Page 20 of Filthy Little Midlife Fling

He’s smiling again. He’s laughing and playing. He can talk about his parents without bursting into tears. His tantrums have all but stopped. Dating anyone risks all that progress. How would Danny feel if I brought a woman into his life and she started trying to mother him? How would I feel if she let him down even once?

I divorced the last woman who did that. I vowed to never let it happen again. Danny will always come first.

So why the hell did I make that stupid deal with Audrey?

She sat on the other side of my desk, green-eyed, lush-lipped, and I felt almost dizzy at the sight of her. All the anger I’d felt for her melted away when she told me about her divorce, because I knew exactly what she meant. It was the first time I’d heard someone talk about the breakdown of their marriage in a way that made sense to me.

My divorce wasn’t just a breakup. It changed the way I think about people. It isolated me in a way I hadn’t been able to put into words until I heard Audrey talking about her experience like she’d been through the exact same thing.

I wanted to help her.

I wasn’t thinking about Danny. I wasn’t thinking about money, or business, or anything logical. I was just thinking about the sad look in her eyes and what I could do to fix it. Then I remembered the Volkswagen paperwork, and I saw the organized piles she’d made on my desk, and words just vomited out of my mouth before I could stop them.

I’m such an idiot.

In the yard next door, Audrey gathers up her pile of twigs and leaves and stuffs them into a big trash bag. “That’s our new neighbor, Audrey,” I tell my nephew.

“Oh.”

“Get your hands and face off the glass and come put your shoes on. You’re getting greasy marks all over the window.”

Danny pulls his face and hands away and stares at the prints he’s left behind. He tries to rub them off with his fingers, which predictably makes them worse. “Whoops.”

“Come on. Shoes. Don’t you want to go to the water park with Jace?”

“Yes! We’re going to race down the big slides. He thinks he’s faster than me but he’s not.”

I grin. “Your mom was competitive too.”

He glances at me, one shoe in his hands. “Really?”

“Yep. She was two years older than me, so when we were kids she could beat me in a footrace. The first time I won, she didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day.”

Danny’s smile is wide and bright. “She was a sore loser.”

“Big time.”

“I didn’t know that.”

The ball of grief in my gut hasn’t gone away, and it lets out a little pulse of pain. I ruffle Danny’s hair and check his backpack. He’s got a towel, snacks, water, sunblock, a hat, flip-flops, and his handheld video game in case the water park fails to hold his attention. I’ve probably forgotten something. Sometimes it feels like I’ll never get the hang of this parenting thing. “Ready?” I ask, holding up the straps of the pack.

He slides them on and heads for the door. “I’m so going to beat Jace on the slides.”

Huffing a laugh, I head out the door and lock up. Audrey glances up when she hears us, one hand going to the big floppy hat on her head. She’s kneeling near the bushes again, spreading mulch around the base. Her gaze flicks from Danny to me, a questioning look on her face. Then she smiles and waves.

Danny stops in the middle of the yard to stare at her. “Are you the one who crashed into our tree?”

Audrey goes still, then slowly stands. She’s wearing gardening gloves, a baggy old tee, and shorts that show off her mouthwatering legs.

I like that she’s taken it upon herself to clean up the bushes. She takes responsibility for her mistakes; I can respect that in a person.

Agreeing to fix her van in exchange for a tidy office was a mistake, and now I need to live with it. As her lips curl into a hesitant smile, my resolve strengthens: nothing will happen between us. Danny is and always will be my priority. I don’t have time to date—at least not until Danny’s older.

I watch her gulp, then incline her head. “Yes. Your…dad…was very kind when he explained what had gone wrong with my van.”

“He’s my uncle, not my dad,” Danny answers, “but sometimes I call him Dad anyway.”

The first time he did, I held myself together until he was in bed that evening, and then I buried my face in a pillow and cried. It was the first time I’d shed a tear in decades. Hadn’t even cried at my sister’s funeral, but that little kid calling me his father turned me into a blubbering mess. Danny did it casually, too, which somehow made it harder to handle. He was playing in the backyard and ran into the kitchen to say, “Dad! Watch this!” before running outside and throwing a baseball at a target I’d set up on the fence. Bullseye. Hit me right in the middle of my chest.

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