Page 70 of Sexting My Ex’s Dad

Back in the kitchen, I pour a glass of water and drink half of it without tasting it. My hand shakes, so I set the glass down carefully, bracing my fingertips against the counter until the tremor stops.

Fury sits under my skin like a pulse, hot and constant, and it keeps replaying the same question with new wording every time it loops. Who does he think he is, showing up now, after all this time, after everything I carried alone?

Still, rage isn’t the only thing in the room with me.

There’s guilt too, irritating and persistent, the kind that slips in through small cracks and makes itself at home. I didn’t tell him. I didn’t give him the choice. I didn’t let him try, even when I wanted to, even when my hands were on a test and my life was on fire and I was searching his face for proof he could be safe.

I walk to the living room and sit on the couch, then I stare at the dim screen of the television without turning it on. My apartment feels smaller at night, and it feels even smaller with his presence still clinging to the air in the hallway.

Ivy’s father. The phrase has lived in my head for years like a locked room I kept walking past, and it just opened in my face. Nathan saw her eyes and he knew, and I watched him go rigid in my doorway, like recognition and anger arrived together and neither one was polite.

Convenient for him.

That’s the line my mind keeps throwing at me, sharp and defensive. He got to live his life. He got to have quiet mornings and clean sheets and the kind of career that comes with people applauding your competence. I got fevers at three a.m. and daycare waitlists and splitting my attention so finely I forgot what my own body needed.

I carried the whole thing.

I carried Ivy’s first steps, Ivy’s first tantrum, Ivy’s first ear infection, Ivy’s first day of school. I carried her questions about fathers with a smile that never felt steady, then I carried my own loneliness when the lights went out and the apartment went quiet.

Then Nathan shows up in my doorway and asks permission to calm her down, and he waits for my answer like it’s important he secures it. I hate that detail the most.

He didn’t push past me, and he didn’t step into my home, and he didn’t speak to Ivy until I let him. That’s a man who can do restraint, and it’s the same restraint he used to show in the hospital, the kind that made nurses trust him with chaos.

I press the heel of my hand to my forehead and let myself remember him the way I tried not to.

Nathan in the hallway at Hawthorne, sleeves rolled to his forearms, tablet under one arm, eyes tracking what needed attention. Nathan at the nurses’ station, asking for details with a calm tone that made panic settle. Nathan walking past a frightened parent and stopping long enough to say, “We’re not leaving her alone,” then backing it up with action.

Nathan with me, the version I tried not to want.

The man who brought me food without making it a performance, the man who remembered I hated cold coffee and fixed it without asking, the man who could be rough in private and careful in public and who never treated my job like a cute hobby. He respected what I did, and he respected the fact that I mattered to kids who were scared.

Even tonight, he asked before he spoke to her.

Even tonight, he stopped himself when he could’ve taken more.

My eyes burn with the kind of emotion I hate. I’ve adored him for years, and now, even with all this anger and the sudden realization that someone wants to share Ivy with me, I can’t stop.

I sit up straighter and stare at the glass of water on the coffee table. My hand reaches for it, then I set it down again without drinking, and the movement feels ridiculous. I’m a grown woman. I’ve been a mother for six years. I’ve faced emergencies that would crack other people in half.

Yet my body is still reacting like I’m nineteen and reckless and one kiss away from making a decision I can’t undo.

I let myself say the truth in my head, just once, without shame. I want him, and not as a fantasy, revenge plot, or a convenient placeholder.

I want Nathan Clarke. The next truth is less flattering and more urgent.

I’m lonely and exhausted and aroused in a way that feels almost cruel, like my body picked this moment to remind me I’m still a woman with needs, not only a mother with responsibilities.

And the worst part is that I know what his hands feel like, and I know what his mouth does when he wants to prove a point, and I know how quickly my composure dissolves around him.

I stare toward the hallway, toward Ivy’s closed door, then I check the clock on my phone. It’s late. It’s not responsible. It’s also real.

Nathan said I still know his number.

He didn’t say it like a game. He said it like a door he’d leave unlocked, then he walked away before I could decide whether to step through it.

My phone is on the couch beside me.

I pick it up and unlock it, then I hover over his contact like it’s going to bite.