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And who was there to shut Grandma up? Absolutely nobody. An unstoppable force, that one.
*
One of the first things that’d developed naturally when I’d become a father was the infamous dad radar. I slept well, really well, and still, the moment Colin stirred in his sleep, I woke up momentarily just to make sure everything was all right. So when I roused one night at the sound of something rustling, I automatically expected to find my boy rolling over. Except, the sound came from the hallway.
I squinted in the dark.
Colin was fast asleep between two pillows, his pajama shirt riding up to reveal his belly, one hand clutching his blanket, the light covers twisted between his legs.
I righted the covers and tucked him in on instinct, and then I heard something again.
The front door opened just as I flicked on the flashlight on my phone, and it was Roe. Not that I’d expected anyone else. He’d come home in the middle of the night before.
Trouble in paradise again?
“Ignore me,” he whispered. He kicked off his shoes, then ducked into the kitchen and opened the fridge.
Kinda hard to ignore him, though. Where did he think he was gonna sleep? I wasn’t taking Grandma back to the airport till tomorrow, and he knew that.
Roe reemerged with a bottle of Coke and walked past the couch. “Go back to sleep.” He opened the balcony door and stepped outside.
I scrubbed a hand over my face and dragged myself up. Go back to sleep—yeah, right. I pulled on a pair of sweats, cast a glance at Colin, and then headed out to see what was up.
The air was fucking nice at this hour. I couldn’t blast the AC a whole lot with Colin next to me, so the breeze that met me in the dark of the balcony felt good.
Roe lit up a smoke and sat down at the table.
Something had to be wrong. He only smoked when he was drunk, and he didn’t appear lit.
“You okay?” I asked quietly.
He leaned back and exhaled some smoke skyward. “That’s the problem, innit? I don’t even care she broke up with me.”
There we had it.
Maybe Grandma was right. Maybe we should just focus on work. We had so much going on, and our schedules were difficult to sync as it was. I had Colin every other week, we had our show, and we had our bartending gig. All the money we’d made from the network had been invested, so we still needed to pay rent somehow. And childcare and insurance and…fuck, the list went on.
Thankfully, we didn’t need to rent studio time anymore. That’d been an expensive journey. Now we had a production company covered by the network, and that was another thing. Roe and I had discussed starting our own production company, something that would require even more time.
“Dating will have to wait,” Roe sighed.
“Maybe it’s for the best.”
He nodded slowly, then cracked a little grin. “I kinda want a kid of my own. I think that’s why I rushed into things with Vanessa.”
Oh.
Yeah, I guessed that made sense, in retrospect. He came from a big family, and he’d mentioned wanting kids one day. I just hadn’t thought it would be anytime soon.
I cleared my throat. “You know I wouldn’t change anythin’ in how I ended up with Colin, but last year was rough. You were right there next to me. Waiting a couple years till we’re more settled probably won’t hurt you.”
He chuckled silently. “You sound like my cousin.”
“Which one?” When we’d recorded an episode outside New York last winter, Roe had introduced me to two of them. Angus and Cullen. There were a few others, all significantly older.
“Greer—I talked to him earlier.” Roe yawned. “He’s back stateside and called me. I’d had a few, so I told him how things were going and that I wanted a family. Like, I wanna have roots. I wanna feel that…” He struggled to find the words. “That true coming home feeling.”
I knew exactly what he was talking about. A feeling that’d evaded me before Colin.
“He told me to build a home first.” Roe smirked faintly. “Focus on work, get our business off the ground, and then I can fill a house with ankle biters and afford to feed them too.”
I smiled. Spoken like a true jarhead. Prepare, prepare, prepare.
Taking another puff from his cigarette, Roe leaned forward and got serious. “Here’s the thing, Jake. I believe we can go really fuckin’ far—but you have to want it too.”
The gravity of what he said hit me, and rather than confirming I did want this, I kept my mouth shut.
Because he wasn’t done. “Now’s the time for us to push. Our first season did well enough for the network to want a longer second season, and we can help get the ratings up even more. You read the comments yourself—people think we’re funny together. Those who had less interest in the destination kept watching because we were entertaining.”
