“Fuck I won’t! I’m coming now.”
The call cuts out, then my eyes lock on to Mac’s as he stands at the end of the hall with his schoolbag slung over one shoulder and his jaw ticking with rage. “Mom?”
“Let’s go, baby.” Bounding to my feet, I practically sprint to the front door and whip my bag and keys up. “We’re leaving for work and school.”
Instead of arguing, he follows me out the door and waits just an inch away while I lock up. He’s my protector, my army, and he knows who was on the phone just now. Moving along the hall at a pace slightly faster than regular walking, I move onto the staircase and hold back my groan when Mac has to slow himself to an almost standstill.
Not so long ago, my son in all his teenage wisdom decided to sneak out and show off for girls. Having climbed twenty feet to the top of a gantry crane at the local steel mill, he slipped, fell, and broke a whole bunch of bones, not the least of which was his skull. He broke his leg in multiple places, which meant months of traction, physical therapy, and bills, bills, bills. Though he’s all but healed up now, we still need to take the stairs slowly; he still takes pain meds sometimes when it hurts too much and he can’t sleep, and in the dead of winter, my poor baby walks with pain, because the cold makes his bones ache.
The mother in me wants to sweep him up and plop him on my hip. But the realist in me remembers he’s the same height as me, and I have no chance of moving him without breaking more bones. So I wait patiently; I obsessively check my watch, and I pray Zeke isn’t coming here to cause more trouble.
Zeke Douglas doesn’t scare me one bit. He’s not dangerous to me; he’s a weakling and a coward, but he’s also loud, and his visits always lead to more headaches for me.
I’ve never feared for my safety as far as he goes, just my sanity.
“What did Zeke want, Mom?” Mac clutches the stair railing and takes each step one at a time. So… Slow… I want to bash my head against the brick wall. “It got heated, so he pissed you right off.”
“Not heated, baby. We were just talking.”
“I heard you tell him to step up for some chick.”
Pretending my chipped nail is the most important thing to me right now, I study the rough edge and act like Mac’s slow movements don’t kill me. “I don’t really remember.”
“He’s got another kid on the way?”
“Umm…”
“I heard you, Mom! Our apartment is tiny; I hear everything.”
“Well if you heard, then why are you making me say it? You know I don’t want to hurt you, so why are you making me repeat it?”
“Zeke and his stupid shit doesn’t bother me.” Reaching the bottom of the stairs, my handsome son looks up with a triumphant smile and fixes the bag on his shoulder. “My sperm donor’s actions have nothing to do with me, and neither do his six dozen kids. They’re nothing to me, because none of them are a part of you.”
“Baby…” Stopping at the front door, I press my hands to his chest and smile. “I love you. Zeke might be an asshole, but you’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Would you change it?” Pulling my arm through his so he escorts me out of the building like a gentleman, we turn left, despite the fact we would normally turn right. My son is smart beyond his years and knows not to go the normal route so we don’t run into his father. “If you could go back in time, would you change it?”
“Nope. It was hard, babe. My life wasn’t easy after I found out about you, but I never regretted you. Not for a single second.”
“If I didn’t exist, you wouldn’t be attached to Zeke. He would have gone his way fourteen years ago, and you probably wouldn’t even remember each other anymore.”
“Still don’t regret you.”
“If I didn’t exist, you would have gone to college and become a school teacher like you wanted. You’d be getting ready for class right now, wearing a cute skirt and worrying about glue sticks because dummies like me keep breaking the ones you supplied.”
“Nope. I still don’t regret you.”
He snickers. “If you didn’t have me, you’d be celebrating a normal thirtieth birthday with your girlfriends, maybe in a club, drinking fancy cocktails and dancing with cute boys.”
Laughing, I smack his hand and lean heavily against his side. “Youwantme to drink, dance, and hook up with cute boys? Macallistar, you’re weird.”
“I dunno…” Shrugging, we turn onto Main Street and make our way toward the diner. “I don’t want you to get drunk and stupid. But I wish you got to enjoy yourself more. Thirty is still kinda young, but now you got a kid literally half your age, and you never got to enjoy being young. I’m almost the same age as you were when you got pregnant.”
“And if I find out you’re doinganythingwith girls, we’ll have trouble, andyou’llregret being born. Don’t test me on this, baby. Don’t make me want to yank your eyeballs out and feed them back to you.”
“Mom…”
“I know those girls are cute, but you have at least a decade before you get to do something about it.”