Page 27 of Single Dad Dilemma
For a few more moments, I watched the kids play and let that insistence spread, just a little bit further. I pinched my eyes shut and let out a shaky breath.
When I opened them, Barrett’s handwriting came into view.
“He was not joking, was he?” I murmured.
After-school rules
1. Homework done before dinner
2. No screens until after dinner
3. Dinner should have protein, fruit and veggies. No treats until all of that is finished. I will be reimbursing you for groceries, so please keep receipts.
There was more, but I just ... stopped reading them. He underlinedwilltwice, which had me rolling my eyes.
“Quit yelling at me, Coach,” I muttered.
With my brow pinched, I folded up the letter and put it right back into the envelope. The kids came inside with Larry tucked in Maggie’s arms. I swear he gave me a look likeSee? She likes carrying me. He was always happiest when someone else did the walking, lazy little brute.
“Do you guys have homework?” I asked. “Should you do that before dinner?”
I could practically hear the man shouting about rule number one in my ear.
This is why there are rules, growl, growl. This is why I should’ve paid you.
And it was precisely why Ididn’twant him to pay me. Having that man as my boss would give me hives.
They looked at each other. “Can’t we do it later?” Bryce asked. “I’ve been doing schoolwork allday.”
For a moment, I thought about what I should do. What a responsible adult might choose in this moment. But even using the wordresponsiblefelt like dismissing an entire gray area when it came to preteen best practices. In a situation like this—to do the homework now or later—there was no such thing as right and wrong. Barrett would disagree, of course, but Barrett wasn’t here, was he?
Maggie and Bryce were young, and when I was their age, the last thing I wanted was to go straight from school to doing homework. It was a fight oft repeated during my childhood.
It would be so much easier if you just got it done. You always want to do things the hard way, don’t you?
I blinked the memory away, fighting a different kind of tightness in my throat.
“Yeah,” I said, giving him a smile. “You can do it later. Anyone up for aMario Kartbattle before dinner? I can order some pizza, if that sounds good.”
They whooped loudly, flinging off their coats to run into the family room.
True to Barrett’s word, I never saw him. The whole week passed in a pleasant blur of my new routine: ease into my morning with a cup of coffee, do yoga in the family room, run on the treadmill downstairs, beg and plead for Larry to pee outside while we both froze our asses off, then make some lunch. I’d usually read or, if it wasn’t too cold, explore the area until it was almost time for the bus to pull to its squeaky stop in front of the house.
What shocked me most was how much I looked forward to them getting dropped off every day.
Even though he’d be embarrassed to have me admit it out loud, Bryce was one of the sweetest boys I’d ever met. He asked for my advice about things at school—drama with friends and a girl he thought was pretty. He checked in to see if he could help clean up dishes after dinner. And as much as he teased his sister, he was constantly looking out for her, in little ways that had me on the edge of melting into a happy pile of goo.
At the base of whatever smelly-preteen-boy antics he participated in, Bryce was kind, and that was the best sort of kid to have around.
And Maggie?
I’d decided quite quickly that Maggie was my platonic child soulmate.
She was adventurous and quick-thinking. She had a voracious thirst for knowledge and wanted to know how and why I did everything. The moment I suggested anything, she was instantly game. And she was constantly asking about the places I’d lived, the things I’d experienced.
“Whoa, what’s this?” she asked, scrolling through the pictures on my phone.
I nested in next to her on the couch. “That’s Sedona. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
