to ask her what was up, her profile was deactivated.”
“Well, if there’s a red flag, that would be it,” Jase sounds out, and when I go to respond, Lev comes running into the kitchen in his little dinosaur jammies and wet brown hair. During these moments, he looks so much like Toby that it physically hurts.
Would he forgive me if it came out about Lev?
Would he hate me more?
Would he want to take him away from me?
My heart shatters with that. No, that’ll never happen. Not ever.
“Mama!” Lev yells and bounds into my arms. “Ace-y said I could have ice cream after dinner if I was good in the tub.”
“Were you good, little prince?” Jason asks from beside me. Lev looks at his dad with a toothy grin and nods.
“He only soaked the entire ground,” Ace admits. “I’d say, he’s a charming little prince.” I smile at my son, seeing the light and dark battle inside his ocean eyes, wondering when they became so dreary and dejected. He’s not the little boy who drank hot cocoa and cuddled with me when I was sad.
He’s tragic and beautiful, and I wish I could fix the past and make his heart glow again. He’ll find the person who does that, and when he does, I’ll be here. I’ll always be here.
“Tacos?” Jazzy asks, slipping under Ace’s arm. She’s grown so much in the past five years. She’s sassy and spunky, but also quiet and reserved.
It’s like she’s in the middle of the battle of her life, and all for something I can’t offer her, so all I can do is try to understand and guide her. But we’re not close. Not like her and Ace, and definitely not like her and her father.
Our dynamic is hard, but I’ll never stop trying.
When we’re all seated at the table with the tortillas I made from scratch sitting in the center, and the garnishes and extras sitting in a circle around it, we all dig in. It isn’t until we’re all into our second and third tacos that Jazzy speaks up.
“Bobbie called today,” she admits. The immediate feeling that overtakes me is dread. But she wouldn’t call Jazzy to tell us Nate is dead. She wouldn’t... right? Heat and cold fight for power over my skin. Heat from worry, cold from that numbness that always tries to burst free of the confines I’ve locked it in.
“Yeah, she said Nate is doing better, but it’s Toby she’s worried about.” My eyes burn with awareness. Bobbie and I connected three years ago. When Toby gave me the restaurant, she reached out, telling me that he fell into his vices. He’d been going to Alcoholics Anonymous for months, and the only step he couldn’t quite accept was making amends. Step eight. She reached out because Nate and Toby stayed close, being accountable together, trying to overcome.
Is Toby drinking again?
Did his spiral happen because I ruined him?
Choices.
We all have them.
Why does guilt make me believe I forced some of his?
“Why’s that, baby?” I ask, not hinting to anything, but the way Jase grips his glass tells me I’m not being as subtle as I want to be. Regret for what happened with Toby eats me alive constantly. How could it not? I gave birth to his child.
While Jase and I decided not to have a test done, I took one when Lev was two and started looking more like Toby than Jase. When Jason found the papers, we fought a lot. We ended up going back to therapy because, at that moment, I broke his trust.
Now, Jase accepts that Toby is biologically Lev’s father, but he is his dad. Always will be.
“Uncle Frankie says he doesn’t go home sometimes and disappears randomly. Bobbie only confirmed the same. She has tried getting in contact, but he ignores her. While she doesn’t believe she has a duty to keep pushing, she cares about him.”
I nod, wondering when my daughter got close to Francis, Bobbie, and Nate, all while I feel out of the loop.
“How’s Nate?” I ask, deflecting the attention from the taboo subject of my ex-best friend.
“He’s thirty-seven days clean,” she answers after she swallows some Pepsi. I stare at my daughter who mirrors me in every way but our hair. She’s blonde like her father, but as she ages, she’s looking less and less like me and growing into a beautiful young woman. It makes me choke up to think that in only five years, she’ll be leaving for