“Usually my mom’s boyfriends either ignore me totally, or try real hard to be a dad-like...thing. One of them tried extra-hard when Mom was around and then ignored me when she wasn’t, but I told her about that, and he didn’t last very long.”
She sounded like she was thinking aloud, so Nate stayed quiet and appreciated the fact that she seemed to trust him enough to do so.
“They don’t usually ask me what I want,” she said musingly. “Huh.”
“So,” Nate offered, “what do you want?”
Eva frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t want an instant dad. That’d be weird.”
“Agreed. I don’t have any dad experience, anyway, so I’d need some time to learn how.”
“I don’t mind having a guy around,” she continued, still thinking. “Ken’s pretty cool. Mom’s super...feminine, you know?”
Nate thought about Stella’s flowing skirts and graceful movements. “She is.”
“Which is fine!” Eva said hastily. “Nothing against it. Just...one thing I always liked about Aunt Lynn was having someone who was less girly. Because I’m not super girly, even if Mom is.”
Eva tended to wear jeans or cargo pants and a hoodie, not dresses like her mother. She was dressed for work, now, but all that seemed to entail was a button-down shirt instead of the sweatshirt. She didn’t have any makeup on. Nate hoped that that wasn’t...a problem for her at school, or anything. Weren’t teenage girls famously judgmental of clothes and stuff?
“You should be as girly as you want to be,” he said firmly. “No more, no less.”
Eva gave him a scathing look. “I know that. That’s why I’m saying it’s nice to have different examples around.”
Well, that showed him. Nate was really enjoying how much Eva was simultaneously very adult and incredibly teenage.
“Anyway,” she continued, “let’s keep it cool for now. You’re not my dad. But we can talk and stuff.”
“Sounds great.” We can talk and stuff. Well...it was probably better to ease into the responsibility of parenting a teenager, especially when she had an experienced mother and aunt already in place. He’d step up wherever he was needed, and if Eva ever wanted to call him her dad, he’d be there with bells on, no matter how terrifying it sounded right now.
“And I want to promise you something,” he added. “I’m not going to make you move, and I’m not going to take your mom away from you. I live in Chicago right now, but that doesn’t mean I can’t move, or we can’t work something out long-distance until you leave for college.”
The idea of living a thousand miles or more from his mate made his chest ache. But he couldn’t separate her from her daughter.
Whether he could separate himself from his job, at least geographically, was something he still needed to work on.
“Thanks,” Eva said quietly. “I know you could convince her. She doesn’t like waitressing here. And I know it’s kind of a crappy job, and she’s doing it to make money so she can help me pay for college.” Now Eva looked guilty.
Nate pounced on that immediately. “This is something else I wanted to talk to you about. I don’t want to make you or your mom uncomfortable. I don’t want you to feel obligated or unhappy. But I do have some money saved. I’m not doing anything with it right now. A college fund seems like the perfect place to put it.”
Eva’s eyes went wide, and their food arrived. Nate busied himself with being pleasant to the waitress—Pauline, her nametag said—to give Eva time to get herself together.
“You’re Stella’s new guy, aren’t you?” Pauline said. “Keeping that Todd asshole away from her?”
Nate reflected that one nice little side benefit of the mate thing was that he wouldn’t be trying to protest that he wasn’t Stella’s new boyfriend anymore. “That’s me. He’s not going to get away with bothering her any longer.”
Pauline nodded thoughtfully, giving him an assessing eye. Then she glanced at Eva. “Drew should be in here later, if you’re sticking around.”
Eva bit her lip. “I have to go to work. He could come by the shop, if he wants.”
“I’ll let him know. Enjoy your breakfast.” Pauline walked off.
Nate thought about asking Eva who Drew was, but that might come off a touch...paternal.
Besides, there was something else on the table right now. Besides breakfast, which smelled delicious. “Well?” he asked her quietly.
Eva sat up straight. “That’s a very kind offer,” she said in a polite and grown-up voice. “But I couldn’t possibly accept so much money from you.”
“If your mother and I got married, it would be her money, too,” Nate tried.