Page 20 of Kiss and Makeup
Chapter Nine
Kristen
What would Xavier do?
I stood there, tightly clutching Emma to my chest and waiting for the blank stare on his face to change. Waiting for him to spin around and walk away. Waiting for him to ask why I was holding this child.
“Zay-ver,” Emma sounded out, trying to say the unfamiliar word.
“Yes, Emma, this is Xavier.” I turned a little to the side so she could see him over my shoulder without twisting her head around. “He’s my friend.”
She gave him a good up-and-down once-over. “Like Lily is my friend?”
“Just like that.” A little hand waved in front of my face, and I had to swallow a flash of sudden panic. What if I looked, and Xavier was gone.
I looked, and Xavier wasn’t gone. He was smiling and shaking the little hand that had reached out to him.
All my fears collapsed, forgotten and unnecessary. Relief weakened my limbs and I had to set Emma down, smiling shakily as I held her free hand.
“Hi Emma,” he said. “Who is Brownie?”
Emma jumped up and down, trying to see over the heads of the adults but only gaining a couple inches of height. “Over there!” Emma pointed to Lily, and I giggled at the confusion on Xavier’s face, lightheaded with relief. “Brownie lives in Lily’s backpack. He likes school.”
“Oh.” Now that it had been clarified Brownie was not the name of a little girl, Xavier looked a little more at ease in the conversation. “Do you like—okay then.” Xavier blinked and retracted his suddenly empty hand as Emma took off toward Lily.
“Sorry,” I said apologetically. “She gets distracted easily. She’ll probably—yeah, there we go.”
Emma dashed back, little brown dog in hand, stopped just long enough to shout “Brownie!” and let Xavier say hello, then wove through the adults back to Lily’s side.
“How old is she?” Xavier asked, his suit tugging at his defined chest as he ran a hand through his hair to counter a little rogue gust of wind.
“Four. And Xavier…” Emma’s cheerful shouts as she played with her friends bolstered my courage. “Emma really was the reason I had to leave dinner. My babysitter called me and told me Emma was sick. I couldn’t just tell you I have a child now… That wasn’t something I could easily explain. And then…”
“I understand why you didn’t explain then. I get not telling me over email or text, either,” he added. “But why didn’t you tell me later?”
“Xavier, I couldn’t.” I gave Emma a little wave when I saw her head turning to and fro on a swivel, looking for me. “I… I was afraid of what you would think. I mean, I have a kid now. Don’t you… Don’t you want to know… anything? Don’t you have questions?”
“Well, of course.” He searched my face like there was something he was missing. “But I just got most of my answers.”
“I’m hungry!” Emma crashed into my knees and hugged me.
“Let’s go home, okay?”
“Okay!” She tried to run ahead, but I took her little hand in mine and refused to let go.
“I live just around the corner,” I told Xavier, shuffling Emma’s left hand into my right hand. “If you want to walk us home…”
“Sure.” Xavier smiled at Emma’s antics, and we set off. “I love kids, by the way. Remember, I used to have my twin cousins over? I always got stuck on babysitting duty because they liked me.”
Oh… oh yeah.Now that he mentioned it, I did remember those two little troublemakers. Their own parents, Xavier’s aunt and uncle, had a lot of trouble keeping them in check. Xavier, though, was a different story. He managed to find that thin line between friend and adult and walk it masterfully, and the twins’ parents had looked for every excuse to leave them with him.
“Yeah, I remember,” I said slowly. I remembered sitting on the couch while Xavier played with the twins. I never would have referred to Xavier as mature—except when interacting with kids. It was like their youthfulness and immaturity brought out a fatherly instinct that no one who knew him and his habits would expect he could have. He became a person who could take care of himself and others at the same time.
I lost my grip on Emma’s hand and snatched after her, images of cars and busy streets filling me with panic. She ran up the steps to our apartment building, and I let out a sigh of relief.
“Mommy, Mommy! Open the door!” I half expected her to take off on one of those bounces and fly up to the sixth floor and through the window to our apartment.
“Here, Honey. Swipe and open, remember?” Emma snatched the keycard out of my hand and ran back up the steps, standing on her toes and holding the card as high as she could. “She can reach,” I told Xavier so he wouldn’t think I’d set her on a path to failure. “It takes her a couple tries to swipe and remember to push the door open in time, but she always gets it.”
