Page 3 of Bring Me Back
But we are not his responsibility. Someday maybe I’ll have the courage to tell him we can’t accept the help he so freely gives. As much as I appreciate him and wish I could return the effort, it’s safer for us all if I keep my distance.
It’s gonna be a long week.
two
“Thanksso much for doing this at the last minute,” Ember says as she passes her son Silas into my arms. He wraps his arms around my neck, squeezing me tightly, and I hug him back.
“Don’t thank me. I didn’t have anything else to do tonight besides hang out with my favorite twins. Besides, when Eli is happy, so is my paycheck,” I smirk and she laughs.
Ember married my boss almost two years ago now, and he’s been a different person since she came into his life. The once stoic and detached brute of a man I’d known since I moved to Grovewood now has polaroids of his wife and kids hanging in his station at the shop. His flash sheets are often hidden behind his daughter’s crayon scribblings. We should all be so luckyto find our soulmate in another person and it shows every day that he found his in Ember.
One by one, I’ve watched my friends find the great loves of their lives, and I’m so happy for them all. A small part of me, a part I keep buried deep in my core, wishes I could find someone like that for myself.
There was a time I thought Cooper was my soulmate. When I first met him, I was thirteen and thought the sun shined out of the man’s ass. By the time I was fifteen, I was elbow-deep in diapers, and the illusion I had about a happily ever after was already long gone.
“Ya know, I can always ask Amelia to watch the wonder twins. You should come with us!” Ember says, and I roll my eyes.
While I'm barely 32, my life is definitely not the same as the lives of my friends. The idea of grabbing a drink at the bar on a Friday night fills me with more anxiety than I’d care to admit. I don’t look over my shoulder for Cooper’s shadow constantly anymore, but I still hear his voice in my head.
“You’re all used up, Lily.”
“Nobody will ever want you. You’re just lucky I'm still around.”
“They aren’t really your friends. They just feel sorry for you.”
I shake my head, pushing the thoughts from my mind.
“I’m perfectly happy spending the night with themost handsome man in Grovewood.” I tell her, kissing Silas’s cheek. He laughs, and my soul already feels lighter.
“Mama go? Mama go?” Scarlett, Ember’s daughter, asks as she toddles through the doorway.
“You'd better run before she cries. You know the mom guilt sets in when they cry,” I tell her, hoping she takes the out while Scarlett’s back is turned.
“You’re right, mama go.” She says, dropping their backpack at the door and hustling back to her jeep before a meltdown occurs.
I close the door with a smile. I love babysitting. It might make me the most boring person in this town, but I love kids. I love being a mama and an adopted auntie.
“Okay, Harding twins. How about some mac and cheese for dinner, huh? Maybe we’ll go crazy and have dino nugs too!” I tell the twins, putting Silas down and watching them both beeline for my kitchen. They know where the playdoh and paint are, all the best things their mom tells me I'm crazy for giving them.
“Nuggy, nuggy, nuggy, nuggy,” Scarlett says, her limited vocabulary already pretty solid.
I strap them both into the matching Ikea high chairs I invested in after the third time they spent the night at my house. Feeding one of them on my lap was difficult, but doable. There’s no way I could juggle them both.
I multitask, preheating the oven and opening the playdoh container for Silas while Scarlett seems to besinging a song about her nuggets now. This is the life on a Friday night, if you ask me.
The front door opens and closes, the sound of Jaxon's keys hooking onto the ring familiar to me by now.
“Hey honey, how was school?” I ask him, eliciting a grunt.
“Unfortunately, it’s still there, and I still have to go,” he says, and I roll my eyes.
The universe blessed me with a son who could do high school trig and calculus with little help, but spent 24/7 wishing he was in an art studio.
“Not too much longer, my boy. Graduation will be here before we know it,” I tell him, sadness seeping into my bones as the words leave my mouth.
It’s cliché as hell, but I swear it was yesterday the doctor put him in my arms after 26 hours of labor and an emergency c-section. Now he’s taller than me, the features of a man present where his boyish face once sat. My nose tingles as I shove the tears and emotion back down. He hates when I get all nostalgic about his growing up. Someday when he holds his own babies, he’ll understand. But for now, I’m just his lame mom.
“There are babies in this house,” he says, stopping as soon as he walks through the kitchen doorway.
