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“What about the game?”
“It’s a yawner. The score will be online.”
He packed up the baby while she cleaned up from lunch. It was a mile car ride. “We could have jogged over,” he said, teasing. “Not. But it’s close enough without concern of stalking.”
“That’s a good way to put it. I was thinking about reactivating my profile on dating sites.”
“You were? That’ll be weird, but I get it.”
Admitting that he would also be jealous and disappointed would be an issue he’d face later, remembering the warnings about a relationship with the nanny going wrong and then losing her, which he couldn’t afford to do.
“Are you sure you don’t mind caring for Violet overnight? Three days straight is a long time. I haven’t even done that yet.”
“Not at all. And I bet Roberta will help out. At least she won’t be obligated, and that will be freedom for her.”
So the relationship had shifted again, back and forth between being flirtatious with sexual innuendo and chatting about dating. She seemed excited and happy to share the information with him, but he couldn’t do the same, facing that caring for his daughter and working a demanding job was not going to leave time for much more than a booty call, and he couldn’t do that anymore because what would his daughter think of him when she grew up? Violet had forced her father to set a new standard of behavior for himself, making him a better man.
Chapter 5
As soon as Leon saw the apartment on Saturday, he wanted it. It overlooked the creek with mountains in the distance, had a private balcony, and was an end unit. After signing the papers, he had to tell his parents, but decided it could wait until right before he made the move. It was mid-October and he could take possession November first.
Contacting Tina was about the last thing he wanted to do, but before he jumped into moving from Big Mike and Roberta’s house, he had to make sure she understood what he was going to do, and that was to file papers sharing custody with her.
I’m agreeable to that,she replied in a text.We’ll work it out with the attorneys when I get home.
Once the idea of his own apartment became a reality, he approached furnishing it and decorating with gusto. He wanted what he wanted, and envisioning a mix of arty pieces and junk appealed to him.
One morning on the way back to the station from a fire, he saw one of those huge spools that held the kind of wire the electric company used.
“Hey, can you pull over?” Leon shouted to the driver. “I want that spool.”
“Get it on your own time,” the driver shouted back.
So later that day, during a break, Leon got into his new truck, this one with an extended cab and room for a baby seat, and drove back to the location for the spool. Somehow, he managed to get the heavy, unwieldy thing into the back of his truck. For the rest of the day he fantasized what he’d do with the spool: refinishing it for use as a coffee table, installing a wine rack into one side and toy storage into the other. He imagined other uses for castoffs, like a pallet headboard he’d seen in an ad.
“You don’t know about Pinterest?” Rick Jackson, one of the EMTs asked. “Hey, man, Pinterest will change your life.”
So Leon became a Pinterest junkie. He decided he had to tell his mother about the move because she had an old, outdated maple hutch in the garage, and he wanted it after seeing what was possible on Pinterest. The week before the move, still adhering to the original babysitting schedule with Roberta caring for the baby at night at her insistence, and Ava being the nanny during the day, he decided to tell her. The baby was at home when he arrived that morning, exhausted but rarin’ to go.
“Hey, Ma, you got a minute?” he asked, picking the baby up out of her chair.
“For you, anything,” she said absently.
It had been a rough night for her because after Violet woke up at two to eat, Roberta couldn’t get back to sleep, and she was just starting to feel the lack.
“I got news. I rented an apartment over by the park.”
To the point, without frills. “Like pulling a Band-Aid off in one movement,” his buddies at the firehouse had advised.
“Leon…”
“I know, Ma, but it’s time. I need to grow up, and I can’t do it here. It’s too easy to fall back on your help every time I mess up.”
“I’ve never complained.”
“No, but I can see how tired you are.”
She put her hands up to her face. “It might be time for more collagen injections,” she said. “Don’t blame yourself.”
