“The couch or your bed?” he whispers.
“Both,” I reply.
He obliges.
• • •
I fell asleep in my bed.
Next to Miles.
Neither of us has ever fallen asleep afterward before. One of us always leaves. As much as I’m trying to convince myself that it means nothing, I know it does. Every time we’re together, I get a little bit more of him. Whether it’s a glimpse of his past or time spent without the sex or even time spent sleeping, he’s giving me more and more of himself, little by little. I feel like this is both good and bad. It’s good, because I want and need so much more of him, so every little bit I get is enough to satisfy me when I begin worrying about everything I don’t get from him. But it’s also bad, because every time I get a little bit more of him, another part of him grows more distant. I can see it in his eyes. He’s worried he’s giving me hope, and I’m afraid he’ll eventually just pull away completely.
Everything with Miles will come crashing down.
It’s inevitable. He’s so adamant about the things he doesn’t want out of life, and I’m starting to understand just how serious he is. So as much as I try to protect my heart from him, it’s pointless. He’s going to break it eventually, yet I continue to allow him to fill it. Every time I’m with him, he fills my heart up more and more, and the more it’s filled with pieces of him, the more painful it’ll be when he rips it out of my chest as though it never belonged there in the first place.
I hear the vibration of his phone and feel him roll over and reach for it on the nightstand next to him. He thinks I’m asleep, so I don’t give him reason to think otherwise.
“Hey,” he whispers. There’s a long pause, and I start to panic internally, wondering who he’s talking to. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I should have called you. I figured you’d be asleep.”
My heart is in my throat now, crawling its way up, trying to escape from Miles and me and this entire situation. My heart knows by my reaction to this phone call that it’s in trouble. My heart has just gone into fight-or-flight mode, and right now, it’s doing everything it can to run.
I don’t blame my heart one bit.
“Love you, too, Dad.”
My heart slides back down my throat and finds its normal home in my chest again. It’s happy for now. I’m happy. Happy that he actually does have someone to call.
In the same moment, I’m also reminded of how little I know about him. How little he shows me. How much he hides himself from me, so that when I finally break, it won’t be his fault.
It won’t be a quick break, either. It’ll be slow and painful, filled with so many moments like these that tear me up from the inside out. Moments when he thinks I’m asleep and he slides out of my bed. Moments when I keep my eyes closed but listen as he puts on his clothes. Moments when I make sure my breathing remains regular in case he’s watching me when he leans over to kiss me on the forehead.
Moments when he leaves.
Because he always leaves.
chapter twenty-eight
MILES
Six years earlier
“What if he turns out to be gay?” Rachel asks me. “Would that
bother you?”
She’s holding Clayton, and we’re both sitting on the hospital
bed. I’m on the foot of the bed facing her, watching her stare
at him.
She keeps asking me random questions. Playing devil’s
advocate again.
She says we need to work these things out now so we don’t run
into any parenting issues in the future.
“It would only bother me if he felt like he couldn’t talk to us
about it. I want him to know he can talk to us about anything.”
Rachel smiles at Clayton, but I know her smile is for me.
Because she loved my answer.
“What if he doesn’t believe in God?” she asks.
“He can believe whatever he wants. I just want his beliefs—or
lack thereof—to make him happy.”
She smiles again.
“What if he commits an awful, heinous, heartless crime and
gets sent to prison for life?”
“I would question where I went wrong as a father,” I tell her.
She looks up at me. “Well, based on this interrogation, I’m
convinced he’ll never commit a crime, because you’re already
the best dad I’ve ever known.”
Now she’s making me smile.
We both look at the door when it opens and a nurse walks in.
She flashes a regretful smile. “It’s time,” she says.
Rachel groans, but I have no idea what the nurse is referring
to. Rachel sees the confusion on my face.
“His circumcision.”
My stomach clenches. I know we discussed this during the
pregnancy, but I’m suddenly having second thoughts, knowing
what he’s about to go through.
“It’s not so bad,” the nurse says. “We numb him first.”
She walks over to Rachel and begins to lift him from Rachel’s
arms, but I lean forward.
“Wait,” I tell her. “Let me hold him first.”
The nurse backs up a step, and Rachel hands Clayton to me. I
pull him in front of me and look down on him.
“I’m so sorry, Clayton. I know it’ll hurt, and I know it’s
emasculating, but—”
“He’s a day old,” Rachel interjects with a laugh. “There’s hardly
anything that can emasculate him yet.”
I tell her to hush. I tell her I’m having a father-son moment,
and she needs to pretend she’s not here.
“Don’t worry, your mom left the room,” I say to Clayton,
giving Rachel a wink. “I was saying, I know it’s emasculating,
but you’ll thank me later for it. Especially when you’re older
and you get involved with girls. Hopefully not until after
you’re eighteen, but it’ll more than likely be around the age of
sixteen. It was for me, anyway.”
Rachel leans forward and holds her arms out for him. “That’s
enough bonding,” she says, laughing. “I think we need to
review the boundaries of father-son conversation while he’s
being emasculated.”
I give him a quick kiss on his forehead and hand him back to
Rachel. She does the same and passes him on to the nurse.
We both watch as the nurse leaves the room with him.
I look back at Rachel and crawl toward her until I’m lying next
to her on the bed.
“We have the place to ourselves,” I whisper. “Let’s make out.”
She grimaces. “I don’t feel sexy right now,” she says. “My
stomach is flabby, and my boobs are engorged, and I need a
shower so bad, but it hurts too much to try to take one right
now.”
I look down at her chest and pull at the collar on her hospital
gown. I peer down her shirt and grin. “How long do they stay
like this?”
She laughs and pushes my hand away.
“Well, how does your mouth feel?” I ask her.