Landslide (59 page)

“I know.” Instead of tossing and turning trying to sleep the last few nights, I’ve just been passing out. It’s so much easier. Until I have to wake up and be a dad. “I’m getting there.”

“Yeah, I know you are. I’d just like to see you get there faster. You smelled like a distillery when you came home yesterday morning.”

My brows raise and I blow out a demoralized breath. I’ve been a legitimate wreck since Erica left me bawling on the floor of my foyer, but in all fairness to myself, feeling like a goddamned teenager sneaking back into my own house before anyone was up was a new low for me. Wednesday night my dad and I tucked Lola into her new bed for the first time, he and I talked for a little while afterwards, and then against my good judgment, I did a drive-by of Erica’s place. The snow on her driveway was untouched, meaning she hadn’t been home in at least a day. She was gone.

I called my dad and asked him if he could just stay at my house for the night because I wasn’t sure when I’d be getting home, and then I went straight to Jerry’s. He took one look at me, hollered into the kitchen to tell Marcy she and the kids were on their own for family movie night, and then he ushered me into his basement turned Man Cave where I proceeded to get obliterated. Marcy woke up at about five in the morning with a hankering for waffles and fried chicken, and I was awake but still drunk and fumbling with my keys when she flipped the entryway light on, so she ended up dropping me off at home before heading to the store for the chicken she was planning to take home and fry up—just for herself.

“Sorry, Dad. And, thank you. For everything.”

“You don’t need to thank me, Cole. She’s my sweetheart, you know that. And you don’t need to be apologizing to me either.”

“I know, bu—”

“But nothin’. You’re doing your best, and it’s better than what I did. Now go. Need my lighter?”

“For what?”

He just bends a look on me.

“Dad, we quit like three years ago.”

“No,
you
quit.
I
just got real good at hiding it. And when you decide to quit again, you might wanna make sure you remember to toss
all
the coffee cans.”

I do a quick count… “Which one did I forget?”

He chuckles at me. “The one in the carport by the shovels.”

“Grampa! Come
on
!”

 
“I’m comin’, princess!” he tells her, simultaneously bending down and scooping up a handful of snow in his bare hands.
 

Smiling, I grab Lola around the waist, swinging her up and above my head as she giggles, her legs kicking in the air and the bow sliding more than half-way down the curled blonde lock of hair it’s tied around. We wrinkle our noses at each other and I lower her just enough so that I can kiss her nose with mine.

“Be good, okay, pumpkin?” I kiss her cheek and set her back on solid ground again. “Go easy on Grandpa…he’s old.”

My dad doesn’t even acknowledge my jab. Instead he pulls Lola to his side and conspiratorially starts explaining that his method of snowball making is better than mine. “Come here, sweetheart, and watch, ‘cause your dad doesn’t know how to build snowballs so that they’re most effective. See, what ya gotta do, princess, is pack the center real tight-like, so there’s weight to it, and then
gently
roll the soft powder around it so it’s nice and round. That way it’ll go farther and sail straighter when you throw it. And when it hits your target, the powder will fly all over him and the hard stuff will pack a punch and stick.”

She’s listening to every word and watching every move my dad makes, nodding her serious understanding the whole time. “Alec is gonna row the d—”

“Rue, sweetheart. It’s rue the day, and by God,
yes
, he will.”
 

I leave the battlefield, grinning and shaking my head. I honestly
never
thought I’d see the day that my dad would actually
play
. Ever since Lola came into his life though, he does it every day. And, he’s good at it, in his own way. His girlfriend told me she discovered he’s not a fan of roller coasters—at
all
, not even the ones made for toddlers—but in every picture I saw of Lola on a ride at Disney World, he was sitting right next to her, a smile plastered on his face and discomfort hiding behind his eyes. He even rode the teacups with her and didn’t speak a single word of complaint when he got off and was so woozy, he actually turned green. In fact, that was the night he called when Erica was over for the first time. He apologized for not calling before Lola went to bed so that I could tell her goodnight like I did every night they were gone, but they’d stayed at Disney until it closed and the first thing he did when they got back was toss his cookies and when he was done, Lola was already zonked out. On the phone that night he told me he yakked because of something he ate, but when they got home the other day, Amelia told me he was totally lying.

Finding myself a tree to hind behind and digging in my coat pocket, I pull my pack of smokes out only to find that it’s empty. I sigh and debate buying another one. A young teenage girl laughing and chasing after a boy her age yells out, “Gimme my phone back! Eric!” It’s close enough and my decision is made. I head over to the drug store, hoping they carry cigarettes so that I don’t have to go all the way to the grocery store located in the upper part of The Village. Once I get inside though, I change my mind.

“You guys carry nicotine gum?” I ask the clerk at the register.

She nods and points. “Back of the store. The pharmacist can open the case for you.”

I walk through the candy aisle, snagging a bag of peanut M&Ms and a Caramello bar, then I grab a three-pack of Chapstick off an end-cap to add to my impulse buys, and figure since I’m here, I might as well see what kind of non-alcoholic sleep aides they have. I round the corner into the cold and flu aisle to discover all the sleep aides there are in things like NyQuil. I don’t want actual medicine. Rather than combing the aisles myself though, I get in line to talk to the pharmacist, thinking I’ll kill two birds with one stone. With four other people waiting in front of me, I turn around to peruse the end-cap closest to me. My eyes work their way from the bottom to the top and I systematically check off what I do and don’t need.

No daily or weekly medication organizers, no batter—well, you can never have too many batteries so I grab a pack of AAs—no cheater reading glasses, gloves, yes, I need dry gloves…

My hands overflowing now, I set what I can on top of the end-cap and start looking through the colors of gloves trying to find plain black. Successful, I grab them and start picking up the rest of my stuff again but have to step out of the way for an elderly man wanting to get to the medication organizers. I drop the Chapstick and it tumbles into the aisle. Turning and almost bending to pick it up, my lungs seize when standing not five feet from me is Erica. She’s just standing there, staring at the rows of vitamins on the shelves in front of her.

“What are you doing here?” I’m so shocked, it’s a wonder I can even breathe let alone speak to her. And I have no fucking
clue
how to feel.

Her head swings around in surprise all her own. “I—”

“I thought you left.” She
did
leave. I know she did. So why in the
hell
is she here?

“I—I did. Sort of. Well…I was in—um…see, there was this accident an—”

“A car accident?!”

“Yeah. But I’m okay. Obviously. I wasn’t actually
in
the accident…I just hit my head and had a bunch of snow fall on me, and I thought I was dying, but I wasn’t. Um, it’s sorta hard to explain, I guess, but I just got out of the hospital an hour or so ago,” she tells me, although I completely stop listening because of what she has in the hand she uses to gesture behind me, “I have a prescription to fill and the hospital was out of it so they called it in here. I had to take a taxi from the hospital even because my car is still in the tow-yard.”

Staring in what feels like joyous horror at the bottle in her hand and within a matter of maybe two seconds, my head goes from being a total blank to being filled with at least a dozen scenarios. “Are you pregnant?”

Her eyes grow round and fall to the prenatal vitamins she evidently forgot she was holding onto until I asked. My first instinct is to be thrilled beyond measure until I realize that I’m going to be even more beyond miserable. I won’t be able to see my own baby everyday, change its diapers, and feed it, rock it to sleep, or even just hold it when I want to. All the things a father should be able to with his child
every
single day in raising that child, I won’t be able to do simply because I’m raising someone else’s. Of course there’s another option she could go with, although it’s simply nauseating and I flat-out
refuse
to let it take up any kind of residence in my mind.
 

“I—”

“This is
fucking
fantastic.” The sarcasm is out of habit, the growling of it is because I’m incredibly pissed off. This is a no-win scenario for me. Unless… “You know what,” I shake my head in denial, “I don’t wanna know.”

I shove everything in my hands back on top of the end-cap again and turn to leave.

“Cole, wait, I—”

She just admitted she had left. She’s going to leave again. Of course she is, nothing’s changed. Except she’ll be taking
my
unborn child with her?!

No.

I won’t let her. I’ll get a lawyer.

I turn on my heel and round on her, trying to ignore the stinging behind my eyes. “No. Tell me. Are you?”

Say no.
Please
say no…

She lowers her eyes momentarily and I start shaking my head again, pleading to the ceiling and the garishly bright white of the fluorescent lights overhead, as if they can help me.
 

“I…”
 
I meet her eyes, drowning myself in the watery depths of bottomless blue. “I don’t know.”

On a shaky breath, I ask, “Then why are you buying those?”

She shakes her head and sticks them back on the shelf. “I wasn’t necessarily. I was just…considering it.”

“Why?”

“Because I—well, the hospital had to run two pregnancy tests. The first one came back positive
and
negative, so they did another one.”

“And?”

“It was…um,” she says, faltering and starting to get teary, “it was negative. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not or…in the process right now. You know, it’s been less than a week and that’s
way
too early to know. So, you know, I thought…it’s still possible, so…” she sniffles again, “Maybe I shou—”

“Start taking vitamins,” I finish her sentence and scowl at the bottle on the shelf.

“You seem really…um, hostile. I didn’t expect that.”

 
I rub both my hands up and down my face, trying to get a grip. Truth is, I feel hostile. By all rights, I should be able to receive even uncertain news like this with excitement and unbound joy, and I can’t. Even just the possibility is crushing me. Not knowing either way is worse. Add in what’ll happen and how it’ll be if she
is
, and I pretty much feel like throwing a King Kong-type temper tantrum right here in the drug store.

“How did you expect me to react, Erica? The decision’s already been made. You left. Living with that has been a nightmare on its own, but now I get to hang out in fucking purgatory for what…? Three weeks or more before I find out exactly which circle of Hell I’ll be living in? Yeah, I’m a little hostile about that. And you know what, I can’t do this. I
can’t
fall apart right now. She’s
here
, Erica. Lola is here, at The Village, waiting for Santa.”

She nods, her chin quivering when without making eye contact, she whispers, “I know. I was walking around trying to find this place and saw you playing with her. You guys were building a snowman and having
so
much fun together. I stopped watching when you picked her up so she could put the head on… You’re a really great dad, Cole, and I just…how did you do it?”

I blow out a breath watching Erica wipe her cheeks. “I just…did. She made it easy.”

She nods and tries to find a smile for me. “Will you tell me about her? Please?”

I consider her hopeful face for a second and then remember where we are. “You already get your prescription?”

“No,” she shakes her head, “It should be ready any minute though.”

“Alright. I’m gonna go wait outside though. I don’t wanna know if you decide to buy those or not and I need a smoke. And call me paranoid or overprotective, but all of a sudden, I don’t really want you around anymore when I do that, so, take your time.”

I grab the gloves again when we part ways and I jog up to the cash register to buy the pack of cigarettes that had I bought in the first place, I wouldn’t have felt like I need one as desperately as I do right now. And I know it’s probably ridiculous at this point to feel this way; to feel like I can’t subject her to even a minute amount of secondhand smoke, but I can’t help it; it’s gut instinct to protect what’s mine, or, what
could
be.

I’m able to chain-smoke my way through almost two cigarettes before Erica emerges from the drug store and stops dead in her tracks, looking at me as if she either is uncertain about approaching or she didn’t expect me to actually be here waiting for her. I take a final drag off my smoke and pitch it into the hole of the smoker’s pole I’m standing next to. Then I gesture with my head for her to come on over.

“Let’s go for a walk…”

We start walking side by side without even looking at each other, and for the first couple of minutes, neither of us speak a word. Itching to take her hand, I shove both of mine into my pockets.

“What do you wanna know?”

“Everything. Start at the beginning…what was it like when you met her?”

I don’t even have to think about how to answer. “Scary as fuck. But then…I saw her. And well, it was that easy.”

“Seriously?”

“Sorta…you know what, I can show you. C’mon,” I say and pick up our previously ambling pace a bit.
 

Erica slows. “Where are we going? I’m not ready t—”