Page 32 of Big Balls
Ethan Alexander is nothing other than respectful of the boundaries I’ve set into place, but I still catch him watching me from time to time with a look on his face like he’s planning an extra high-risk play. Sometimes I catch him watching my hands. Sometimes it’s my mouth.
I don’t want to get carried away with the whole watching-him-watching-me thing, so it’s easier to pretend like nothing is happening, like we are the same people we were before.
But the entire drive home every night, I parse and dissect every single interaction we have until my two best friends are absolutely sick of hearing about it.
“Kiss him,” Nerissa yells through the phone at me during one of our post-work phone conferences. Heather enthusiastically supports this agenda as well, telling me that if I’d go ahead and make out with him, we could get it out of our systems.
But I don’t necessarily want it out of my system. I like the way things are between us now. He’s spending a lot more time with Katy out in the world, and I can tell by the way he looks at her that he’s delighted by how capable she is becoming at so many different things.
If I were to give in to temptation and kiss him, I’m afraid it would throw the entire situation out of the precarious balance we’ve found and send us back to a place where the three of us weren’t together anymore. And I don’t know if I can do that again.
I plan a pizza and a board game night where the three of us make our own pizzas, and Katy shamelessly cheats at Monopoly.
“You can’t take money out of the bank, Katy,” I finally say when I catch her pilfering a handful of twenties for the third time.
“Why?” She blinks at me owlishly. “I’m out of money and need some more. Daddy says more money can fix almost anything.”
My eyes slide over to Ethan, who looks sheepish and hastens to qualify his words. “Not everything, Katydid.”
She nods, all seriousness. “Right. You said almost anything. That’s not the same as saying everything.”
I sigh, at a loss for how to explain the difference between those two ideas to a six-year-old with the most concrete thinking of anyone I know.
But then Ethan cuddles her close and kisses her on the head. “The important things can’t be bought with money. Times like this are worth more than any amount of dollars.”
And oh, my heart thumps so painfully in my chest. As much as I want to stay angry with him, Ethan Alexander was proving himself to be more than just a good father. He’s a good man who knows the value of family time, and that more than anything else calls out to me.
He goes with me and Katy for our autumn hike, and then makes some pressed leaf art with us too. His turns out absolutely terrible. “Like a poo wrapped up in wax, Daddy,” chortles Katy.
Instead of getting grumbly about her teasing or even how much better her art was than his, he positively sparkles with delight. But despite the natural competitiveness that I can see drives so much about him, Ethan laughs it off and even found a little frame for Katy’s leaf art.
We go apple picking together, and if I blush when our hands accidentally touch, I could only hope that he didn’t notice. I took the apples we’d picked and made crockpot applesauce with Katy in Ethan’s fancy kitchen.
“Wow,” Ethan said when the applesauce was done. “It smells amazing in here.”
It did smell amazing, like the actual essence of fall. Warm apples and cinnamon wafted through every inch of the giant kitchen, and if there was anything more autumnal than this, it would be covered in pumpkin spice and a pair of fleecy boots.
“You want to taste it, Daddy?” Katy fills a spoon with the applesauce we’d prepared and holds it out to her father, and he gives her one of his special dad smiles, the kind that warms me from the inside out.
“Yummy,” he purrs at his cute little girl, and whatever was left of my resistance to Ethan Alexander’s charms slides away with his ongoing enjoyment in all of Katy’s adventures. He leans forward and kisses her on her nose then lets his sharp gaze linger on me. “Great work, girls.”
I preen at his words. I knew how good it was for Katy to try new things and find new ways to feel confident about herself. I wanted her to have what my big brother never did—a family that was able to meet her where she was at instead of wanting to pretend like she was exactly like any other kid.
Did we still have some rough times? Absolutely. The tractor noise at the hay ride had her covering her ears, but instead of dissolving into tears or refusing to continue, Katy had pushed through her discomfort and we’d picked two big bags of apples.
“Thank you for today, Zoe,” Ethan says, his voice low and warm and intimate. And my traitorous heart beats just a little bit faster at the tone in his voice, the appreciation that he is doing nothing to hide.
I don’t want him to see the effect his praise is having on me. Because if I thought Ethan Alexander was attractive when he was focused and driven on the football field, he is approximately one million times better looking when he’s affectionate and relaxed.
Happy looks good on him, and I take significant pleasure in being part of the reason for his happiness.
I swear I didn’t mean to watch him lick his lips, but since he was already watching me, I didn’t have a good way to pretend like I wasn’t staring at him too. While he holds my gaze captive, he finally winks at the end of the slow trace of his tongue across his mouth, and I remember to take a breath.
“Okay,” I say, faking a chipper demeanor to belie the racing of my pulse and the trembling of my hands. “We’d better get this put away and then clean up.”
“Aren’t you going to taste it, Zoe?” Ethan’s voice runs along my skin like a charge of static electricity.
And God help me, I do want to taste it. I want to taste it directly from his mouth, with its soft, gentle lips and teasing grin.
