“Come on. You know what kind.”
“Mac and c-cheese.”
“Was it good?”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Yeah. I-It was.”
“Yeah, mac and cheese is elite.”
JJ asks me a few more questions about food until my breathing is somehow under control. I watch him carefully as we lower ourselves down to the floor and lean our backs against the brick wall of our house.
“Better now?”
There’s still tightness in my chest, but it’s under control. “Yeah.”
“It’s what I sometimes do with Ivy.” He smiles softly. “It helps her.”
My head falls into my hands, and all I see is Skye’s face.
Skye. Her name is Skye.
“What’s going on?” JJ asks eventually.
I shake my head rapidly, unable to say the words out loud.
“Talk to me,” he whispers. “I’m worried about you, Finn.”
My hand raises to wipe my nose as I sniffle. I turn to JJ, my expression blank and my shoulders drooped. “I went to see Maya.”
JJ winces before recovering. “And it didn’t go well?”
“No, not really.”
“What did she say?”
“I fucked everything up.” I aggressively chew on my bottom lip to feel a wave of sharp release. “I said unforgivable things at a time she needed me most. I pushed her away when I should have been there, and things would have been so different if I wasn’t drunk when she told me.”
JJ frowns and wraps his arms over his knees. “Told you what?”
“I’m a father, JJ.”
He blinks at me once and then twice. “What?”
“That’s what she told me that night. That she was pregnant, and I must have acted out, said that I didn’t want them or something,” I say as my face scrunches up and venom poisons my veins. “And I went there today, and I saw our baby. She has her eyes, but my hair. That girl is mine, JJ, and I missed everything.”
My lungs collapse again, and I burst into tears. JJ wraps his arms around me and tugs me into his side. He says nothing, which I’m grateful for because nothing he could say will fix this. I have no idea how long we stay like this, but long enough that my eyes start to dry up.
When JJ pulls away, I’m hollow and empty. “I-I don’t know how to fix this,” I choke. “She’s never going to trust me again.”
“Hey.” He grips my shoulder gently. “You can show her how far you’ve come with your drinking, that it’s been two months and you haven’t touched a drop of alcohol. And as for what you said, you’ll just have to prove to them that you want to be a family, if that’s what you want.”
My chest heaves as I look at my best friend. “Of course it’s what I want. The love of my life had our baby. I want nothing more than to be there for them and to be a part of their lives.”
“Then prove to them you can be the man that they need.”
“She doesn’t want to see me.” I close my eyes in defeat. “She made that very clear.”
“She can’t keep her from you, Finn.”
