20
Making coffee with a two-year-old clinging to your neck like a spider monkey isn’t easy but, like so many Jones’ girls before me, I do what I have to.
Sam offered to make it but I’m not in the best headspace to have him moving around our tiny kitchen like he belongs here, familiar with where we keep the coffee and filters and cups. It would just remind me of…well…everything. How much time he used to spend here. How he used to pitch in to help me do the dishes or fetch and grab ingredients while I made cookies or cupcakes.
How it was between us.
Bad enough he’s at the table, sitting the way boys do, taking up too much space with his legs wide, his feet planted on the scuffed floor, watching me. I wonder what he’s thinking. If he’s planning what he wants to say or if, now that he’s gotten his way, he’s changed his mind and doesn’t want to go through with an early-morning chat.
“Juice,” Taylor says. Seeing Sam, a real live actual boy, looking at us, she tries to bury her head in the crook of my shoulder. Her words are muffled against my hair. “Mowah juice, Haddy.”
I shift her higher. “No more juice. You already had two cups. I’ll get you some water.”
This is an injustice that will not stand. She lifts her head to glare at me. “Don’t want watah.”
Sam snorts out a laugh.
“Don’t encourage her,” I say. “She already thinks she’s a princess and you laughing will only give her the idea she’s a funny one.”
“Sorry,” he says, trying to hide his grin behind his hand. “But she sounds like Mark Wahlberg in Ted.”
Huh. He’s right. “You been hanging out in Boston lately?” I ask Taylor. “Is that where you left all your rs?”
She’s not amused. Then again, she hasn’t seen that movie. “Juice, Haddy! Juice!”
“The first step in getting over an addiction is to admit you have a problem. You need a twelve-step-program for juice-aholics.”
“No pwogwam,” she says, not the slightest bit fazed. This is not the first time we’ve had this conversation. “Juice!”
I shouldn’t give in. If I let her have her way now, it will only make it harder to tell her no the next time.
But I’m tired. And honestly, I’ve already dealt with enough today. I glance at Sam. Still have more to deal with.
Sometimes a girl needs to take the easy way out.
“What do you say,” I ask Taylor, “when you want something?”
“I say please,” she tells me, switching from demon child to angel baby. “Juice, please, Haddy.”
I pour her more juice. “Want a donut?”
Already sucking down her drink, she nods.
“You have to sit in your chair at the table to eat it.”
She glances at her booster seat. Then at Sam. Shakes her head. “No, donut, Haddy. No, thank you.”
Well, at least she’s being polite.
Good to know a few of the things we’re teaching her are getting through.
“You don’t have to be afraid of Sam,” I tell her. “He’s nice. Look, Eggie likes him.”
Understatement of the year. Eggie lies on his back at Sam’s feet, belly exposed. You know, in case Sam should feel so inclined to give it a good rub.
My dog has no pride.
Taylor studies the boy and then the dog as if gauging Eggie’s trustworthiness on this issue, then turns back to me. “You like him.”
I blink. Blink again. Try to figure out if that was a question or statement. Sam’s watching me, hands fisted on the table, waiting for my response. “Uh…”
Taylor sighs because I haven’t answered her and am straining her patience. Ha. Welcome to my world, kid. “Haddy, you like him?”
Definitely a question. One that makes my palms sweat. One that’s a lot harder to answer than it should be.
“Sam’s nice,” I repeat lamely and he drops his gaze. He caught what I did there—how there had been no admission of my liking or disliking him. Yep, that’s me. Super clever. “He brought you a donut.”
He gets the hint and opens the bakery box, taking out the frosted donut covered in rainbow sprinkles and putting it on one of the paper plates I set on the table earlier. “I got this one just for you,” he tells Taylor.
“See?” I say, hooking my hands underneath her bottom. But when he holds out the plate to her, she whimpers and turns her head to my shoulder.
Sam slowly lowers the plate.
He’s not used to people—the female population, especially—not liking him.
Poor baby.
“How about we turn on Disney Jr.?” I ask Taylor—a rhetorical question as there’s only one way she’d ever respond to that.
“Yes, Haddy! Yes. Disney Junaw.” She kicks her legs in excitement, starts bouncing in my arms. “Mickey! Goofy! Pluto! Dai--”
“No need for roll call,” I say, before she can list every character she knows. “We get it. The gang will all be there.”
I take the plate without looking at Sam and carry Taylor into the living room. Set her up in front of the TV, her juice and donut on the coffee table. I shouldn’t use the TV as a babysitter, blah, blah, blah, but…
Drastic times and all that.
It takes approximately thirty seconds for her to be transfixed by the crazy—yet educational—shenanigans of Mickey and his gang and I go back into the kitchen.
I pour my coffee, add vanilla creamer to it then fill a tall glass with milk and carry them both to the table. And realize as I set the milk in front of Sam that I didn’t ask him what he wanted to drink.
“Sorry,” I say, my face heating. “You don’t have to drink that if you don’t want it. You can have coffee or apple juice or--”
“This is good.” He pulls the glass toward him. “I’m just…I’m surprised you remember what I like.” He lifts his gaze to mine and I can’t look away. “I’m glad you do.”
“It’s no big deal,” I say, shooting for cool and casual when it’s so hard being either around him now. “I mean, we were friends for a while.”
His mouth thins and I feel bad, like I’ve dashed some high hopes he’d had. But I don’t take anything back. Don’t assure him that I remember more than just his preference for milk when he eats something sweet.
I remember everything.
I pull out a chair, move it as far from him as possible—which is about six inches but hey, give me a break, I’m working with a tiny square table in a small kitchen here—and sit down. Wonder if he sat where he did, across from Taylor’s booster seat, on purpose, taking away my ability to put the table, and even more physical space, between us.
Feeling him watching me, I choose a cinnamon scone and break it in half. I take a bite and, as much as I’d love to just enjoy its melt-in-my mouth, buttery, sweet deliciousness, I can’t. I’m too anxious about what Sam has to say.
It hits me that once I’ve heard him out, that’ll be it. Things between us, our friendship, and that tiny possibility of more I could never even admit to myself I wished for will be over.
We’ll be over.