My core pulses when all I see is pure, unfiltered desire.
I am so fucked.
“Baby, I need you to get your shoes so you can go home with Mommy. Are your shoes in the house?”
Dutton is clinging to my leg, refusing to go back into Matt’s house—the home we used to share together before the divorce. It’s nice, newly built, with black frame windows and white siding in the cookie-cutter farmhouse style.
“No, Mommy. Me go home with you!” Dutton complains.
“Yes, you are coming home with Mommy. But we need shoes.”
Matt is standing in the doorway, shaking his head. “You should just let me keep them another night.”
My ex-husband is dressed in dirty sweatpants and a dingy white T-shirt. The boys look even worse, like he hasn’t bathed them in days. My three-year-old twins are always a little grimy by the end of the day after playing outside, but this looks like more than one day of filth.
“I’m hungry! Mommy, can I have a snack?” Dawson is spinning around in circles behind me.
“Can you get their shoes, please?” I finally ask Matt.
He stretches his arm out toward the inside of the house. “Get them yourself. You know your way around.”
My chest tightens. He knows I don’t want to go inside. I don’t want to be in an enclosed space with him ever again. The state of Texas gives me that right, but they won’t give any protection to the two mini versions of my heart thathave to live here with this monster thirty percent of their lives with no supervision.
I can’t let myself think about it for too long.
“All right, boys, let’s go. We can stop at the store and get new shoes! Does that sound fun?” I reach down to peel Dutton off my leg. He’s the more sensitive one.
“Mickey D’s, Mommy? Please!” Dawson begs.
“Yes, we’ll get Mickey D’s too.”
“Yay! You hear that, Dutton? Mommy is getting us nuggeys and Fwench fwies!” His voice is so cute with the mild speech impediment that makes all hisT’s,R’s, andS’s difficult for him to enunciate.
The speech therapist says to give it another year, but I’m the only person who can consistently understand what he’s saying besides his twin. Matt gets unreasonably angry when he can’t figure it out and, of course, blames the three-year-old who hasn’t learned how to roll his tongue.
And me—because everything is ultimately my fault somehow.
I strap the boys into their car seats in the beat-up silver minivan with Matt looming over my shoulder.
“Okay, boys, say bye-bye to your dad.”
“Bye,” Dawson says, but Dutton ignores him.
Matt leans into the van, ruffling each of their heads of dirty-blond hair, which is usually a lighter shade when it’s clean. When they were born it was a darker brown, but it slowly lightened up.
“Bye, boys. I’m gonna miss you. I’ll see you next week, huh? We had such a fun time together.”
He lingers in the van for an irritating amount of timebefore realizing they are ready to go with me and don’t want to offer him any more affection to soothe his fragile ego.
They’re mama’s boys who prefer being with me, and he knows it. He’s always known it. Dutton flat out doesn’t like spending any time with his dad. He’s the more emotional twin, and Matt’s frequent outbursts—where he screams, curses, and throws things—scare him.
Dawson is a little more inclined to have fun with him when he’s paying him any attention at all. Even just Matt throwing the ball around with him for five minutes makes Dawson happy because his dad took time away from drinking and online gambling.
I walk around to the driver’s side of the van, anxious to leave the negative energy that oozes from my ex-husband’s aura.
He follows me. After I shut the door and start the van, he knocks on my window. Dutton and Dawson are fighting in the back seat over a water bottle, and I can tell they’re both starving. Who knows what time it was when they last ate? I make a mental note to start bringing them snacks when I pick them up.
I crack the window. “What is it?” I attempt to control the amount of irritation in my tone.
