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With confidence, I can say we are on the precipice of friendship. It’s getting there, but not yet. I know this co-parent deal will work once we figure it out.
She noticed Kat’s little reaction earlier, but Allie didn’t acknowledge it. Kat and my dad don’t particularly like one another, and though the house belongs to my dad, she’s trying to force him to stay at a hotel for the visit.
She’s going through her own issues at the moment, so I’ll give her a break. But whether she’s there tonight, I’m telling my dad and Jen about Jadon. They’ll be ecstatic. Jen never had kids of her own but has mentioned before how she looks forward to spoiling mine.
At the house, Allie left me with Jadon while she went to shower and pack for her trip with Ted. I still think it’s a terrible idea for her to leave, but she seems to think it’s fine. I guess if she wants to spend time withhimover ourson, who am I to say anything?
Jadon flips through a book with some children’s show on in the background, so I take the opportunity I have now before her boyfriend comes over. Maybe see if she’s really set on leaving tonight.
I’ve come up here a few times and caught Allie and Jadon brushing their teeth. They have a little game where he sits on the counter and brushes his teeth the same way she does, and they make faces at one another. This morning they were brushing all the “bugs” out.
I haven’t seen the inside of her room, and I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it’s comfortable. Cream and a leafy green color with black accents. She has black framed pictures with motivational words and an eclectic print of a llama.
She holds up two different dresses in front of a mirror when she sees me. “What’s so funny?”
“I don’t know if I’m more surprised by the green, the llama, or that you can stand to be in the same room as me and not throw a half-assed insult my way.”
“Oh.”
Well, I had hoped for a good quip, but she’s distracted. She turns to keep switching between the dresses. One is red and way too short for a mother to wear out with some guy named Ted. Honest and unbiased opinion. The other is black and is also too short.
She has a small desk with a chair, and I take a seat when she doesn’t yell at me to get out. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she sighs and switches between those dresses with an eye closed. Her hair is rolled in curlers on her head, which I didn’t realize women still did. She’s in a robe and I can’t help but notice it. I’m a dude and that robe is thin black material. I can see each curve under the fabric.
Allie isn’t wearing anything underneath that robe. I can almost feel her in my hands once again.
She whips around and my eyes snap back up to her face. “Which one should I wear?”
Neither. She should stay here when Jadon inevitably hates the news and wants her. “It might get cold,” I say. “Maybe you should wear something more comfortable, like a sweater and long pants.”
“It’s June.” She narrows her eyes at me. “I don’t need a sweater. It’s going to be hot.” She shakes her head and grabs a third dress I didn’t see before that’s even shorter and has nothing to hold it up from the top. It’s not even a dress. “What about this?”
“The red one.” It was the longest and most appropriate for her to wear. Plus, I can see from the hanger it is the least accessible as far as tit grabs go if some Ted guy thinks about shoving his hands in there somehow.
She holds the red one up to her chest while she does whatever visualization she needs to do. “Okay. Red it is.”
“You’re still dead set on going tonight?”
“Yeah,” she hangs the other dresses back up in her closet. “Why? Are you worried?”
Terrified. “No, but maybe he’ll take it the wrong way and then only want you.”
She lays that red dress down on her bed and tightens her robe. “You’re killing me, you know that? Here we are, and I was the one that didn’t want some deadbeat coming in and out of his life, and you’re worried about whether a four-year-old is going to like you when he gets excited over your high fives.”
I don’t know what to say to that, but she moves past me and toward the hallway.
“Allie, what are you doing?”
“Jadon!” Allie calls him from the top of the stairs. “Come here, please!”
The low rumble of his fast feet hitting the floor while he races upstairs has me shaking, and a knot forms in my belly.
“Are you sure about this?”
Allie, confident as can be with curlers in her hair and half of her face made up, smiles at me. “You keep pushing for this. Why are you so nervous?”
“I don’t know, is it right?”
