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“Oh, I was just throwing that in for comparison, I don’t think it’s right for me.” She tapped the other side of the paper. “On this side here you can see that we don’t need to worry about that for a couple of years, but it still warrants discussion. I assumed you wouldn’t feel strongly about homeschooling, but your opinion is still just as important as mine, you know?”
I wasn’t sure my opinions were worth shit in this situation because I didn’t know what the hell any of this meant.
Slowly, I closed the manila folder and leaned against the side of her car, staring at her with a growing sense of awe. “How are you so calm all the time? I feel like I’m … like I might have a heart attack reading all that.”
Poppy closed her eyes with a soft smile, then turned and leaned against the car, her shoulder almost brushing my arm. A single inch, and it would be.
What would she do if I leaned in?
No. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
There was no world where I could let myself touch her again unless it was a freaking emergency because I was already struggling with a wobbling sense of discipline. I almost punched her fucking boyfriend in the balls when he purposely tripped me during our game to keep me from catching a pass. The yard full of witnesses was all that held me back.
The feel of her skin on mine was absolutely off-limits, even accidentally, so I kept still and made sure not to move a single inch.
“I wasn’t calm at first,” she admitted, staring straight ahead. “Not even a little.”
Turning my head, I studied the lines of her profile. “How did you find out?”
She blew out a slow breath. “It was Parker, actually. He was home visiting after their playoff loss, and it was pretty rough for him. I thought I was sick. I’d never been that tired in my whole life. And he said something to me like, you’re not pregnant, are you?”
My eyes fell shut, imagining how scared she must have been.
“And you knew,” I said.
“I was pretty sure, yeah.” She ran the tips of her fingers over the front of her stomach, the sweet smile on her face almost too much for me to bear. My chest felt cracked wide open, the messy feelings for her mixing with the strangest sense of awe that I’d have a child with someone like her. Someone good and kind and amazing.
The thought of a little girl just like Poppy sent a bolt of longing and fear so potent that I almost fell to my knees. With her smile and her hair and her eyes.
I’d be a fucking goner. I’d give her anything she wanted. Turn my world inside out just to make sure she was happy.
Sort of how I felt about her mom.
“Parker got me a million pregnancy tests,” she continued. “And when I saw the positive test, I cried. A lot.”
I dropped my chin to my chest and breathed through that image. My hands curled into helpless fists, the urge to reach for her so strong I could hardly think of anything else.
“The list has been slowly building in my head for the past couple of months,” she admitted. “I knew you’d be home eventually, and we’d have to talk about things like … money. Health insurance. Custody,” she added delicately. Her eyes darted to mine and held. “Do you want split custody? I don’t even know how you feel about wanting to be a hands-on dad.”
Anxiety sat like a block of ice on my chest, worries compounding bigger and bigger and bigger until I could hardly breathe through it.
I thought about my two-bedroom house with no personality. Thought about trying to have a kid there every other weekend and split holidays. Is that how it would work?
What did I feel about being hands-on? Could I handle a baby on my own?
I’d never changed a diaper in my entire life. Never rockeda kid to sleep. Never handled them during a tantrum. Never tried to calm them when they had a nightmare or cried because they dropped their ice cream on the floor.
Pushing off the car, I paced around it for a few seconds, trying to let that initial prickling, cold wave pass. She watched patiently because, of course, she’d had her days and weeks to cry. I was the one who was behind.
Always, always behind on figuring this shit out.
What had my mom done when I cried? When I spilled ice cream on the floor or had a tantrum?
My mind was blank. Nothing. I couldn’t dredge up a single memory of any of those things.
All I could think of was her handing me a strip of condoms when I was sixteen. “Keep those in your wallet. Believe me, you’ll want to wrap it up or you’ll end up with a whole lot of regrets, kid. Trust me.”
I pinched my eyes shut. A different memory pressed through, insistent and unwilling not to be remembered. Sitting on Henry’s back deck, eating a bowl of ice cream after we painted his front porch. “Tastes better after some hard work, doesn’t it?” he said. And it had. It was the best ice cream I’d ever had in my life.
