Worth the Fight (Accidentally on Purpose) (5 page)

“I'm sorry I didn't cook dinner tonight,” she said through an obviously stuffed nose.

“It's okay. Don't worry about it,” I said as I loosened my tie. I collapsed on the now vacant couch.

“I can make you something,” she said, picking up Lucas’s toys.

“I'm fine, thank you.”

I just wanted her to leave me the hell alone. It wasn’t a requirement for her to make my meals. The fact that she did was appreciated, but I didn’t want her under the impression that this was some kind of amicable arrangement. I was tired and grumpy and I wanted her to just go in the bedroom like she always did when Lucas was in bed, even if it was a little earlier than usual. For a few damn minutes, I just wanted my own apartment back, but since I couldn’t have that I had to settle for her slithering into the other room.

“Are you sure I can’t make you anything?” she asked after carrying a couple of dishes into the kitchen. “It’s not a pro
blem.”

“I said no!” I yelled. “My god, it's not like you're my wife, Emmy.”

Even to my ears that sounded harsher than she probably deserved for just trying to be nice, but I wasn’t about to apologize for it.

She stood in front of the bedroom door for a moment, frozen and hurt by my outburst.

“Okay then,” she said in a wounded voice. She closed herself in the bedroom and I congratulated myself on being a big jerk.

*~~~*

The slightly chilly autumn was soon drifting into the short days and long nights of winter. I was still seeing Claire once or twice every two weeks, but that was beginning to not be enough for her, but I was extremely busy in my busted office and if I wasn’t there then I was with Lucas.

Not much had changed between his mother and me. She moved about the apartment like a scared stray, skittering out of my way when I came anywhere near her, always with her eyes cast down. The only time I saw her animated was when she was with Lucas or when her mother came into town for the hol
idays. She barely left the apartment most days, unless it was dinner every other Sunday with my family, trips to the grocery store or other small errands; however, when Sam came into town, Lucas’s Mom found any excuse to get away. I swear she made up errands. I was pretty sure I had never seen the woman touch Jell-O, but I once heard her say that she had to run to the store for some. She didn’t come back for three hours.

My rough days at work were getting rougher. While the office was slowly coming together, it still looked and operated rather unprofessionally. The few resources we had weren’t b
eing properly utilized. We were still turning away clients and Kacey was still scary – and not the good kind of scary. We had to do something and fast before everything fell completely apart.

“Hey, buddy,” I said to Lucas one evening as I dropped my suitcase by the door and threw my jacket over the back of a chair at the table. I swept him out of his pack and play and planted a manly kiss on his forehead. “How was your day, little man?”

I did what I did almost every evening when I got in from work. I put Lucas in his high chair and spoiled him with a jar of banana custard. His mother always had him fed before I got in, but I always felt he was entitled to a little dessert. I could tell by the look on her face that she disapproved, but she never objected. I had missed doing this with him the night his mother was sick.

“This stuff is gross,” I said to Lucas when we were nea
rly finished the jar. “I don’t know how you eat it.”

He scrunched up his little nose and grinned at me as if to say “Good! More for me!”

When he was all finished, his mother brought my dinner out to me along with a glass of homemade sweet iced tea, another thing she was really good at making. I thanked her, but that was the end of our conversation. She never sat down to eat with me and I never asked her to. I wasn’t sure when and where she finally ate her own meal, but I guess I didn’t really care. I appreciated what she was doing, being useful, but it didn’t change anything. Even if the damn lasagna she just made almost made me cry with joy.

As usual, Lucas’s mother swept him away for a bath while I ate my dinner. By the time I was finished dinner and watching the evening news, Lucas was bathed and ready for bed. At this point, without acknowledging words, I did my us
ual and put him to bed after reading a short book to him. As a family – if you want to call it that – we had easily fallen into a regular routine without much discussion on the matter. Even the mutual silent treatment had become routine, especially after that night when Lucas’s Mom was sick. After Lucas was asleep, I came out of the room and settled down on the couch with my briefcase and turned on
Family Guy
while his mother busied herself in the kitchen with cleaning up dinner and putting away the leftovers. A more recent development was packing a lunch for me to take to work, I supposed in an effort to get rid of the leftovers. She probably would have made an excellent wife if she wasn’t a cheating, lying, deceiving bitch.

She exited the kitchen sometime later, turning the light off behind her.

“I’m going to go do the grocery shopping,” she said meekly as she hung near the bedroom door with her hands folded in front of her.

Despite the obvious personality changes in her that I didn’t necessarily care about, I was still a little stunned when she behaved so submissively. Maybe to any other man, this would have been a turn on. In fact, sometimes the unbidden d
esire to see her submissively on her knees as she orally pleased me came into my head, but then the knowledge that she was obviously a very scarred person always shattered that idea. Regardless of what she was to me, no person with such obvious demons should ever be put in that position. It just seemed…wrong.

“How much do you need?” I asked, reaching for my wa
llet.

I insisted on paying for all of the groceries and household items we needed on a regular basis, even the things that she needed. I was well aware that she could pay for her own sha
mpoo and body wash and feminine products, but if nothing else, she was still Lucas’s mother. She was Lucas’s mother and she was living in my home, caring for my son. It was my responsibility to see that her needs were met. She was permitted to spend her own money on makeup or clothes for herself or similar luxuries if she wanted to, but I did not want her paying for anything else. I had to come up with a better system than making her come to me every time she wanted to go to the store. All of this extra communicating rubbed me the wrong way and only served to put me in a pissy mood.

“I’m not sure,” she said, looking at the floor.

I took my ATM card out and got up to hand it to her. “I am going to add you to my account so you can have your own card. Then you won’t have to wait for me every time you need to go to the store.”

“That won’t be necessary,” she said, taking the card from me. She still had not met my eyes after all of these weeks of cohabitating. Not that it really mattered.

“It is necessary,” I said, angry that she said that it wasn’t.

“I will have to plan better,” she said with a small shrug. “Then I can give you a heads up instead of springing it on you as I’m about to walk out of the door.”

“Or,” I said roughly. “I give you your own card.”

“Whatever is easiest for you,” she said and turned away from me.

I went back to my place on the couch.

I could think of a million things that would make this life ‘easier’ for all of us, but that would require a time machine, and as far as I knew, the world was sold out of those.

Chapter Six

I felt the condom break just as my orgasm began. What fucking luck.

I pulled out of the writhing blonde with a curse and fi
nished on her pretty blue bedspread under us, even though I knew that I had not really pulled out in time.

I cursed like a trucker that used to be a sailor that was the son of a trucker and sailor couple as I made my way to the bat
hroom to take off the remaining pieces of the useless rubber.

“It’s no big deal,” Claire said behind me in the bedroom. “I’ll go to the pharmacy in the morning and get that Plan B.”

“That’s not a guaranteed preventive, Claire,” I growled.

“Nothing is a guaranteed preventive,” she said.

I laughed without humor. “How about abstinence?”

“Well…yeah, but you don’t have any intentions of being abstinent.”

I turned around and walked back into the bedroom without answering her. I started picking my clothes up off of the floor and putting them on.

“You’re not seriously considering not being intimate with me anymore,” she said in disbelief.

“I don’t know,” I said, feeling highly aggravated. “All I know is that I do not need this shit right now.”

“I told you I’ll take care of it,” she said as she got up from the bed.

“Yeah? What if that doesn’t work?” I questioned as I pulled my pants on.

“Then I’ll take
care
of it,” she said, glaring at me from the bathroom doorway.

I stared at her, surprised by what she was implying. “I can’t even believe you are suggesting that,” I snapped at her.

“If I was Emmy, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation,” she snapped back. “You’d probably be glad to knock her up again.”

Patiently, I pointed in her general direction. “Don’t. Go. There.”

Her demeanor immediately changed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I promise this isn’t a problem, okay? I’ll go to the pharmacy tonight if you want. Chances are the timing is all wrong anyway.”

I ran a hand through my hair and let out a frustrated sigh. This thing with Claire had its high points, but more recently I begin to realize it wasn’t really the arrangement I wanted, esp
ecially with her. Despite our agreement to keep our relationship as friendly as possible, she was still clingy and jealous, often calling me during my time with Lucas or trying to get me to meet her more often than what I was giving her. Apart from all of that, my work load was threatening to crush me and my associates. Whatever time I had left at the end of each day or during the weekends when I wasn’t tied up with work was reserved for Lucas and my family.

“Luke,” she said my name in a small voice.

“I can’t do this anymore, Claire,” I said, meeting her eyes. “It’s not you, but I just…I just don’t have time for this relationship right now.”

“I won’t push so hard,” she rushed. “I’ll take whatever time you can give me.”

“Any extra time I have right now should go to my son,” I said to her and picked my sneakers up off of the floor. I sat down on the edge of the bed to put them on.

“What about time for yourself and your own needs?” she asked.

“Someday, hopefully under the right circumstances, you are going to have your own child and you will put your own needs aside, and you won’t regret it. I don’t.”

“That’s like saying you don’t regret giving me up,” she said, looking horrified at such a prospect.

“That isn’t what I am saying, Claire,” I said, getting to my feet. “But you look at it how you want to.”

I knew she was about to cry and I didn’t want to see that. I got off of the bed, grabbed my wallet off of the nightstand and turned away from her. I stopped in the doorway and spoke to her over my shoulder.

“I still care about you, Claire, but you want much more than I can give you, and you should go find someone willing to give it to you.”

She didn’t follow me out and I was thankful for that.

I went straight home after Claire’s. I felt badly for leaving her like that, but honestly, I was more worried about the broken condom. The last thing I needed was to have another baby – with another woman – when my relationship with Lucas’s Mom was so damn broken. I felt like my whole life was turning into an episode of
Maury
.

In the living room, I stripped out of my jacket, sneakers, jeans, and sweater. I left everything in a heap on the floor by the coffee table and fell wearily onto the couch. I usually slept on an inflatable mattress, but I didn’t feel like going through the motions of moving furniture out of the way, blowing it up and covering it with a sheet. I really missed my bed, and I was sure if I asked Lucas’s Mom to switch for a few nights a week she would meekly agree to it, but I didn’t want to have to ask her for anything.

I was just beginning to relax when I heard a muffled cry from the bedroom. In dad mode, I automatically got up off of the couch to go take care of my son. There was no regulation on who got up with Lucas on what nights, but since she was sleeping in the same room with him she almost always got to him first, but sometimes I would come in and take over. She never argued, but simply went back to bed.

I pushed the door open just after another cry. I walked over to Lucas’s crib, but was surprised to find him fast asleep and completely still. I scratched my head like a cartoon chara
cter. Was I really that freaked out by the condom thing?

And then
she
stirred on the bed behind me and I realized just as she let out something that resembled a sob that it was never Lucas crying. It was his mom.

I don’t know why this floored me and literally made me immobile as I watched her hands shoot up as if blocking a blow.

“Please stop,” she said in such a heartbreaking, pathetic, soul crushing voice that it knocked the breath out of me. “Stop it!”

It sounded as if she was trying to scream out her words of distress, but it was faint aloud in reality. She turned to her side and curled into a ball as little sobs escaped her lips.

“My baby,” she mewed. “You’re going to hurt my baby.”

It hit me then. It really hit me. I knew that Kyle was somehow responsible for the emotional scars that Lucas’s Mom – Emmy – tried to keep hidden, but now I believed whatever he had done was far more sinister than just being a douche bag. Whatever it was he did, he did it to my son, too.

*~~~*

The next day was off to a bad start. I had sat up all night thinking about what to do about Emmy and her nightmares. I didn’t know if I should confront her or leave it alone. If it was just about her, I probably would have minded my own business, but Lucas was definitely involved and Lucas
was
my business. I just didn’t know if what happened to him was in or out of the womb.

By the time I fell asleep, the sky was beginning to light up the morning sky. I was shaken awake by Emmy an hour a
fter I should have been up and ready to walk out of the door. I jumped off of the couch, crashing into her. She stumbled back, but I grabbed her waist to steady her. That was the first time I touched her in a long time. If I had time I would have thought about how surprisingly refreshing it was to feel her curves and not Claire’s bony body. I released her as I murmured an apology and darted out of the room to get ready for work.

I showered in record time and almost shouted with relief when I saw that Emmy had picked out a suit and tie for me and laid it out on the bed. Hell, she even put out a pair of boxers and socks.

I dressed quickly and dashed out into the living room. Emmy was holding a smiling Lucas in one arm and had my coat draped over her other arm while she held my briefcase. Again, perfect wife material, if she wasn’t who she was…

I took the coat and briefcase with appreciation and leaned in to kiss Lucas goodbye. As I was pulling away, I got a whiff of Emmy’s scent and was shocked at how sad I suddenly felt.

“Just a second,” she said and turned around to the dining room table. She handed me a reusable shopping bag. “Breakfast and lunch,” she said and shifted Lucas to her other arm.

I held the bag and looked at it with a dumbfounded e
xpression. She’s given me lunch before, and on weekends she makes me breakfast, but something about this was…touching.

“It’s just an egg and bacon sandwich,” she shrugged. “But I figured you don’t have time to stop. I think I heard you tell someone on the phone that you had to be in court rather ea
rly today.”

“Yes,” I said stupidly. “Thanks.”

I turned away and rushed out of the door before I did something ridiculous, like smile.

When I walked into the office, I was once again remin
ded of what shit shape it was in. Kacey sat at her desk texting on her phone. I usually ignored this, but I was moody.

“Put the phone away and do something useful,” I snapped at her as I passed by her desk.

“We had to send away another client this morning,” Craig said, following me into my office. I liked Craig. He was very young, just barely out of high school, but he was a hard worker and took the pressure working in our screwed up environment well. He was a fast talker, though, spoke a mile a minute, especially when he was feeling said pressure.

“We have
got
to get this office in order, Luke. This place is turning into an absolute nightmare when it should be effin’ amazing. We shouldn’t have to turn clients away just because we’re completely unorganized. What is Kacey for? Isn’t she supposed to be part of that organization process? And for shit’s sake, Luke, the reception area out there looks like the reception area before the gates to hell and Kacey looks like a gargoyle guarding the gates to hell. Who am I kidding? The reception room to the gates of hell are probably fucking fabulous. I keep looking at it and expecting to see Michael Keaton all dressed up as Beetle Juice and that guy with the shrunken head and the lady cut in half.”

I stopped staring open mouthed at Craig after every one of his rants a long time ago, but sometimes it was the only rea
ction I could muster. This was one of those times.

“I wish I could do more, but I can’t. I’m only one person working for four attorneys in a piece of crap law firm. No o
ffense.”

“None taken,” I said and tried to get myself together. I had to be in court in less than an hour. “Look, money is e
xtremely tight right now. I can’t hire anyone else just yet.”

“Then make that woman out there do her job,” Craig d
emanded as he handed me the very file I was looking for.

“I’ll try, but I don’t want to push her out the door. No one else will work for what I’m paying her.”

“Maybe if you were paying her more money she would care a little more,” Craig said walking to the door. “Just saying.”

The moment Craig stepped out of my office, Kacey pounced on him, yelling at him about not minding his own business, the usual pleasantries between the two young emplo
yees. A moment later as I walked back through the reception area, I snapped at the pair to stop arguing and get back to work. That’s all I needed was for one of my current clients to walk in and find a morning brawl.

Court wasn’t too much better later. I lost good ground on what I thought was a very strong case in my client’s favor. I should have been prepared for what the opposing counsel had up their sleeve, but admittedly I was distracted by many things – Claire and the busted condom fiasco, Emmy and her nigh
tmares and wondering how my son was involved, the state of the office and wondering how the hell we were going to stay afloat if I had to keep turning people away and my current clients weren’t exactly rolling in the dough.

Later that night after Lucas was in bed, I sat on the living room couch looking towards the kitchen where Emmy was cleaning up. I couldn’t see her, but I could hear the hum of the dishwasher, the water running in the sink, and occasionally I’d hear a light cough or a sigh. I never cared to know what was g
oing on in her head before, but now I was dying to get between her ears and know the things she knew, to relive what she lived when I was not there.

I was angry that Lucas was possibly hurt. The anger ran deep, contending with my dark emotions regarding the time I missed of his life because of Emmy’s foolish decisions. I was angry for my son, but I would be the biggest douche bag in Chicago if I wasn’t also angry for Emmy. Regardless of what she did to me, if Kyle Sterling physically hurt her, I wanted to personally break every bone in his smug body. I wanted him to hurt her, I really did, but not with his hands. I only had wanted her to feel the same emotional pain I had felt after I pulled my head out of the sand and faced the fact that she was not only truly screwing Kyle, but it didn’t appear that she was going to stop. I did
not
want her to suffer any physical abuse, and admittedly, I was still a douche bag for wanting her to suffer at all.

Emmy stepped out of the kitchen, wiping her wet hands on her jeans as she took a look around the living room and di
ning area to make sure everything was cleaned up. She did not look at me or say anything to me before disappearing into the room for the night. Up until this point, this was our version of normal and I was okay with normal. This time it wasn’t sitting well with me and I didn’t know what to do about it.