Page 65 of Single Dad Problems
We got up off the curb.
48
Callie
I was pretty sure dogshit was about to rain from the skies with the type of morning I’d been having.
I had spilled an entire mug of coffee down my pajama top at the ass crack of dawn and I had not yet changed. I had barely slept cause my realtor said we had gotten an offer on the house I shouldn’t refuse and I was still struggling with whether I should let it go. My hair was in the kind of bun that suggested I had given up halfway through making it. There was a small black smear of yesterday's mascara on my left cheekbone that I had registered in the bathroom mirror at seven-fifteen this morning, considered, and decided to keep. But despite the chaos, a soft flutter in my belly reminded me that even in the middle of the worst weeks of my life, something good was quietly growing.
Oliver was working through a reading passage about the Arctic tern, which migrates forty thousand miles a year, and was doing so with the air of a small prisoner who had been polite about his incarceration for ten days but was preparing to start a riot.
"Mom."
"Yes, baby."
"I would like to formally request a sleepover with Noah."
I set my coffee down. "Bud."
"Or Beth. Or Emma. I am not picky. I will accept any of them."
He looked up at me with that flat steady look that had been reading my face since he was two years old.
"Sweetheart. Come here." I patted the chair next to me. He moved into it with mild suspicion. I took his hand. I had to take a breath before I could say it. "I have to tell you something. I should have told you a few days ago. I think Mr. Cole and Mr. Luke and Mr. Ben are not going to be part of our lives the way they were before. Sometimes grown-ups have a fight that they can't fix. I am so sorry, baby. I know you loved them. I loved them too."
Oliver was processing what I said with a contemplative frown. Then he looked up past my shoulder toward the kitchen window and said:
"That's strange. Because all three of them are walking up the driveway right now. Mr. Luke is holding a big envelope."
My head whipped around.
Holy shit on a shingle.Three full-grown handsome men, formerly known as my boyfriends were coming up Tessa's gravel path in the morning light. Cole in the front in a dark t-shirt, hands at his sides, looking so hot it should be illegal. Luke behind him, was laser focused with a thick manila envelope clutched against his chest. Ben bringing up the rear, looking like a man who had not slept in a week, with the kind of bed-head I was definitelynotfinding adorable.
My body went through every available physiological response in about two seconds. I dropped my coffee spoon. I stood up. I sat down. I stood up again. My heart fluttered like a hummingbird on meth.
"Oh shit oh shit oh shit."
"Mom."
"Oliver. Listen to me. We are going to hide. Right now. You are going to your bedroom. You are going to be very quiet. We are going to pretend nobody is home."
"That's a lie. They can see your car. They can probably see us through the window."
"Get down."
"Mom."
"Oliver, I love you, I will buy you a dog, please get in the bedroom and be quiet."
"You promised no dogs ever."
"I am rescinding that promise if you do what I say. GO."
He sighed like he was humoring a deranged person, but he went anyway. I heard the bedroom door click softly shut.
The knock came on the front door about two seconds later.
I plastered myself against the kitchen wall between the refrigerator and the doorway like a woman in a heist movie who had not actually thought through her plan and was now committed to it anyway.
