Page 48 of Bad & Bossy

Even though every second of it was breaking my heart.

He’d changed into a fresh set of clothes in my car after pulling out a gym bag from the trunk of his. I wasn’t nearly as soaked as he was, but he’d offered me a fresh shirt and hoodie anyway. I glanced down at it as a man across from us spoke about his struggle after losing his wife, and remembered I still needed to give back the hoodie I’d stolen from him weeks ago.

It wasn’t my first time at an AA meeting. I’d been once before during Mom’s longest stint of sobriety when I was eighteen, when she’d made it a whole six months. We’d all gone in support of her but the next morning, the booze on her breath had stunk up the breakfast table.

“Do you want to share?” I whispered to Cole, careful to keep my voice low enough that it wouldn’t disturb anyone else.

Cole shook his head. “No, just listen.”

He squeezed my hand again, his thumb tracing the back of it. When I’d first heard about his alcoholism and put the pieces together, I wished I could have gone back and changed things. I didn’t mean in the way of Drew, not in a million years, but if I could have had him with someone else…

But sitting there with him and knowing how hard he was trying, how much further he’d gotten than Mom, I was fighting it. I didn’t want Drew to grow up with an alcoholic father in his life, but if Cole was genuinely making improvements and could be one of the few who could make it out the other side, who was I to demonize him? And if he struggled occasionally, did that make him a horrible person? Surely not. My gut instinct was to help him but I couldn’t quite tell what my mind thought of him. But I knew how my heart felt. I knew that I cared about him no matter what—he was the father of my son.

A woman across the circle spoke about how she was almost eight months sober and I could feel Cole relax in his seat. Another person almost at the same milestone as him, struggling with the same issues, speaking her mind for him. “It’s overwhelming,” she sighed. “Sometimes I don’t feel like I have control when the cravings hit. Shit happens and all I can do is hope for the best.”

Cole squeezed my hand again, a silent me too.

————

“Tell me about him.”

I cracked a grin as I shoveled a mouthful of pan-fried hash browns into my mouth. The saying was true, “You don’t plan to go to Denny’s. You end up at Denny’s.” Either way, breakfast at half past midnight was a solid choice. “Drew?”

Cole nodded and sliced into his stack of chocolate-chip pancakes. “I want to know.”

“Well, he’s four months old,” I began around a mouthful. “Almost five. He lost the last of the hair he was born with the other day, so he’s looking a bit like a bald old man.”

Cole chuckled and shoved a bite of pancakes into his mouth. It was the first real, happy sound he’d made in hours.

“He only babbles right now. I thought he said mama once but Vee said it sounded more like la-la so I’m not counting it.”

“Is he a handful?” Cole asked. His foot tapped against mine and a little wave of fondness washed over me.

“A bit but for the most part, he’s fairly good. He doesn’t shriek for attention like Brody,” I laughed. “He sleeps through the night about half the time. He’s… he’s great, honestly.”

“Do you like being a mom?” Cole asked, his words a little hesitant as he watched me.

I leaned forward onto the table, resting my head in my hand. “Yeah,” I grinned. “More than I thought I would. Though that answer could change once he starts teething.”

He laughed and the weight I’d felt on my shoulders when all this began suddenly felt lighter.

————

His house loomed high above though I could only make out points of it with my headlights off. The drive back had taken us well into the morning hours—it was almost two o’clock—and I didn’t feel comfortable leaving him back at the liquor store where he’d left his car.

My phone dinged in my bag and instinctively Cole reached down to grab it. He passed it to me, and my screen lit up with a text from Vee.

“He’s finally asleep,” I sighed, flicking the screen off and leaning my head back on the headrest.

“That’s good.” I turned my head on the cushion, looking across the center console at Cole. He’d calmed down so much since I’d met him at the liquor store. There seemed to be an ease now between us, something that felt far more like comfort instead of the underlying tension since he’d found out I had a kid.

“The last time you were here,” Cole started, his hand creeping across the center console and coming to rest on my bare mid-thigh, “When you left, was it because of him?”

“In a roundabout way, yes.” I shifted, turning onto my side. “I needed to pump but I’d left it in my car back at the restaurant.”

“And you didn’t want me to know that?”

“It wasn’t that I didn’t want you to know,” I lied. Thinking on my feet, I threw out the one plausible thing I could come up with that wasn’t I didn’t want you to figure out he’s your kid. “I just… I don’t know. People get weird about having sex with a new mom, you know? They think things aren’t quite right down there, or that it’s like throwing a sausage down a hallway, and I didn’t want you to get weirded out, I guess.”

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