Page 83 of Dr. Single Dad

He raises his eyebrows but doesn’t smile. Just because I’m not choosing that job doesn’t mean I’m choosing him. He knows that.

“And we talked a lot about how I feel when I’m with you…how different that is. How it’s woken up a part of me I didn’t know existed. All these things are mixed up in my mind, like my brain’s a giant snow globe. I feel like I need some time for the storm to settle.”

“In this analogy, am I Santa?”

I laugh. “You’re definitely Santa.” I reach for him and trail my fingers across his stubbled jaw. “It’s the white beard.” He pushes his face toward my fingers like a cat enjoying my attention.

“And what does the snow symbolize?” he asks on a sigh.

“I can’t…see properly at the moment. There’s too much to figure out. When things thaw, everything’s going to be the same but different.”

When he finally meets my gaze, I say, “I have to move out.” I pause and suck in a shuddering breath. “I can’t be your live-in nanny. This has gone too far.”

He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes and sighs. “I know.”

My chest deflates like a paddling pool at the end of summer. I know I have to go, but part of me wanted him to want me to stay.

“I’m not very good at this stuff,” he says. “Fatherhood is…it’s changing me. The physical closeness to another human…” He sucks in a breath. “I think it might have unlocked something in me. And then came you, and it’s not just physical…”

“No,” I agree. “It’s not. For me anyway.”

“For either of us. I don’t take a ten-hour round trip for something that’s just physical. My world is shifting. Before Guinevere, life was so simple. I had my work and that alwayscame first. Everything else in my life was…not disposable exactly, but not a priority, either. Life was easy, for the most part. I knew what came first and what I wouldn’t compromise.” He sucks in a breath and shakes his head. “And now? Now I have all these competing priorities and I don’t know how to make them fit together. I know I want Guinevere. And you. But I still want my research. I hope I can have all those things.”

I want to promise him that he can have me, but I can’t. Because I don’t know who I am beyond caring for those I love. “I need to figure stuff out.”

“Yeah, I get it. I want you to have the time you need to do just that. But the part of my brain that likes order and logic wants everything resolved.”

“Life’s not like that,” I say. “Nothing’s ever resolved. The best advice I can give a new parent is that everything’s a phase, but it’s advice for us all. Any certainty you had in your life before Guinevere was just an illusion. If it hadn’t been, Guinevere would never have come along. We never know what’s next.”

He smiles at me, smoothing strands of hair off my face. “Of course you’re right. And of course you’ve made me feel better. That’s what you do.”

But is thatallI can do? Make others feel better? “I’ll help you find a new nanny.”

“You’ll focus on getting well,” he says, his tone warning.

“And then I’ll find you another nanny.”

“And after that?” he asks.

I pause and the silence thickens, descending like a fog.

“We live in the ambiguity for a little while,” I say. “Is that okay?”

“Deep down, do you think we’re done?” he asks, still reaching for certainty.

I try to swallow down whatever’s stuck in my throat. “I’m not sure we’re?—”

“I don’t want us to be done.”

It feels like he just unzipped my heart and climbed inside.

“I don’t want us to be done either. But let’s figure out if this is about convenience because we live together or?—”

“That’s not what it is for me,” he says.

“Then we’ll find our way back to each other. But I need to figure out who I am when I’m not looking after people I care about. When I’m not giving all of myself away. I need the snow to settle.”

“I get it,” he says, his tone defeated.

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