Page 129 of You've Got Hate Mail
Cricket’s studying me while I struggle to look her in the eye.
Mabel’s right.
My problem was never Cricket.
My problem was always that I don’t know how to be attracted to a woman anymore.
There’s guilt. Guilt that I’m moving on.
There’s fear that I’ll make a fool of myself. That I don’t know how to read signals anymore.
There’s shame that I’d think of my own wants and needs when I have a daughter who lost her mother so young that she sometimes thinks her mother was always just a picture and not a real person.
And then there’s the naked vulnerability that comes with her knowing that I’m afraid I’m doing this dad thing wrong.
That if anyone finds out I’m fucking up this parenting gig, my in-laws might hear, and they might try to take Lav from me again. Or that the person I date would do something to give them fuel for the fight that I’m still not convinced is over.
“I ask because I was thinking of hitting the dating apps,” Cricket adds. “Not that you need to know. But I didn’t want to send mixed signals and confuse anything.”
“You’re—you’rewhat?”
“I’m thinking of hitting the dating apps,” she repeats slowly.
Like I’m still hungover.
“The fuck you?—”
She cuts me off with a simple lift of her brows.
It’s a challenge.
Why do you think it’s your business?
Are you going to stop me?
“Let me know if you want me to walk Lav over to the house,” she says. “I have to go see if my chicken left me overnight.”
She slips back downstairs before I can make myself say a thing.
I manage to get eggs and bacon going despite the way my hands are shaking, which isn’t normal.
Dating apps.
She’s hitting the fuckingdating apps.
Where strange men with fetishes about women who’ve been naked on the internet will try to get into her pants.
To see that gorgeous body naked.
To get firsthand what they’re probably buying off of GrippaBeav.
If they tell her there’s a single fucking thing wrong with her?—
Fuck, fuck,fuck, I’m sweating and I can’t make my hands steady.
I text my sister to ask if she’s heard from our parents.
She immediately calls to ask if I’m okay.
