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Chapter 4
~ AVA ~
With the morning light streaming in, I stand in my front doorway, letting the heat of the house escape as I wave to my son—one last time for this year.
His sweet face through the window of the car looks so similar to last year at this time, and even the year before that.
It’s funny.He grows up, grows taller, grows stronger.But his face, to me, always look strikingly similar to the precious baby that I brought home with Bryant over eight years ago.
Tears well up in my eyes like they always do when Bryant picks him up.
This is never what any woman pictures when she says her wedding vows, or in that moment when she tells her husband that he’s going to be a father.
But so much is different from what I expected.
I sigh as the car disappears into the distance.
Nicholas is going to have a blast this Christmas; I know it for a fact.Bryant got him some kind of build-your-own-computer kit that will probably elevate this holiday to “best-ever” status.I wish I could be there to see the look on Nicholas’s face when he opens it.
No, this is definitely not what I imagined.
Divorce was never part of my plan, not even when the stress of multiple surgeries, sleepless nights, juggling of healthcare costs, and fighting with insurance companies was tearing into my marriage.
We wouldn’t let that break us up, I kept telling myself.If anything, it should make us stronger.Strongertogether.Stronger for our son who needed us.
But Bryant didn’t feel the same way.He needed some distance, he said.He needed a break.
Take a vacation, I had said.Something.Anything.But not divorce.
In truth, I’d have to admit that Bryant is a better dad to Nicholas now.Maybe some men just aren’t up for the task of being a full-time parent to a child who has a hefty handful of challenges.For a few weeks out of the year, Bryant is able to take time off work and focus his energy on being the good dad his son deserves.
But I can’t help wishing that my ex-husband could have been this better version of himself while we were still married.
I shut the door behind me and take a long look at the decorations that literally took two entire days to put up on my own.Nicholas is still at that age in which his version of “helping” is pretty much limited to hanging a few ornaments on the tree until he tires of it and curls up on the sofa to watchElf.
The house looks so nice when it’s done up like this.It was kind of nice to show it off to someone last night when Harris came over.
Harris.Why does the mere thought of his name launch a million butterflies in my stomach?
It was easier not knowing his name.It was easier just thinking of him as yet another one of the unattainable Navy guys who comes and goes next door.
It was also easier not knowing how sweet he could be to my son, or how it felt when our hands touched as he helped me with the dishes.
It was easier… because a guy likethatis the last thing I need, even if I did stand a snowball’s chance in hell with him.
I’ve lived here long enough that I know the routine of the apartment next door.
Every two years, a new Navy guy arrives.A new guy for my son to worship from afar and for all the moms in the neighborhood to gossip about when we run into each other while taking out the trash.
But after two years, it’s out with the old and in with the new.
I grab my coat and keys and head to the grocery store, part of my usual routine after my son goes to his dad’s.
When I arrive at the store, I fill my cart up with food thatIlike.Easy to prepare.No clean-up needed.And absolutely no fresh vegetables—which I realize makes me a complete hypocrite.
I grab two boxes of indulgent, sugary cereal for breakfast because I love the stuff but won’t admit that to my son.
For lunches, I pick up a loaf of French bread and Brie cheese.I never eat Brie around Nicholas.Because when I’m pretending that I’m sitting in a café along thePlace de la Concordein Paris and my kid walks by, telling me that what I’m eating looks and smells like the same thing he grew in a petri dish for his first-grade science fair entry, my Parisian fantasy melts away.
