Page 95 of Holding Out

“Because I love you madly,” Jenina said, blowing her a kiss.“And one more question, while we’re at it.Has it occurred to you, my friend, that maybe the problem isn’t that you’re too weak, but that you’re too strong?”

“Me?No way,” Becca said.“I mean, you remember me before New Becca.I had the shittiest self-esteem.I let people walk all over me.”

“So yousay,” Jenina said carefully, “but I never really thought you were weak.And New Becca, she’s great, but do you think maybe sometimes she is a little bit of an ice princess?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Like, ‘I’m not going to let anyone in, and that way, I can’t get hurt?’Like, ‘I’m not going to set myself up for failure’ is really just another way of saying, ‘I’m not going to risk getting hurt by you?’”

“That’sexactlywhat I’m saying.”

“But if you don’t take the risk of getting hurt, you also can’t set yourself up for success.It’s like with the tutoring thing, right?If you never tried it, you’d never suck at it, but you’d also never discover you loved it.Same with Griff.If you push him away, you don’t have to think about whether maybe, just maybe, you’re actuallyin lovewith him—which is, admittedly, terrifying because heartbreak and disaster and ugly crying.But you’ll also never get to find out if maybe?possibly?he’s also in love with you?”

Becca’s mouth opened, but no words came out.

“Just think about it, hon,” Jenina said kindly.“Meanwhile, if you’re just going to let the wide, beautiful world of Tinder go to fucking waste, let’s at least watch a movie or something.Or,” Jenina said, as Becca burst into tears, “we can do the ugly crying.I’ll get the tissues.”

46

“Just you and me, dude,” Griff said to Robbie, who was sitting on his lap, facing him.It was Nate and Alia’s first date night out in a while, and Griff had been pressed into service.He’d protested lamely when Alia had asked him—but he hadn’t meant it.“What do you say?”he demanded of the baby.“Should we head out to the bar and pick up women?No?Play Trot Trot to London again?Okay, man, you got it.I wasn’t in the mood for conquest anyway.”

He bounced the baby on his knees, then tipped him backward off his lap, his hand behind Robbie’s head, and Robbie’s mouth fell open into the biggest baby belly laugh of all time.It even got Griff, despite his dark mood of late, to crack a smile.

It also made his craving for Becca about a thousand times worse.Because Becca would love Robbie’s ridiculous belly laughs.And Robbie’s all-in, no-holds-barred smile reminded Griff of Becca’s sunshine grin.

He wondered how she’d been doing in Seattle the last couple of weeks, whether the job was going well for her, whether she was happy.Jake still hadn’t hired anyone to permanently fill the reception desk position.Griff had offered to take on more of the Fourth of July planning—the picnic was this weekend—so Sibby could be available on the desk.He tried not to question his own motives, whether there was a part of him that wanted to make it easier for Jake to delay hiring to fill that position.A part of him that still thought Becca might change her mind and ask for that job back.

And bloody hell, was he doing the same thing now that he’d done after Marina had left?Sitting around,waitingfor something to miraculously change?

“Robbie, my man,” Griff said to his drooling charge, “do not, I repeat, donotgrow up to be as much of an idiot about women as I am.Actually, may I suggest the Catholic priesthood?Or, just go ahead and be a monk.I’d say you should be gay, but you’d probably still be an idiot about love, and I think you would miss breasts.Although I’m probably just projecting.”

For sure, he missed a certain set of breasts, and the perky nipples that went with them, as well as the moans he could draw out of their owner.And everything fucking else, too—smile, blue eyes, long legs.But really most of all justher.Everything, and he meanteverything, was more fun with her, from movies to watching baseball games, to eating Friday Night Dinner to putting an arrow in a target—in both senses, he thought wryly, and with a pang of sadness, because he could have made her laugh by saying it.

When he’d showed up tonight to babysit, Nate had opened the door, and for the first time since Becca had left, he didn’t glare at Griff.Instead, he surveyed him, long and hard, and said only, “You look like shit, man.I don’t know which one of you guys is the bigger idiot, you or Becca.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?”he asked the baby.

Robbie gave him a sly sideways smile, screwed up his face, turned red, and delivered payload.

“Seriously?”Griff asked him.He reached for the set of changing things that Alia and Nate kept under the side table.He had Robbie securely under one arm, the changing pad in one hand and a diaper in the other when sound crackled around them, sharp as thunder.

He jumped.Robbie burst into surprised sobs.

“My man,” he told the baby.“You areokay.We areokay.”

And that was when he realized that he was still in the living room.He hadn’t traveled through time and space to the northernmost reaches of Afghanistan, but was actually in Nate and Alia’s house, a baby under one arm and a bunch of changing paraphernalia in his hands.

Also, Robbie still stank.

Another crack came, and Griff flinched but stayed firmly planted in the present.Robbie gave another shriek and buried his face against Griff’s chest.

“It’s fireworks, bud,” Griff said.His heart was slowing down.He took a deep breath and sighed it out, willing Robbie to respond to his calm.And the baby did seem to be settling down, his cries softer and spaced further apart.“Early Fourth of July fireworks,” Griff told Robbie.

I gotta tell Becca, he thought.She was fucking right.All that talking about it—telling Jake, leading the last few Saturday groups and fessing up to the other men—it washelping.Maybe it wasn’t a miracle cure, but look at him.He was in the living room, holding it together, wasn’t he?

“I gotta tell Becca,” he told Robbie.

It was probably just coincidence, but at that moment, Robbie stopped crying and smiled.

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