s back at the couch, sitting down, and he’s as close as he was during the movie. A question about her nighttime routine is on my tongue when her little voice fills the room again. “Pops, my leg hurt.”
He pushes to his feet, and I hear him praying for her boo-boo. A sheepish smile covers his face as he falls back on the couch near me again, so close I can appreciate his cologne, when she calls for him yet again.
“Excuse me, I’m going to have to use my authoritative dad voice.” He turns around, popping his head into her room. “Brooklyn Christine, no more!” His voice dips deep, and in his command, my poor cock, which is always alive around him, pushes against my track shorts, doing nothing to hide my erection. “Now, go to bed, honey. I don’t want you to get in trouble. I love you.”
When he spins around, I’ve shifted on the couch to grab a pillow as though I’m snuggling with something in order to hide my apparent jovial member. If he notices, he doesn’t say anything.
“So, is this what bedtime is like every night?”
He shakes his head. “She is pushing me tonight because there’s company, and she thinks there’s free rein, but with her mom, this normally goes on for hours. Alison has called me to put Brooklyn to bed.”
“You drive to Alison’s to put her to bed?” I’m dumbfounded by this.
He shakes his head. “I have in the past, but now I tell Al to get a fucking backbone and punish her, and maybe she’d learn her lesson—so she’s not asked me in a while.”
“Wow,” I begin as he moves his stance, placing part of his leg on the couch, less than a foot from me.
“So, tell me about you and Garrison.” There’s no damn segue or anything. He just throws it out there.
I’m not sure what to make out of this. “Um, I told you, we are what we need. I care for Garrison, and if he were to find something more serious, with someone who could give him a forever, I’d wish him luck and would hope for an invitation to the wedding.”
Crush’s lips straighten, and I can’t figure out if he’s happy or upset. “So, you don’t see yourself with someone forever?”
I take in a long inhale. “I’d like a child or two. I’d like someone who’s home when I get home, and someone who’s in my bed every night, but it’s not Garrison. He needs a man who’s willing to give up a career for him. I’m not doing this, and I’m not asking him to, either. He’s one of my closest friends, and we’re great together. We just happen to have great out of this world sex. It’s more than friends with benefits, but it’s not love. If all of this makes sense?”
I don’t notice it at first, but his nostrils flare at my words. “Crush?” I’m not sure what I want to ask him. There’s a question in there with his weird behavior, but I don’t know what it is yet.
“Yeah?” he asks, and he’s not figured out my silent question.
“Why are you pissed off?”
His posture changes, and in it, he stands, pacing back and forth in front of me, then disappears into the kitchen. I give him a second, and when he doesn’t reappear, I pop my head around the corner, having grabbed my keys off his dining room table.
“Hey, dude, I’m going to head out.” I’ll allow him to wallow in whatever shit he’s sorting through in his mind.
He reappears with a couple of sodas in his hands, a completely different countenance on his face than just a couple of minutes ago. He’s composed and not the irrational hothead he’d been over the thought of me with another man. And when he hands me a Diet Coke, I sit back down and open the top.
“I’m sad too, you know, right?” I ask, and this causes him to stop in mid sip.
“What do you mean?” The crystal blue of his eyes collide with my own, and I’m pierced by his fixed gaze on me.
“I’m sad your daughter doesn’t call me Unca Ryda, like she does your brother. I’m sad I wasn’t there the day she was born, to see you hold her tiny little body, and though it would have killed me, I wanted to be at your wedding, even to someone like Alison. And more so, I wish I could have thrown you an epic party on the day your divorce was final. And fuck, I wish I was there to help you when you caught her with another man. There’s so much regret I feel when it comes to you, so you feeling slighted you don’t know my significant other, though I wouldn’t call Garrison this, is something I understand.”
He moves his body from mine, shifting to the side of the sectional where Brooklyn was sitting earlier, and I miss his proximity.
“Yeah, bro, I guess you’re right. It’s a lot we have to make up for.” But the conviction in his voice doesn’t sound genuine.
“I’m ten minutes away, so now we have no excuses when it comes to building back what we lost.” It’s all I know to say.
His weak smile meets my own, and I know he’s keeping something from me. And all I can do is wait it out until he’s ready to share. Until then, I’m not giving up on him like I had before.
8
Crush
The doorbell has Brooklyn running toward it. For all intents and purposes, Al was a bad wife, but she’s a fierce mom. Sure, there are things I don’t agree with, like letting our daughter get away with everything, but Alison would lay down her life for Brooklyn. And for that reason, and that reason alone, I can stomach all the shit she throws my way.
“Ask first, peanut, to make sure it’s your mom,” I command as Brooklyn pulls on the door.
“Whood it?” she calls out.
“It’s Mommy, baby.” Alison’s screechy voice can still get under my skin, and flinch the second her pitch hits my ears.
When my daughter swings the door open, Brooklyn bounces into her arms, but Alison isn’t alone, and she jumps over to the guy on her mother’s arm. This tells me she’s met him before. Alison’s eyes pierce mine, and she helps herself into my home with this stranger attached to her, and he’s still fucking holding my daughter.