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I showed it to Matt.
“Shit,” he said.
“Yep.” I texted Willow back. “Oh, and Dakota will be in my box at the game next week with the girls. Maybe Shelly and your kids would want to join them.” I said it, realizing having Dakota hanging out in my box with another coach’s wife and all our kids was not exactly maintaining boundaries. But she was the nanny. That I was having sex with.
Matt laughed. “A hundred bucks says you’re married and divorced by Christmas.”
“Shut up.” I thought about last Christmas, when I had met Dakota on the elevator.
The kiss we’d shared under the mistletoe.
I shoved my drink across the bartop and threw down a twenty. “I’m going to bed.”
Matt had brought up points I didn’t want to think about. Ever.
“Hey.” He turned to me. “In all seriousness, Macnamara. Don’t you deserve to be happy?”
I paused. “I don’t even know what that means. I’m happy. I have great kids and a killer career. I’m a lucky man.”
“You know what I mean. You deserve to have someone care about you for a change.”
His words eerily echoed Dakota’s when she had asked about my ex. It had made me uncomfortable then and it made me uncomfortable now.
If Matt was suggesting again I start an actual relationship with Dakota, he was off base. I shook my head. “My responsibilities come first.”
With that, I left the bar.
“This apartment is so big I’m kind of afraid of the dark,” I told Felicia as we chatted on the phone. I was lounging on the couch with seven lights on, trying to disperse corner shadows. “How do you live in that huge apartment with all those levels? Someone could be on every floor and you’d never know.”
“Well, that never occurred to me until just now, so thank you for that. I’m going to have to get a security system installed.”
“You should have that already,” I said. “This isn’t the English countryside.”
Willow and Poppy were both in their rooms. It sounded like Willow as watching YouTube videos. Poppy had been reading when I had looked in on her. It was almost eleven and I was wide awake and avoiding the disaster of my room. The bed was put together and that was about it.
“You have a doorman,” Felicia said. “And a front door on the apartment. I think you’re safe from intruders.”
“True. And unless you’re Spiderman you’re not getting in here by climbing onto the terrace. We’re on the fortieth floor.” I picked up the remote and stared at it. I didn’t even know what I was looking at, it was so complicated. I had already wasted ten minutes trying to figure out how to turn all the lights on. It turned out you just touched the panel. There was no switch.
“The view must be amazing.”
“It is. And there’s a smart toilet. It has a warm water feature. I feel bougie as hell.”
Felicia laughed. “You’ll never be bougie, I hate to break it to you.”
“That’s just rude. Hey, let me let you go. I need the kids to show me how to use the TV. I think this means I’m officially old. I’m going to need dentures and bladder control protection next.”
“Wait until you have a baby. Your bladder will never be the same.”
“That’s information you can keep to yourself, thanks.”
We said our goodbyes, then I went to get Willow. I knocked on her door. “Hey, sorry to interrupt but can you show me how this TV works?”
A few seconds later she cracked her door open very slightly. “You just tell it what you want. It’s voice command.”
I forgot all about the TV. Wow. Someone was experimenting with makeup and not particularly well. Willow’s natural skin had been hidden under seven layers of contouring. She looked comical. Terrifying. “You should have told me it’s makeup night. I would have joined you. Anything to avoid that mess in my room.”
She hesitated. “I’m following a video and I don’t think I’m doing it right.”
