Paul’s brow furrows. “Sex? What about sex?”
Logan laughs out loud. It’s more of a bark. But I hear it. “Shut up,” I grumble, and I kick his knee.
He laughs again. “I didn’t tell them about that.” He cups his hands around his mouth and says, “He did her in the coat room.”
I take a sip of my beer. A grin tugs at my lips. Hell, they already know. “Supply closet, actually.”
“How was it?” Pete asks.
I scowl at him. “None of your f**king business.”
Sam puffs his chest out and pretends to be Paul. “Did you use a condom?” He laughs. I don’t. I’m not going to tell them that part, regardless.
“I’m shooting blanks, man. We all know that. I couldn’t get her pregnant if I wanted to.”
“You don’t know that,” Paul says.
“I do, too. I know in the very marrow of my bones that I will never have a child of my own.” I hold up a finger. “But,” I say, “Sky just happens to have three already, and they all need a dad, so I’m a pretty happy guy.”
“Are you really?” Paul asks. His brow furrows. He grabs my knee and squeezes it. “You going to be satisfied with that?”
I take another sip of my beer. “I’ll have to be, won’t I?”
“You want a kid, man, we’ll all donate sperm for you. We could mix them all together so we have no idea who the father is.” Sam laughs.
“There’s no f**king way I’d let one of you get Sky pregnant. No.” Absolutely not.
“You ever need my sperm, you let me know,” Sam says. “Hell, I don’t have a girlfriend. I’d be happy to participate. Give me a magazine and a little plastic cup.” He makes a crude gesture with his hand.
What’s bad is that he’s half serious. Any of them would do it for me, I’m pretty sure. “I’ll be happy with the kids we have. I already love Seth and Joey and Mellie.”
“Do you worry at all about people’s perception of them, and you when you’re with them?” Paul asks. He’s playing devil’s advocate, I’m sure, because we weren’t raised to see a difference in color. We see people, the way it should be.
“I don’t worry about it at all. None whatsoever.” That’s the God’s honest truth. “I’m humbled by the very idea of being their dad.” I have to swallow past the lump in my throat all of a sudden. Paul squeezes my shoulder. That doesn’t help.
“So what happened at the wedding?” Sam asks. He rubs his hands together like he’s excited.
“Sky got scared. She took off when she thought I had still have feelings for April. I had to go to her and prove that I don’t.”
“Did Emily f**k it up for you by mentioning the letter?” Logan asks. He winces.
“That letter saved me,” I say, chuckling.
“What letter?” Sam and Pete look at one another.
“I wrote a letter to April when I was dying,” I tell them. They had no idea. “I wrote one for all of you.”
Sam raises his hand. “I want mine.”
“Nope.” I shake my head. “I didn’t die, so you don’t get a letter. Deal with it.”
“Em knew about the letters, but we didn’t?” Logan asks. He pretends to pull a knife from his chest.
“She promised to deliver them for me.”
He nods. “You trusted her. I’m glad.”
“She’s trustworthy.” I shrug my shoulders. He just smiles.
Sam stands up and stretches. “Well, if we’re not going to talk about jizzing in a cup, I’m going to bed.”
“Me, too,” Pete says. He gets up and pulls his keys from his pocket. “Emily’s going to drop Reagan off at home.”
Logan drops his feet to the floor. “I better go, too, then,” he says. He jerks on my ponytail as he walks by me. But then he walks back to stand in front of me. I’m happy for you, he signs.
I grin at him. Thanks. I need to talk to him about something. Tomorrow, do you think you can draw up a new tat for me?
Any idea what you want?
I know exactly what I want. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.
He nods and ruffles my hair because he knows how much that shit bothers me.
Then it’s just me and Paul.
“I’m really proud of you,” he says.
I jerk my head up. “What brought that on?”
He shrugs his shoulders.
“It was the sex in the supply closet, right?” I pat my chest. “You know I got mad skills in the sack.”
He chuckles. “You got mad skills in life, Matt.” He closes one eye and looks at me. “You ever think about going to college?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I like what I’m doing.” I think about it for a second. “I might have to make my appointments a little earlier in the day, though, so I can be home at night.” Paul already does that when he has Hayley. He works late one week and comes home early the next.
“We can cover.” He nods. “Whatever you need to do, we’ll make it work, just like always.”
“Thanks.”
“You know she makes more money than you do, right?”
I laugh. “Yeah, I know.”
“Does it bother you?”
“That she’s successful and educated? No. Doesn’t bother me at all. Hell, maybe I’ll stay home and be Mr. Mom.”
“You’d be good at that.” He lays his head back and closes his eyes.
“You ever think about going back to college?” I ask. He never even got a chance to go; he was too busy taking care of us.
He shrugs, suddenly looking really uncomfortable. He plays with a string on his jeans. “Never had time to give it much thought.”
Oh, he’s thought about it, if his avoidance is any indication. “You should go. When I move out to go live with Sky, it’ll just be you and Hayley here. You won’t know what to do with all the quiet.”
He snorts. “Like I could ever get rid of you guys. You’re all here more than you’re at home.”
“Can I ask you something?” I say quietly. I try not to get into his personal business, but I can’t help it.
“You can ask. I can’t promise I’ll answer.”
“What’s going on with you and Friday?”
He groans. “Nothing. Why? What did she tell you?”
I try to play it off. “She didn’t tell me anything. There’s just, like, this undercurrent when you’re in a room together. What did you do to her?”
“I kissed her,” he blurts out.
I choke. “You kissed Friday?” I thump my fist against my chest, trying to restart my heart.
“Well, we kind of kissed each other.”
I grin. “How was it?”
“Amazing,” he breathes. But then he realizes what he said, and he sobers. “I mean, it was okay.”
He’s such a bad liar. “You should ask her out,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I did. She told me no. She’s been telling me no for years.”
“You know she’s not a lesbian, right?” I ask.
He raises one brow. “No thanks to you, yes.”
I chuckle. “Sorry about that.”
“No you’re not.” But he’s grinning. “She’s got some issues,” he finally says. “I would love to know what they are.”
“What kind of issues?” I ask.
“I don’t know. The I-don’t-have-any-family kind. The girl is completely alone. You know she doesn’t even go home in the summer?”
“Well, she didn’t get picked out of a cabbage patch.” I stay quiet for a minute because it looks like he’s thinking. “What happened when you kissed her?”
“Sparks,” he says. “Fucking sparks.” He blows out a breath.
“What about Kelly?”
His gaze jerks up. “What about her?”
“I’m guessing that Friday wouldn’t like kissing you when you’re still sleeping with Kelly. Was that the problem?” Getting information out of Paul is like pulling teeth.
“I haven’t slept with Kelly since you and I talked about it that morning. Haven’t slept with anybody since I kissed Friday. I can’t get her off my f**king mind.”
“So go for it.”
He shakes his head. “She said no way. Her exact words were no f**king way, Paul, you stupid son of a bitch. Then she told me to go f**k myself.”
That’s Friday for you. You have to love her.
Suddenly, there’s a knock at the door. I jump to go answer, hoping deep in my heart that Sky has come to see me, to be sure everything is all right. To tell me she loves me and can’t wait another minute to see me. I open the door and my heart stalls, but for a completely different reason. It’s not Sky at my door. It’s April. She has her arms crossed, and she’s all wet. Her makeup streaks down her face, making her look like a semi-drowned raccoon. She’s still in her wedding dress and a puddle is forming on the floor beneath her.
“Can I come in?” she asks.
I step back and let her walk by me, right into the house, and right back into my life.
Skylar
Dad is still up washing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen when I get home. I toss my keys onto a table, and he turns to face me, rubbing his hands on a kitchen towel. “I didn’t think you’d be home until the morning,” he says.
I shrug my shoulders. “I missed my kids,” I say. I smile because it’s true. I really did miss them.
“Never thought I’d hear you say that.” He lays the towel down on the counter and crosses his arms. “Did Matt find you?”
I nod. I don’t need to tell him more than that.
“What was that all about?” he asks.
“Just stuff,” I say. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter, Sky,” he protests.
I don’t like that he’s acting like this. I don’t like it at all. He has no right. “What gives you the right to ask me questions, Dad?” I say. The words hang there in the air between us, visible and palpable, almost living and breathing. “I did what you wanted. I took on your responsibility. That doesn’t mean that you get a free ticket into my life.”
“I don’t want a free ticket,” he says. He turns away. “Never mind,” he mutters.
I let out the breath I was holding. “What do you want, Dad?” I ask.
“I don’t want a free pass, Sky,” he says. “But I do want to earn a ticket. I’m trying. And I know I’ve done a brilliant job of walking away my whole life, but I don’t want to walk away right now.” He holds out his hands like he’s surrendering. “So, what happened with Matt?”
“He came to see me,” I admit. “He came to my apartment. Why did you give him my address?”
He chuckles. “The boy was wrecked. I couldn’t sit here and let him suffer.”
“Why would you care about Matt’s suffering?” I cross my arms and glare at him.
“I walked away from your mother’s suffering for a long time. And yours. And now that I’m trying to be aware of all of it, you don’t get to give me a hard time about it.”
“Yes, I do.” I sound like Mellie when she doesn’t get her way.
He chuckles. “You can. But it won’t get either of us anywhere.” He waits a beat. “You know he came to see me, right?” he asks.
I roll my eyes. “I’m not deaf, Dad. You just told me that.”
“Not today, Sky. Yesterday. He came to see me.”
I go to the fridge and get a bottle of water. Chunky Monkey makes me thirsty, apparently. “Why would Matt come to see you?”
“He wanted to ask for my permission to marry you.”
I drop my bottle, and it rolls across the floor. “He wanted what?”
“You’re not deaf, Sky,” he says, repeating my earlier taunt.
“Not funny, Dad.” But a grin steals across my face. “He really asked you that?”
He smiles, too. “Yeah, he did. I told him you guys should just shack up like young people do, but he told me he couldn’t do that as long as there are impressionable kids in the house. He said that Seth will learn how to treat women from the way he treats you and that Joey and Mellie will learn how to treat men from the way you treat him. And vice versa. So, he wants to marry you and make it all legitimate.”
My heart warms at the very idea of it. “He hasn’t asked me yet.” But I know what my answer would be. I feel for my ring finger with the pad of my thumb. I want to wear Matt’s ring. I want him to be my husband.
Dad takes in my grin. “He’s the one, huh?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “He’s the one.”
“I had a feeling he would be. I met him when Kendra was sick. He seemed like a wonderful person. Good and kind. And persistent.” He narrows his eyes at me.
I laugh. “He’s definitely persistent. But you know what I love about him most, Dad?” I ask.
He quirks a brow instead of responding.
“I love that he was willing to give up tonight and walk away for the good of the kids.”
“I don’t get it.” He looks confused.
“I ran to my apartment because I didn’t want to face him. He came there and told me he would give up if I would just go back to the kids, because they didn’t deserve for me to leave them. He quit our argument. He walked away. And that makes me love him even more than I did before.”