him uncomfortable. I know he’s just being a nice guy like he is with everyone. My sister May really likes him, and now I can see why. He’s more than just a little bit adorable.
I search for a way to get back on track and away from this schoolgirl silliness that wants to overtake me. “You said that there were two reasons why you couldn’t really participate. What’s the second reason?”
He chews his food, his eyes roaming around the table, the room, and then over the boxes. He takes a moment to poke pepperonis falling from his pizza sandwich back inside. “I have responsibilities at home that are a little more involved than the other guys on the team.”
“Do any of them have kids?”
He shakes his head. “None of them are married either.”
“But you’re not married, right?” My heart squeezes in my chest a little as I wait for his answer. I don’t see a wedding ring on his finger, and he told me that his son’s mother left right after he was born, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he isn’t with someone. I guess I just assumed he wasn’t. I hope I’m not wrong about that. Not that this is a date.
“No, I’m not married. But having a young son is a lot of work.” He shrugs his shoulders, and there’s a hint of melancholy there.
I nod deeply, because I feel his pain. I feel it, I live it, and I breathe it. “I hear you. It’s like your work is never done. You work all day, and then you come home and there’s more work waiting for you. Even when the kids are sleeping, it still feels like it’s never going to end. I work until I collapse, every single night.”
He looks up at me. “I know, right?” He puts his pizza down and brushes his hands off over the box, then reaches over and grabs his soda and leans back on the couch, throwing his free arm over the cushions. He lifts his leg and rests his ankle on his opposite knee. “My son can be sound asleep, and I’ll be in my bed down the hall, and I swear, I hear when his breathing changes just the tiniest bit.”
I bounce up and down on the couch a little, excited to be talking to another parent about something I know only too well. “Same for me! It’s crazy. If I hear anything that sounds out of the ordinary, I spring up out of bed because I have to go check to see what it is. I don’t know what I’m expecting; it’s not like some kidnapper is going to crawl into my kid’s window on the second floor and snag her. Of course, I get there and find out it was just a change in her breathing pattern or whatever, or one of my son’s action figures has fallen out of his bed onto the floor.”
He laughs. “I check the locks on my son’s window twice before I go to bed. Every night. I’m so paranoid somebody’s going to try to get in there or he’s going to fall out.”
It feels so good to be sharing mutual parental paranoia with another person. “Ha! And here I thought I was the only one with OCD tendencies where my kids are concerned.”
He shakes his head. “Nope. You’re not alone. Trust me.”
Neither of us says anything for a long time after that. The silence should probably be awkward, but it’s not. I’m just enjoying being in the same room with somebody who hears the whack-a-doodle things that I do and doesn’t think I’m whack-a-doodle for doing them.
“We should get our kids together someday.” I smile at him. “Our sons would probably bring the walls down and have a ball doing it.”
Dev’s reaction is not at all what I expect. Instead of nodding and smiling and saying that might be a lot of fun, his face falls and he turns back around to face the pizza boxes. Both of his feet go to the floor and he leans forward, putting his forearms on his knees. After about five seconds he leans over farther, flips up the top on another pizza box, and grabs another piece of pizza. “Yeah. Maybe. Someday.”
It’s like a knife has been shoved into my chest. Did I totally misread the situation? Did I overstep my boundaries somehow? Does he hate my kids without even meeting them? I replay the moment in my head, along with the moments