“An endeavor doomed to fail. There’s only one me and you’ve lost me irrevocably.”
He stared at me.
I stared at him.
This lasted way too damned long.
I uncrossed my arms to throw my hands out to my sides and started impatiently, “Corbin—”
“We’ll see.”
Oh hell.
“I’ll talk to you soon, honey,” he said as he walked toward me.
I turned with him as he walked by me and I followed him as he kept walking.
Time for the big guns.
“Mom has cancer,” I announced.
He stopped abruptly and pivoted to face me.
“I think it’s bad,” I shared. “I just found out today. I’m not sure they’re handling it right.”
“Not a surprise,” he murmured.
“But whatever,” I kept going like he didn’t speak. “I need to focus on that. Focus on how to share that with Juno. Focus on what that means for us and for them and how we’ll fit into how they plan to tackle that. I don’t need you messing with my head.”
“In dealing with them especially, you used to lean on me.”
I did.
I so did.
That was the part where he made me feel listened to.
He thought they were as crackers as I did and it felt good having someone validate my decision to put a firm boundary between them and the part of them that might harm me, and, when she came, my child.
Back in the day, Corbin was that boundary. He was stalwart in that.
In that, he’d never let me down.
Now…
“I’m sorry about your mom, honey,” he said. “And I hope it goes without saying that if you need me in any capacity, I’m there.”
“After you scrape off Paula, of course,” I noted.
He didn’t even flinch.
He just concurred, “Yes, after I end things with Paula.”
We went into another staring match that lasted until I sighed.
Corbin smiled.
I had learned that in men, there was good cocky—the confident kind that was so confident, the little swagger that went along with it was attractive.
There was also bad cocky—the overly confident kind that was just annoying.
Guess which one Corbin was.
(Hint: not the first.)
“We’ll talk,” he said.
“We won’t,” I replied.
“We will,” he refuted. Another smile and, “Hang in there, honey. You need me, you know how to get to me.”
And with that, he turned again and walked out of my house.
I stared at the door he closed and belatedly realized that Juno would be going to him on Monday, which was four days away, and I probably should have told him he could not talk to our daughter about the possibility of reconciliation.
Any decent father would know to be extra cautious about broaching such a subject with their child, doing so only upon mutual agreement and doing it in a way that was also mutually agreed.
I couldn’t depend on that with Corbin.
This sent me to my phone on my desk whereupon I typed in a text that shared he was not to bring this up with Juno under any circumstances.
Probably texting while driving, he sent back, Of course not. Later, baby.
And yet again I had the urge to take my phone to the garbage bin and drop it in.
I couldn’t do that.
Instead, I sat back down at my desk, woke my laptop and did some Facebook sleuthing at the same time keeping my eye out for my daughter’s bus because I had hopefully one last unfun thing to do that day and it was going to happen around the time my daughter was expelled from a Twinkie on wheels.
Chapter Four
Desperate Times
Juno
Juno thought it was really, super nice that, whenever she called him, he answered by the second ring.
“Hey, Juno.”
“Hey, Mr. Cisco,” she whispered.
Her door was closed. Her mom was downstairs. Juno was sitting on the floor on the opposite side of the bed from the door and hopefully beds absorbed noise.
But it was late. Nearly time to go to sleep, also almost time for her mom to go to work.
This meant soon Mom would come up and check on things, like Juno brushing her teeth and hair and having her book bag ready.
She didn’t have a lot of time.
“How did things go today?” Mr. Cisco asked.
“I don’t think good,” she told him.
“Why don’t you think that?”
“Okay, well, um…first, I watched out the windows after they left school and they talked by Auggie’s car then Mom took off to her car real quick and Auggie followed and they talked there and, um…well, he was in my way and I couldn’t see her. But when he took off, she was crying.”
“Damn.” Mr. Cisco was now whispering.
“Yeah, but, um, okay, see, things are even more bad.”
She swallowed and her mouth tasted funny when she did.
She knew that taste.
It tasted like tears.
“Can you tell me?” Mr. Cisco asked.
Juno took a breath and then another one because the first one was all hitchy, but the second one was better and that meant she could talk.