Page 50 of Single Dad Problems
The nausea came up fast, that cold-sweat, spit-pooling, we are evacuating the premises feeling, and I grabbed the plywood castle and had a stern internal conversation with my own stomach. Not here, I told it. My stomach was unmoved. I breathed and swallowed and stared at the sun's little chipped face until the floor stopped tilting, because throwing up in a prop hallway over Darren Beauford would have been letting him win, and I'd be damned if I gave him a single thing more than he'd already tried to take.
But I didn't throw up, because I am, despite extensive evidence to the contrary, a professional. I got my hands to stop shaking.And then I did something that scared me almost as much as standing up to Darren did: I went to find the guys.
Because I wasn't alone now. I had three enormous men out there who'd told me they had my back, and for once I could let somebody help me carry something. Ben had said let somebody take care of you. Maybe I could.
I held onto that shaky and hopeful feeling all the way to the edge of the wings and then I heard them and I stopped.
They were behind the snowdrift flats, the three of them, and they weren't talking about mitten songs. Their voices had an edge I'd never heard them use on each other, the kind men get right before somebody shoves somebody into a wall.
"-because you keep crowding her, that's the problem," Cole was saying. "Every time I get five minutes alone with her I turn around and there you are."
"That's rich." Luke replied with none of his usual calm. "You had her at her house. Overnight. You don't get to lecture anybody about hogging her."
"At least I'm not following her around with a clipboard like her personal assistant," Ben shot back. "What's the matter, the color-coded calendar not getting you anywhere rich boy, so now you're-"
"Watch it, Ben."
"Or what? You'll schedule me a consequence? Block out forty-five minutes for it?"
"I'm not stepping back so you two can-"
I didn't hear the rest. I didn't need to.
Oh, shit.
Crowding her. Hogging her. Stepping back. Three best friends snapping at each other behind a cardboard snowdrift over who got the most of me. The exact thing Ben had looked me in the eye over a basket of hush puppies and promised was square.
It wasn't square. It was cracking in real time behind a snowdrift, and I was the crack.
And it wasn't just their friendship I was about to blow up. It was my job. My whole careful little life, balanced on a man who'd just looked at me like I was something he was owed. And I couldn't involve them in that.
I backed away before they saw me, got to the front of the stage, and clapped my hands twice in my brightest teacher voice, which did not match a single thing happening inside my body.
"Okay, my beautiful snowflakes! Amazing work, genuinely award-worthy mitten energy but tonight we're calling it early! Grab your things, find your grown-up, no running, Tommy put down the snow, it is not food, we've discussed this-"
"Callie?" Luke stepped out of the wings, clipboard in hand, confused. "We've got another forty minutes on the schedule. The blocking for the second number isn't-"
"It's great! We're ahead, actually, the snowflakes are very advanced this year." I was already gathering my bag, my keys, Oliver's backpack, Oliver himself, moving like the building was on fire, because in every way that counted it was. "Ollie, bud, grab your clipboard, we're going."
"We're leaving early?" Oliver frowned. "That's a change to the schedule. Two changes today. I don't love it."
"I know, baby. I'll make it up to you. Vanilla ice cream, the kind with no flecks."
"Cupcake." Ben now, coming toward me, paint on his forearms and real concern on his face, Cole a step behind him and all three of them moved toward me at once, wanting to help with no idea I'd heard every word, and somehow that was the thing that nearly broke me. "Hey. What happened? You're white as a sheet."
"Nothing happened! It’s been a long day, you know me." I got Oliver's hand in mine and aimed us both at the exit. "Thank you all for tonight, really. See you-"
"Callie." Cole's voice was firm, that one syllable doing the work of a whole sentence. Stop. Talk to me. Let me.
But I was already at the door, pushing out into the cold parking lot with my kid and my keys and my pounding heart, gone before any of them could reach me. Before any of them could look me in the eye and tell me one more time that everything was handled.
I'd believed it once. I wasn't going to be stupid enough to believe it twice.
42
Cole
I knew the second I saw her face that something was wrong. Callie went white in that auditorium, grabbed Oliver's hand, and bolted like the building was on fire. I've spent enough years watching the people I care about to know when something's actually hurt them and I just stood there and let her walk out the door.
