Hell, I was hardly keeping up with Giuliana’s needs now. I wasn’t supposed to be doing this alone, but that didn’t mean I shouldn’t be able to rise to the occasion. I would prove to her that I could be a good father—not just despite Kyle’s abandoning us, but because of it.
And because I knew what having a father who didn’t care felt like. I hadn’t spoken to my dad since I’d come out, not even after Giuliana had been born. When I looked at my daughter, I wondered how any father could turn their back on their child, no matter what the reason was.
Kyle and my father had a lot in common, and none of it was good.
“Let’s get you a bottle, baby,” I crooned to Giuliana as I made my way into the house.
The kitchen counter was filled with bottles I still needed to wash, but I still had one bottle with the formula waiting to be mixed in it. I turned the faucet on warm, waited until it heated, and then flipped my water filter on. Warm filtered water helped speed up the process, and thank God, because my baby girl was amping up again.
As we sat on the couch and she ate, a thousand thoughts battled in my head. Next week I’d have to go back to work. Just the thought made my whole body feel like it was sinking. I loved being a graphic designer, but the thought of losing any time with my daughter killed me.
Hell, she’d gained a pound in the past month, and grown two and a half inches already! If I got tied up at the office like before, what milestones would I miss? First words? Steps? It was too heartbreaking to consider.
Kyle had always nagged that I let work consume me. With Giuliana depending on me now, I refused to let it happen again. Before she’d been born, I’d been sending out feelers to clients and building a portfolio. It would take busting my ass, but I knew that I could make a business work. So long as I let nothing distract me, I could be at home more, working for myself, making our lives as uncomplicated as possible.
And that meant that thoughts of Javi’s firm ass and sexy smirk needed to be put on hold. Just say no to the hot neighbor, Gordo. There will be time for relationships later. Way, way later. And not with someone next door.
It took some time for my mind to settle, but settle it did. I was good at focusing when I needed to. Giuliana, finished with her bottle, stared up at me with eyes so blue I thought of sapphires. She seemed to be calming down with me, a reminder that we’d be fine on our own.
It was the way it needed to be—even if I couldn’t shake the niggling feeling that the easiest solution of avoiding Javi wasn’t going to be so easy at all.
4
Javi
Andrew sat at a table in the art room at the center with a storm cloud over his head. I’d felt its anger and violence as soon as I walked into the room to find him. Another fight, then. If he kept this up, he’d lose his spot in the center, which was something I wouldn’t tolerate. Kids like him—kids like me, back in my teen years—needed the grounding found in youth centers. They needed a place to feel welcome and safe.
And they needed resources to help them, something I knew the center occasionally fell short on. It wasn’t their fault. The kind of funding needed to support special needs kids, like Andrew, who was deaf, was higher than normal. The center was already operating on a shoestring budget, and I was the only ASL-fluent volunteer. It sucked that such a valuable community resource was frequently overlooked. Especially when it did so, so much good.
At least there was a relay race fundraiser coming up—it would be the largest single fundraiser of the year. In the past years, it had been enough to keep the center going. But with the way Mike, the director of the center, had been talking…
I couldn’t think about that right now, though. I still found so much joy in the youth center, and the thought of it shutting its doors wasn’t something I could entertain for long. As much as I loved the shop and the guys there, I was most at home when I volunteered at the center.