Page 91 of Blue Line Lust

“It’s okay. It’s safe to climb up.”

Alright. This is crazy. I’m climbing out a window to climb onto a roof, where an emotionally unstable professional athlete is waiting who may or may not be furious at me.

I take in a breath to steel myself against the insanity. Then I go. One step, then two. The ledge is surprisingly stable and the texture of the roof gives a good grip on my shoes. It’s not too steep, nor too far. I realize when I get to the top that it’s flat.

That’s where Reese is.

He’s laid on his back, gazing up at the stars. A half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s keeps him company.

Frowning, I sit beside him. “You scared the shit out of me, Reese.”

“I’m good at that. Scaring people.” He takes a swig of whiskey. “Real piece of work I am.”

“That’s not true.” Clicking my tongue to my teeth, I yank the bottle away from him. He doesn’t protest. Just lets the hand that was holding it fall limp and useless on his chest.

I set the liquor behind me and stare him down. “Accidents happen. It’s okay.”

“Was yelling at you okay?”

I frown. His eyes meet mine, like he’s looking for confirmation. When I don’t answer, he nods. “That’s what I thought,” he says. He looks away, lips pursed in self-loathing.

“You’re not right,” I argue. “I shouldn’t have tried to fit so much into today. Baby baths are finicky. They’re all squirmy and sometimes, they don’t cooperate. It’s easy to get flustered.”

Reese shakes his head. “No. You’re trying to give me an out, and I don’t want it. I was being a dick. I mean, I didn’t even catch her. You did. And then I yelled at you, and I scared her. Like some trash fucking deadbeat.”

Silence falls between us. It’s tense and boiling, almost painful.

The way I see it, there are two ways this could go. Either we sweep this all under the rug and pretend that nothing happened, revert back to the la-di-da B.S. we’ve been doing, where he acts like he doesn’t care and I tell myself I don’t either.

Or we could make a change. We could rip the Band-Aid off and expose these old wounds to the light. That’s the only way healing happens. It hurts like hell, but in the end, it’s always worth it.

Well, almost always.

I turn my eyes from the horizon to him. “Were you afraid, Reese?”

His demeanor shifts as he props himself up on his elbows. “Are you my therapist now?” he scoffs.

“Maybe I should be!” I explode. “Or maybe you should look into getting one! Reese, I get it. I understand. But you can’t… You can’t blow up like you do over everything that makes you uncomfortable or scares you. You’re a dad now. You have to do better. Be better. You don’t have any other choice.”

His jaw clenches. A pulse of muscle there tells me I hit a nerve—literally and figuratively. When he says nothing, I press on.

“You told me about your father. The way that he was with you and your mom. You don’t want to be like him, right? That’s why you fight so hard.”

Another scoff slips between his lips. “Why would it matter? He’s dead. He was a dick and now, he’s not around. That’s just life.”

“He doesn’t have to be alive to affect you, Reese.”

“Yeah, well, it’s fucking stupid.”

This man is so damn stubborn. I want to slap some sense into him. Either that or kiss it into him. Maybe both, I can’t decide.

Settling beside him, I lay on my back and gaze up at the stars with him.

“You know, my last family that I worked for, they really tested me sometimes. The kids were great, but getting so attached to them made me think of them like my own. That makes for some terrifying moments.” I laugh, thinking of a specific incident. “The little girl, Sophie… She’s such a ray of sunshine; she’d light up a black hole. She’s always been like that, since the very first minute. Well, I take her to the park one day. At this point, she’s just a little older than two. There’s so much energy stored in such small creatures that that was the only way to get her to burn some of it off. She’s running around the whole jungle gym and then launching herself tummy-first onto a swing. When she got as high as she could, she’d jump off. Rinse, repeat. Over and over.”

I swallow as the fear I felt that day creeps back into my stomach. Like dark, cold fingers, squeezing my organs to the point of bursting.

“I looked away that day for barely a second to pull out snacks because I knew she’d be getting hungry. But when I looked back, she was gone. I thought maybe she went up into one of the tube slides. It didn’t take long to realize that wasn’t the case. I couldn’t find her. It was only five, ten minutes, but it felt like forever. I was looking and calling and crying hysterically. Somehow, she’d gotten away from the park and ran toward the little forest near it. I heard her crying at the edge of it. When I found her, she was plopped in the dirt, her hair and dress a mess. But I found her.”

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