Page 54 of Single Dad Problems
"We could be pregnant at the same time," I said, and then I was crying and laughing at once, which is my body's most reliable setting, and she was too, and we stood in my flour-bombed kitchen gripping each other like two women who'd spotted the same lifeboat.
Somewhere in the middle of that hug, with her heartbeat going against my ear and a maybe-baby I couldn't look at yet, the truth I loved to bury finally cracked out of me.
"Tess, I'm just so tired of pretending that I'm fine." My voice came out small. "Everybody's so used to me being like everything is A-OK. I've gotten so good at masking that I'm staying afloat, but the truth is I feel like I'm sinking. I just, I don't know how to ask for help and half the time I feel like I don't deserve it."
"You just did, dummy." She squeezed harder. "That's what this is. That's what I'm for."
And of course, that was when my phone rang.
I knew before I looked.
Tessa's grip tightened.
"Don't answer it."
"It's my boss."
"It's a four-day weekend!"
I answered because I knew I couldn't ignore it forever. "This is Callie."
"Miss Morgan." His voice was smooth the way things are smooth right before you slip on them. "I need you to come into the school this morning. There's a matter we need to address before the break goes further."
"Today's a holiday, Principal Beauford. I have my son."
"It won't take long." He took a meaningful pause and then chuckled. "I'd hate for this to become a bigger conversation than it needs to be. Shall we say an hour?"
He hung up before I could answer.
Tessa was already shaking her head. "No. You're not going alone. Vaughn drives you, he waits right outside the office, he's enormous, it's a whole vibe-"
"And that tells Darren exactly what he wants to know, that he scared me." I set the phone down so she couldn't watch my hand shake. "I shoved him into a stack of plywood and told him to choke on it. I'm not following that up with a bodyguard. He gets five boring minutes and then I leave."
"Callie-"
"But." I held up a finger before she could detonate. "You two can follow me in your car and wait in the parking lot. Vaughn can lean on the hood and look like a Viking." Vaughn, from the dining room, called out, "I do lean good." I almost laughed. "And the second I sit down in that office, my phone goes face-down on my knee with the voice memo running. Whatever he says, I'll have it. Every word."
Tessa stared at me, and I watched her rage turn into something prouder. "Look at you. Documenting."
"I learned it from a terrifying woman at a DMV."
"Ollie stays with us, then."
"I'll come with Mom." Oliver was in the doorway, puzzle piece in hand, having materialized like a small auditor. "There's a bench outside the office where they keep the lost and found. I'll bring my book." He leveled that flat gaze at me. "Also, I've had two schedule changes this week. If I stay here, that's three. I don't love it."
I looked at my son, who would rather sit on a hard bench than have one more thing change. "Okay, bud. Bench and book. Ten minutes."
At the door Tessa grabbed my hand and squeezed hard enough to hurt. "We'll be twenty feet away the whole time. And twin?" Twenty years of calling each other that, and she only pulled it out when she meant business. Her eyes were still red from thecrying and the laughing, and fierce as anything. "Whatever that cologne-soaked small-dicked tyrant thinks is about to happen in there… he has no idea who he's dealing with."
I smiled like I believed her, called Oliver over into the car, and pulled out with a biker and a pregnant woman riding escort behind me, plus a maybe I couldn't look at yet in my chest, a voice memo app open on my phone, and a feeling that the five minutes in Darren's office was about to change everything.
44
Callie
Oliver took the bench outside the office without being told and opened his book across his knees.
"I'll be ten minutes, bud."
