Page 82 of Single Dad Dilemma
I laid my head back and stared up at the ceiling. This admission wasn’t so easy.
“I’m not sure.”
Patty made a noise of surprise. “How come? Don’t you always have the next move planned?”
“Usually,” I hedged. Always. Ialwayshad my next move figured out by this point. A destination, if nothing else. Or I was asking my current job if they knew of anyone who might need someone with my particular skill set.
I really hoped no one asked me to list those skills, because I wouldn’t look great on paper.
She hermits well, but please don’t ask her to have surface-level conversation. Also wears disdain and general disgust clearly on her facial expressions.
I’d joked about those things for so long, and it’s because they had a basis in truth—but wasn’t there room for our personalities to change as we got older? That the things we wanted, the things we craved, could change too? Allowing those changes was often the hardest part. It made me think about what Barrett had said about not wanting to hold on to the way he used to do things. Arrogance, he’d called it.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever met a man so willing to admit his own flaws.
“It’s getting harder,” I admitted in a hushed voice, “to keep moving like this. But I’m not sure I know how to stop.”
Patty let out a quiet sigh. “I may not have a great answer for you, Lily. I’ll say this, though: No one’s making you leave. Not yet. The guest room is yours if you wanted to stick around Buffalo for a while after we get home.”
Her offer moved me far more than I dared admit, and that emotion built in the back of my throat. “Thank you. I’m not sure I’d make a great roommate, though. I don’t have very much practice.”
“It’s hard to change when we’re used to doing things a certain way,” she said carefully. “But I have a feeling you’d be better at it than you think.”
There wasn’t a whole lot to say after that, so we said our goodbyes after I promised to change the humidity thingy on the furnace. Larry was sound asleep when I disconnected the call, and I pushed to my feet with a groan, wandering down the hallway to the mechanical room. I found the knob and had to rise on the balls of my feet to be able to read the tiny print. Once the knob was moved, I dropped back down and shut the light off, a lingering sadness hovering like a cloud after my conversation with Patty.
I’d felt it all week, if I was being honest with myself.
It wasn’t the kind of sadness that weighed me down completely, but I just couldn’t get it togo away. It had settled at the back of my mind, found a tiny foothold in all my thoughts. A thin wisp of fog that couldn’t be swept away. If I tried, if I waved my hand in front of me or shifted my thoughts elsewhere, it simply crept back up, drifting in and out of my day-to-day.
Itbeing the thing I was feeling. It did have a name; I’d just refused to use it the entire week.
I missed them.
Imissedthem.
What a horrifying discovery to make, because holy shit, there was no turning back from that.
On the dresser in my room was the postcard I’d picked up when I visited Niagara Falls. For the last couple of weeks, I’d left it sitting there, unable—or unwilling—to write anything on the back. The cloud, though ... the cloud of sadness pushed and prodded until I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
Carefully, I picked up the ballpoint pen I’d left next to the postcard and slowly wrote three things across the back.
Maggie.
Bryce.
Barrett.
My eyesight blurred when I closed the pen.
For the first time in over ten years, I wrote names. Not a place or a restaurant or a sight that I’d visited. Living, breathing human beings—who’d provided memories to take with me, moments to miss and replay. A gift. One they weren’t even aware of.
With a heavy chest, I opened the closet to put the postcard away where it belonged, tucked in a clear page of a book full of pieces ofpaper just like it. But I didn’t close the closet, deciding instead to pull out my suitcase. The small one that I hardly ever opened, and simply kept bringing with me from place to place. Somewhere in Texas, there was a storage unit that held all the items I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of. But as I moved around, I took a select number of sentimental items with me.
They hadn’t seen the light of day in at least a year. Maybe longer. Why? Because it fucking hurt to look at them, and I made it a habit not to hurt my own feelings.
Except when I felt like this, I supposed. When I needed a tangible reminder of why I was avoiding this very thing. Why missing anyone was the last thing I needed. Why missing memories and moments and traditions should be avoided at all costs. Forget heaven and hell—thatwas purgatory. And I’d already spent enough time there to know how much I hated it.
My hands shook as I opened the suitcase holding the small white box. The edges were smudged and banged up, but the clasp still held tight. When I opened it, a small creaking sound filled the room, and I had to shore up all my defenses before I cracked the lid.
