Page 8 of My Dead Wife's Ex Will Do
I would never have made the first move on him. His wife had just died. My best friend. The mother of my kid. And his.
He was a straight, grieving widower.
I’m a…well, let’s be honest. I’m a flirt. I talk a good game, and I’ve had my fair share of fun, but I’m far less of a slut than I pretend to be. Case in point: minutes ago, I made a crack about Jason kissing something other than my jaw and spread my knees like an invitation. Just to see him blush? It’s not like I expected him to do anything about it.
I travel a lot. I lead yoga retreats all over North and Central America and I’ve worked as a personal trainer to a number of celebrities who are household names. In my world, there is no shortage of available pretty boys or gorgeous women. I’ve learned since knocking up Leah that I like dick far more than pussy and since co-parenting with Jason that I prefer people who are smart and steady. Not as superficial as nearly everyone I interact with on a daily basis.
But I’ve never really found the right person, you know? Not like how Leah found Jason. They were perfect for each other. She was the smartest person I’ve ever met. She’d have been valedictorian of our high school class if her father had let her graduate with us. She did speak at her undergrad commencement, then graduated summa cum laude with a dual degree in law and public administration.
All after having a baby at eighteen.
Jason’s also really smart, if in a different way. He was always the one to help Kelsey with her homework. I’m totally useless at that kind of shit. He’s built the music program at Saint Sebastian into something way more than directing a choir and leading a congregation in a few songs during church services.
I’m not much of a church-goer, or a classical music aficionado, but even I know that when a Catholic church’s music director is profiled in the New Yorker and the New York Times and the Lincoln Center set is willing to travel all the way into Brooklyn for a concert at Saint Sebastian, that’s not nothing.
I suppose you could say they were an odd pair to start out with. Leah told me once that Jason seriously considered becoming a priest. And Leah, well, her family was nominally Catholic, but there wasn’t much about her father that was actively Christian, if you get my drift.
But Jason doesn’t push his faith on others. He just lives it, in his music mostly, but also in the way he takes care of people. Leah, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer at fucking thirty-one. Kelsey, from the moment he married her mom. The members of his choirs and music ensembles.
Even me, from time to time. The whole thing that night started because Jason was trying to comfort me. Which was a little unfair. He’d just lost his wife and, while Leah was my best friend and the mother of my kid, it’s not like we lived together or shared a life or anything.
But I was a basket case that night. I’d tried to be strong for Kelsey through the funeral and the wake afterwards. I stood at Jason’s side while an endless parade of people—Leah’s extended family, colleagues, friends—came up to him and offered meaningless platitudes.
An aunt threw herself at Jason and sobbed a wet spot into his suit jacket. She might have been the aunt Leah stayed with while she was pregnant but I’d never met the woman before. Jason held her upright by the elbows and said something to her that made her smile through her tears.
It went like this for hours. And then, after everyone left, and Kelsey was tucked into bed, I lost my grip and broke down in harsh sobs while I was trying to do the dishes.
I thought Jason was in the living room and I could cry in peace under the sounds of running water. But then I felt a hand on my back and turned blindly into a solid, warm embrace.
Jason held me while we both cried. Then we drank a fuckton of whiskey. Then we?—
“Daddy!” Kelsey waves at me from a spot across the parking lot near the reception desk. She gestures at me to come her way.
There’s a small knot of people huddled at the concrete barrier between the parking lot and the grounds, staring up into the trees.
“It’s a sloth,” Kelsey says with the same bubbly excitement she exhibited as a child. “A mama sloth with a baby!”
I follow the line of her arm and hand pointing to a spot near the top of the tree. It takes a while for my eyes to distinguish the brownish huddled mass among the brown branches and the dark green leaves. “Oh wow.” I finally see the sloth. “Look at that.”
Someone offers me a pair of binoculars and I get to see the mama sloth slither a couple of inches up the branch, then reposition her baby snuggled against her chest. I hand the binoculars back to their owner and put my arm around my daughter’s shoulders.
“Pretty cool, huh?” she says. “Where’s Dad? I know he’s super excited about the birds here but I bet he’d love to see a sloth, too.”
“Yeah, about your dad, Kels.”
“He made it, right? He texted that his flight from New York was delayed but I thought he got rebooked on a later flight in Orlando.”
“He made it,” I reassure her. “He’s here. He’s taking a nap.”
I crane my neck down to look her in the eyes. “He’s kind of pissed about having to share the casita with me. You could have warned us about this, hon.”
Kelsey’s eyes widen. “Oh shit. I should have, Daddy. I’m sorry. It was sort of a last-minute thing. Adrienne asked the coordinator if there was room for Logan and Silas and when she looked at the guest list, I guess she just assumed that you and Dad would be okay sharing.”
Sharing custody of Kelsey while she was a child was one thing. Sharing a two-room casita in a tropical rainforest paradise is another thing entirely, apparently. To Jason, anyway.
That’s not all you’ve shared.
“Who are Logan and Silas again?” This wedding was supposed to be small, according to Adrienne’s insistence. If Kelsey’d had her way, we’d be doing this at a rooftop ballroom with a guest list of everyone she’d ever met.
