She shrugged. “It’s possible. Obviously, you know your father a lot better than I do, but maybe deep down he feels guilty for having suggested you give Will up for adoption, and he’s trying to make up for it by being there for your kid now.”
“I don’t think so. I think he just knows it looks good when someone gets a picture of him at the baseball stadium with his grandson. He does it for the photo-op. Trust me.”
She put her hands up to indicate she wasn’t going to argue any further. “I do trust you. Like I said, he’s your father, not mine. Either way, it’s better for Will that he acts like a caring grandfather, don’t you think? Regardless of whether or not he’s being genuine, at least this way Will gets to have a positive relationship with his grandpa.”
“I guess that’s true.”
She reached up and pushed some hair out of her face and I watched as it fell right back where it was before. “So,” she said. “Do you still worry that your ex-wife is going to come back and try to get custody of Will?”
I drew back. No one had ever asked me that before. And the truth was, I had worked really hard the last ten yearsnotto think of that as a possibility. I knew it would drive me crazy if I let myself think about Irene coming back into my life and ruining everything Will and I had built together.
“Yes,” I said after a few seconds. “I do worry about that. But I try not to. I don’t want to let her have any more of an effect on me or Will than she already has.” I stared at Stephanie for a few seconds, feeling a strange combination of emotions. I was grateful to her, for having asked me about all this, but I was also a little nervous about how easy it was for me to spill my guts out to her. I wanted to tell her everything, but then a part of me wanted to remain a mystery to her.
If we got too close, then who knows where things might lead from there…
They might lead exactly where I wanted them to—which was up the stairs, around the corner, and to my bedroom. And that wasnotan option.
“What was she like?” Stephanie asked, just as I pushed myself away from the counter. I was about to excuse myself and head upstairs. Alone. But then I saw that she was waiting expectantly for me to answer, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave her in suspense.
“Irene?”
“Yeah.”
I laughed. “She was fun. And funny. I already told you, I thought she was someone I could talk to, but by the time I sobered up the next morning, I realized that it was just the alcohol that made us both so amiable. She was a wildcard, which is how the two of us ended up getting married at a 24 hour Las Vegas chapel that night. She left my hotel room sometime in the early hours of the morning, without leaving so much as a note. I didn’t hear from her again until 10 months later. She showed up at my door with a month-old baby in her arms and said that I owed her $40,000 for her hospital bills.”
She smirked. “Sounds like a charming woman.”
“She was… she was a lot of things. For the next few weeks, she lived in my old house with me, as I got to know our son. It didn’t take long for me to realize that she had no interest in being a mother. She seemed to resent Will every time he cried, or needed her in any way, which meant that I quickly took over almost all of the childcare duties. I didn’t mind though. I was excited to be a dad, even if the whole thing didn’t happen the way I had planned.”
“You said before, that when you were in Las Vegas, that you were going through a big life change,” she said. “What exactly were you—”
“You know, another thing about Irene was that she was gorgeous.” I knew it was rude to interrupt Stephanie like that, but in all honesty, I was done with story time. I was sick of hearing myself talk, and I wanted to either move onto other things, or say goodnight. “Just one of those women that really turns heads you know.”
She smiled awkwardly. “Yeah, I know what you mean.” She looked away from me. “I assume most of the women you have relationships with are very pretty.”
I had to laugh. “You’re half right.”
She looked at me, confused.
“I do spend time with a lot of beautiful women,” I said. “But I don’t have relationships with any of them. Not really. I’m not a relationship kind of guy.”
“Oh you’re not?” she said. “Huh. What kind of guy are you then?” There was something lurking underneath her tone of voice, something hiding behind her gaze. I was pretty sure—about 75% sure—that she wanted me.
And I liked those odds.
I took a step closer to her. She didn’t move away.
“I’m a ‘let’s go to a nice restaurant, order an expensive bottle of wine, and see where the night takes us’ kind of guy.”
“I see.”
“But the real question is, what kind of woman are you?” I got even closer, so now we were only a couple inches apart.
She laughed and looked away from me. “Like you really want to know.”
“I do. I really do.”
“Oh please,” she said, still avoiding my gaze.