Page 65 of Beating Heart
Yes, your neighbor who you aren’t dating, but seem to be spending an awful lot of time with, is coming over for dinner, right?
King
After spending the whole day together.
River
Sounds kind of like a relationship. And this may be her wedding day, but the wedding was called off a few months ago. She seems like she’s over it. Make your move.
Hayes
Hey, maybe she just wants something casual. That plays into your hands.
King
She’s dated one dude in her life, and she was supposed to marry him. She doesn’t strike me as a casual girl.
Hayes
Go plant some dandelions, dickmunch.
River
Don’t overthink it. See where it goes. If all else fails, tell her you like her on a sticky note. Because we can all tell that you like her.
I set my phone down and looked over at Cutler, who was doing a puzzle on the coffee table. He found this new love for puzzles a few months ago. When the kid wasn’t running around outside, this was what he wanted to do.
I loved the concentration and how intently he focused. It’s how I felt when I was building and creating something with my hands. I loved taking an old, rundown shack and turning it into a home.
Maybe my boy inherited some of that creativity from me. I had pasta boiling on the stovetop and the meatballs in the oven. This was Cutler’s favorite meal and one of the few things I made well, aside from barbecue.
At least I thought I did, but this was all according to a six-year-old, so for all I knew, my cooking was shit.
My phone vibrated, and I was surprised to see another text from Tara. This was way more communication than we’d had since the day she’d left.
Tara
Hey, I’m still planning to come in a few weeks. I’m looking into an Airbnb, unless you’d be cool with me staying with you?
What the actual fuck?
That’s not an option.
Tara
I wish you had a little more faith in me. I think Cutler would enjoy spending time with me.
I ignored the comment because she wasn’t in a position to ask me to trust her. She didn’t know shit about parenting or kids or Cutler, for that matter. She didn’t know that he loved puzzles and that he loved to swim and play baseball. She didn’t know about his asthma or the scares we’d had over the last few months. She didn’t know that he ate his cereal dry unless I allowed him to have chocolate milk on his Cheerios, which apparently, he got at his uncles’ homes whenever he stayed over there. She didn’t know that he loved to ride horses and that he had a heart that was so big it concerned me because I wondered how I was going to protect this kid from getting it broken in the future. She didn’t know that he was a massive flirt and a jokester and that he’d been collecting baseball cards for the last two years. She didn’t know that every parent-teacher conference I’d ever attended, I’d been told that my son always looked out for the kids who weren’t included.
My boy was a fucking rock star.
I knew it. My father knew it. My friends knew it. All the people in Cutler’s life knew it.
But she wasn’t one of them, so it pissed me off that she would have the audacity to tell me how things would go down.
Maybe River was right, and it was time to force her hand legally so we wouldn’t have to jump through hoops on the rarity that she came to town.
