It wasn’t the answer I had wanted to hear, but I appreciated her honesty. “Goodnight, Janet,” I said, as she waved goodbye and left.
I closed the door, sighing deeply, and walked to my couch. I felt utterly and completely drained, and it had nothing to do with work. The weight of all the emotionally-charged conversations I’d been having lately had started to wear on me.
After a few minutes, I got up and walked to Noah’s room to check in on him. He was sleeping soundly in his bed with the night-light on. I could see the faint glow of light fall onto the picture of Daphne that I’d placed by his bed. I wondered how she would feel if she knew I’d been on what was effectively a date tonight. I paused for a moment, realizing that my night with Kristen had very much been a date. At least, that was how it had felt to me. Maybe that’s why I had felt so…strange afterward.
“Would you have wanted me to move on, Daphne?” I asked quietly, to her frozen image. “Would you have been happy for me?”
I wasn’t quite sure. Given our line of work, we had actually discussed certain things about our individual futures during our early marriage.
“If I died, would you remarry?” Daphne had asked one day while we had been lying in bed.
“That’s a morbid question.”
“Answer it, please.”
“No,” I had replied. “I would just pine for you for the rest of my life.”
She had laughed and kissed my nose. “Good boy.”
It was nothing more than a light-hearted conversation between young lovers confident in their future and their mortality. Looking back now, I saw the cruel irony there.
Still, I wondered how Daphne would feel if I moved on with my life and remarried. I wasn’t even sure how I felt about it. I looked at my sleeping son and felt an ache in my chest. What I would give to see him have a mother...
I thought about Janet and how detached she was from Noah. He was a job to her and nothing more, which was why he had no real attachment to her. With Kristen, it had been different. Noah had taken to her immediately, and that made me wonder. Was I depriving him in some way? Was I underplaying the importance of a mother in his life?
I was confused, I was scared, but most of all, I was searching. I was searching for something that would give me the help I needed to do this job right because I couldn’t screw up with Noah. I had to be better than the average father because I was all he would have. Unless…
I stopped the vain hope in its tracks. There was no unless. I had to stop thinking about a future wife and a future mother for Noah.
This was what life looked like now, and I had to work with what I had. I just hoped Noah wouldn’t suffer for it.
Chapter Fourteen
Kristen
“This is the second time in three days that you’ve called me up and scheduled a gym date,” Melody said, giving me a suspicious glance.
We were both doing some light cardio on the treadmills. We had TV screens right in front of us, but neither one of us were concentrating. The whole point of going with a partner was so that you didn’t have to watch the mindless programs they usually played at the gym.
I smiled. “Can’t a girl work out every now and again without it meaning something?”
Melody smirked at me. “No,” she said with finality.
I laughed. “I’m just feeling… I don’t know, motivated lately, I suppose,” I said. “It feels like my adrenaline is pumping, and I want to get shit done.”
“It also means you want a nice tight ass,” she pointed out.
I rolled my eyes. “I want to be healthy.”
“Please,” she said, pursing her lips at me. “Let’s be honest here. Health is always a secondary concern. First and foremost, people want to look good. They just talk about health because they don’t want to seem like superficial jerks.”
I laughed. “That’s how you feel,” I said. “You’re just projecting that onto everyone else.”
“I am not,” she said defensively. “I’m just educating you about how the world works.”
“Ah, I see,” I nodded, in a mock-serious fashion. “I’ve learned so much from you already; I almost feel like I should be paying you tuition.”
Melody smiled. “Please do; I could use the money. There’s this dress I saw in the window of a Bloomingdales the other day, and it looked stunning. I’m thinking of saving up and buying it for my date with Cameron.”