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Jacob’s face went blank, then broke. He dropped his head and started to cry all over again. “I didn’t mean to eat the chocolate, Dad! I was trying to be good. I was really trying.”
“I know, Jake. You’re a good boy. Your mom loves you. She isn’t staying in Jamaica because you did anything wrong.”
Over Jake’s head, Tony shot Ant a look that said, Pipe down, or you’re in a world of hurt.
Ant smiled evilly and turned his attention back to the game on his DS.
He wasn’t supposed to have the DS today.
Bigger fish to fry.
Tony lifted his free hand to brace his small son’s back between his palms. Framing him, pressing slightly, trying to tell him with the pressure that the world wasn’t coming apart, even if it felt like it must be.
He’d realized in the van—Jake had never been apart from his mother overnight.
Six years old.
Which meant that not only was this really super extra hard for Jake, but also, Amber hadn’t spent a single night apart from the kids in six years.
He’d never thought of it before. She’d never said.
They used to get away sometimes. Leave Clark with his mom or hers, or with one of his sisters, and drive up to Columbus to stay in some swanky hotel and split a bottle of wine. Go dancing, if she made him. Have noisy, tipsy sex with the lights on, all their clothes off, on top of the goddamn sheets for a change, and not give a damn who heard them.
One year they’d gone to Oktoberfest at the fairgrounds, and for some reason he couldn’t remember, Amber had been waitressing at one of the booths for a shift. She’d worn one of those German outfits, like the chick on the St. Pauli Girl bottle. A white shirt cut low, and those suspender things over a big flouncy skirt.
The outfit had plumped up her breasts, and he’d eye-fucked her all night. After she got off her shift, they’d clinked together their giant plastic steins of beer and laughed because they were free of the work, free of the kids. Together. They’d taken a cab back to the hotel and she’d worked the heel of her hand along the fly his jeans, outlining his cock, smiling at him with her hair loose and her eyes so happy.
And God, when they got in the room, he’d had his hand up her skirt and his mouth on her breasts before the door was even closed all the way. They’d been like animals, rutting against the wall, sliding down to the floor. On the carpet. Sitting up on the bed. On all fours. He’d been drunk enough that he didn’t come for forever, and they kept laughing and grabbing at each other, her hand slick sliding over his balls, his nose in her neck, in her armpit, her shirt a little ripped, askew, then gone, her mouth sucking him until finally he came, and every single piece of that whole night had felt good. Every second.
She’d been there. Right with him.
He remembered, on those trips, how they used to plan to sleep in late but always woke up early instead, listening for phantom baby cries. They’d head home at dawn, grab breakfast at a diner, hold hands in the car.
Even after Ant was born, they’d done that sometimes. Once when she was pregnant with Jake. At least once when she was pregnant.
Since then …
Jake had been a tough baby. And they were dead broke.
Still. He should’ve taken her somewhere. Six fucking years.
“Wuh-was it Ant?” Jake asked, too loudly. Tony could see the flight attendant making her way down the aisle, her forehead furrowed with concern. She had two cans of Coke in her hands. Thank Christ.
“Because Ant and Clark were getting on her last nerve,” Jake said. “She told Grandma at the reception.”
“It wasn’t Ant. It was just …”
But Tony didn’t know any way to tell Jake what Jamila had told him. That Amber had disappeared after the wedding ceremony so that she could cry. That she’d cried herself incoherent, her throat hoarse, and her mother had been frightened to find her that way.
He’d been on the phone the whole time. The interior paint job in Dublin had gotten all fucked up, and the owner had called him, furious, accusing Tony of trying to cut corners because he’d lowballed the bid, which he had, but he’d thought the painter had enough sense to be able to spray the goddamn walls without getting paint all over the window trim and the countertops.
It took him two hours to calm the guy down, a promise that he would personally fix anything the owner had a problem with, and by then Amber had seemed fine.
A little distant, but fine.
Distant was nothing new.
He couldn’t tell his son how it cracked him open to hear that Amber had been crying. How he’d thought maybe when it was less busy at work, he could do something. Take her somewhere.
