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George snorted. “Too late, my friend. I already saw your middle-school-esque love doodles.”
“They aren’t…that.”
His beefy hand landed on my shoulder. “You can tell me all about it in my office.”
I finally realized that everyone else had left the conference room, so I shoved my notepad into my bag as I stood up. “Actually, I don’t have time for that. I need to get home to check on Lexi.”
George’s hand tightened. “Nope. You’re not getting away from me that easily. The text you sent to the group chat was cryptic, so your mom and Margie have put me in charge of finding out the details. Besides, I can’t let you drive right now. You’re a wreck.”
“But I won’t be once I get home to Lexi,” I said, trying to argue for my freedom as George used his body to propel me into his office.
“Sit.” He pushed me down into my normal chair across from his desk right as my cell phone chirped.
I opened it quickly, panicked that something dire had happened, and found a picture of Lexi holding her newest creation in one hand with a beaming smile on her face. I exhaled the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
“Is that a truck made out of Play-Doh?” George asked, bending down to look at the screen over my shoulder.
“It sure looks like it.” The body of her sculpture was a long pink, sort of rectangle shape, sitting on rolled-up green balls that were approximately the same size, even if they weren’t all the same size, and an extra hunk of orange Play-Doh on the front of the truck to resemble what I thought might be the cab.
George grunted and walked around his desk. “Explain.”
I wanted to say that I didn’t have time for this, but another glance at the phone disproved that. Lexi was fine. She was having fun, and it had been considerate of CJ to send that picture. He knew I was freaking out about leaving her.
Hell, based on the insecurity on his face this morning when I answered the door, he hadn't been too sure I’d go through with the live-in manny thing at all. Honestly, until the minute I’d opened the door and saw him standing there, looking a little hesitant but hella hopeful, I hadn’t been sure I wouldn’t tell him that I’d changed my mind.
After sending CJ a thank you, I saved the picture and then steeled myself to face George. He quirked his eyebrow. “What? You all told me I needed help, so I hired someone.”
“We did. This is true, but according to your mom, you had no intention of hiring a live-in person. Which, why would you? You don’t have to work more than forty hours a week, there’s no traveling, and your mom lives with you for part of the year and is around to help out a little more, so I’m not sure what happened. Or why you didn’t call me or Margie, or, I don’t know, your mother to discuss your decision. All we got was, Hired a manny. He’s moving in tomorrow morning. And then, when we tried to reply to you, it said your notifications were set to silent. That’s not like you, Kevin. What’s happening?”
He wasn’t wrong. Even when Lexi was napping as a baby, I’d only turned my ringer down to low. Between my father’s health battle, the surrogate’s pregnancy, and then my mom becoming a widow, I’d always stayed available.
Then there was my team. With how much we all worked from home, they had to be able to reach me if any problems arose that might hinder whatever project they were working on. But last night, I just couldn’t. I needed time to try and figure out where the hell my head was at. It hadn’t worked.
“Talk it out, buddy,” George said in that fatherly way he had with me. My friend wasn’t that much older than me, but he was an old soul. He’d married his high school sweetheart and began building a career and a family while most people his age were still focused completely on themselves.
George had a full life, and he loved those he cared about hard, and I’d been lucky enough to be one of those people. He’d held my hand through so many things, including relationships gone wrong, most notably the disaster with Alan, and he’d never judged me or shown me anything less than total support.
“The first two interviews were awful. There was no way I could’ve entrusted Lexi to either one of them, even with being in the house the majority of the time. I did that last interview, hoping that if the guy was the right fit, I could see if him not living in our house was a possibility.”
“And?”
“And I knew him, George. I met him the night that Mom watched Lexi so that I could go out, and—” I felt my face flush.
George chuckled. “Oh, I know what you went out for.”
“Shut up. Anyway, we had a really, really nice time, and I was kind of bummed that I didn’t at least get his number or something, but then I thought, why? I never had any luck with a relationship before I became a father. Alan made it more than clear having a child thrown in the mix wasn’t going to do me any favors..”
“We’re not even discussing that asshole. He was a selfish—” George stopped himself and took a deep breath. “Forget him.” Expression turning intrigued, George rested his forearms on his desk and leaned forward. “So you’re telling me the guy that you hooked up with is a professional babysitter?”
“Manny,” I corrected. “He’s a manny, and he loves it and played trucks with Lexi before I even let him in the front door. And she seems so comfortable with him already. And he doesn’t have a place of his own, so he’d have to live with his parents if I didn’t give him Mom’s room, and now I’m going to have to fire him when Mom comes back, which makes me feel like a complete dick, because I shouldn’t have even hired him if I knew I didn’t have a place for him to stay year-round. And what if Lexi really ends up liking him? She’ll be broken-hearted all because I got swept up in…” I trailed off.
“Swept up in what?” George asked softly, nudging me to really lay it all out there.
Slumping back in the chair, I admitted to him what I’d been shying away from internally. “I like him, okay? The night I met him seemed…magical. And maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part. Maybe it’d just been so long since I felt a man’s touch?—”
“Woah, woah, woah. I don’t need details, friend. Not unless you want me to give you some specifics about my and Margie’s?—”
I held up my hand. “No.” I dropped my hand back into my lap. “I’m probably overthinking that night, and now I’m overthinking the fact I hired him and moved him in, and I’m so rattled. I’m not impulsive, George. You know I’m not. But…he was telling me how he got into this profession, and he was even better looking and kinder than I remembered, and I… Well, I hired him on the spot and then watched him and Lexi play Lexi-ville.”
