Page 103 of The Problem with Perfect

So instead, I just give her a thin smile.

“Okay, I’ll figure it out. Good luck with your paper.”

“Thanks. Have a good night, Mr. Lock,” she tells me, giving a friendly wave before grabbing her backpack and heading out the front door.

I take a deep breath then let out a long sigh as her feet thud softly down the stairs from our second-floor apartment, thankful for a few moments of silence. Crossing the small living room to the kitchen, I snag a bottle of beer from the fridge.

I’m proud of the way I handled that, knowing how angry I was earlier when I realized Millie had come to the bar without Kasey, meaning she walked all the way there from our apartment alone. She could have been snatched off the street. Or hit by a car. Or wandered off to the ocean a block from the bar and drowned.

Thank God she’s a levelheaded kid. More levelheaded than Kasey, apparently.

I shake my head and sink down into the leather chair that used to belong to my grandfather, the familiar feel of the cool material and the comforting way it fits my body shape as I settle and lean my head back giving me a moment of reprieve.

Clearly, I need to make some changes when it comes to Millie’s daycare situation.

Thankfully, my mom helps by watching her on weekdays after school until I get home just before Millie’s bedtime, but I’m still struggling to find someone for the weekend nights, like tonight, when I work until after midnight.Kasey has been okay since she started babysitting a few months ago, but if she’s letting Millie wander off, especially on Friday and Saturday nights when Sandalwood is a little more chaotic, I’m not sure whether she’s the right person for the job.

I sigh and take a swig of my beer. It’s definitely something I’ll need to think about this week, but thankfully not for a few days at least.

Millie’s mom is coming to town for the week our daughter is out of school. Even though Toni is almost entirely focused on her tour, she’s not doing acompletelyhorrible job at making time here and there for Millie. This will be the third spring break in a row that she has cleared away completely, so I need to at least give her that much credit.

Almost as if my thoughts conjured her into being, my phone pings with a message from Toni, reminding me she’ll be here on Sunday afternoon.

I frown.

It’s unlike her to be so…specific.

I don’t doubt that she’s coming to town. She’s notthatnegligent that she just no-shows her own kid, but she’s never been punctual, preferring to be vague so as not to disappoint anyone when she’s inevitably late or delayed because of somethingsuper important.

I flick a message back, letting her know we’ll be at the house all day Sunday and to just let me know once she’s an hour out.

It’s easier that way. If I try to get a specific time from her and then I tell Millie, she’ll be waiting by the window, her forehead creased with a worry wrinkle that shouldn’t already be on the face of a seven-year-old.

Looking forward to seeing you, Toni responds.

I chew on the inside of my cheek and stare at those words for a long moment before taking another sip from my beer.

She always sends me stuff like that. ‘Can’t wait to see you’ or ‘Looking forward to being together again’…and then she gets here and shows me just how much she means it.

It’s unspoken that she’ll be staying here, at my apartment with Millie. It always is. She’ll offer to take the couch, but we both know the blankets and pillow I pull out for her are just a formality. I can’t be within a hundred yards of Antonina Crawford and not be sucked in, like a gravitational pull.

I mean, it makes sense considering the history we have between us. The connection we have. Thedaughterwe share.

Which is why her visits are always complicated.

I spend months and months putting Toni out of my mind, enjoying life as a bachelor. Well, a bachelor-father. I don’t reallydateper se because I’m certain my life with Millie is easier just the two of us than if I tried to introduce any other complications besides her own mother.

I don’t ask what she’s been up to while she was gone and she doesn’t tell me. Neither of us share the things we do while we’re apart—another unspoken rule, another way we tiptoe around things instead of addressing them head on.

But then she comes back to town and, like I said…gravity. That familiar pull of how good we are together. The heat between us. The way she feels in my arms.

We both know it’s only while she’s here, because after a few days or a few weeks, she’s gone again, off on her next tour or booking gigs with her band somewhere on the other side of the country as she chases her dream.

A dream that takes her away from us.

From her daughter.

Keeping her on the road almost 50 weeks out of the year.

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