Page 32 of Resisting Mr. Fancy Pants

“Thanks, but I have a couple of things to do. I don’t want you to wait on me.”

“You can borrow my car. I’ll probably just eat and go take a nap,” Avery said on a laugh. “Let me grab my keys from my purse.”

I sent Mitchell and Zoe on to the car and said I would follow them. When Avery gave me her keys, I found her jeep out back and then followed Mitchell to Zoe’s new school, which was a lot different from her old one. Everything looked newer.

Zoe took my hand after Mitchell got her out of the car. She was talking a mile a minute about how much she loved the school. Mitchell must have warned the principal about my visit because Zoe’s teacher was out front.

“Mrs. Miller, this is my mom,” Zoe said to her teacher.

“Hi,” I said and held out my hand.

There was no judgment in the teacher’s eyes as we greeted each other, a far cry from my experience at the school I’d gone to and where Zoe had been. “Nice to meet you. Why don’t I give you a tour?”

As much as I didn’t want to like it, there was nothing not to like. The school was modern. Long gone were the chalkboards I’d grown up with. Zoe’s classroom had a huge touchscreen board that was connected to the teacher’s computer. Zoe’s friends were also lovely. By the time I left, I felt better about Mitchell’s choice to switch her schools.

When we got to our cars, I turned to Mitchell. “Thanks.”

“For what?” His surprise was evident.

“For recognizing she needed this. I don’t know how I missed it.” Not that I could have done anything about it. I couldn’t have picked up and moved to get her into a better school.

“You had a lot going on, and Zoe wasn’t talking. Being a new dad, I was hyperfocused. I’m sure if things had gotten worse, you would have found out.”

“Thanks anyway.” I turned to get in the jeep when he stopped me.

“Look, there’s something else.” He handed me an envelope. “Avery suggested I do things above board and not just write you a check. She said you wouldn’t accept that. So I had my accountant figure out what I would have owed you in child support from the beginning when I wasn’t working until now.”

I opened the envelope and pulled out the check. I hadn’t ever seen so many zeros. “This is too much.”

“It’s not enough. I should have been there. I heard you were valedictorian of your class and would have gone to college. Dad’s excuse for not telling me was so that I would finish college, but it’s not fair it came at the expense of your college education. And I plan to make things right. I probably would have married you and we would have been a family. But I’m in love with Sunshine. I’ll figure out some way of making this up to you.”

I’d learned to have thick skin when I’d been labeled a teen mom, but Mitchell moved me almost to tears. “I wouldn’t have married you. And I wouldn’t have let you leave school. Honestly, most of all, I wanted Zoe not to grow up without a dad like me.”

“Money would have helped.”

“For sure, but everything happens for a reason. Zoe has you now.” I tried to hand him back the check.

He waved me off. “No. That’s yours. For you. I owe you this and more. You should go to school. I’m here now and we’ll be able to work this out together.”

I didn’t want to cry in front of him. “Thanks,” I said, tapping the check in my palm. “I should go.”

“Wait, one other thing.” He reached in his car and held out a box.

“A phone?” It was the latest model that I had only ever dreamed of having.

“You lost yours and the school has your contact information. You’ll have to sign into your account to get it to work. The phone store wouldn’t do that for me because I’m not you. They said it would be easy.”

Now I was really going to cry. “Thanks.”

He nodded, and I got in quickly before tears fell from my eyes. As I drove away, I let myself imagine what it would have been like to be married to Mitchell. And as quickly as the thought surfaced, it died. There was another man who held my heart in a vise grip.

When I pulled up in front of the diner in Mountainside, I opened the phone box and powered it on. It took a few minutes to go through all the setup screens. I wasn’t sure how much a fancy phone like this would cost me for monthly service. I installed the app for my provider and logged on. There my account said it had been paid and set up for automatic billing. The last four digits of the credit card shown weren’t mine. Mitchell.

I sent a text to Avery and asked for Mitchell’s phone number, something I hadn’t really thought about getting until now. In fact, I hadn’t thought about my phone at all. I hadn’t called a lot of people before and Avery, the main person I would have called, had been with me.

She sent back a quick reply. At the same time, old notifications began hitting my phone. I ignored them and texted Mitchell another thank you.

Now that I had the phone, the urge to call Agan hit me. I deserved answers, didn’t I? He should have told me about his fiancée. Then again, guys who cheated didn’t admit that fact until caught.

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