Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 59265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
I was someone who always prided myself on being independent, someone who enjoyed her solitude, who didn’t need anyone else for company, who wasn’t bothered by a quiet house.
I guess I’d gotten accustomed to his presence. The noises in the bathroom. The conversations we shared. Sometimes, it was just about bathroom fixtures or mirrors. Other times, we’d share coffee or a meal and talk about his childhood, mine, about Tuna, or what his house was like.
I liked it.
The domestic rhythm.
The comfort of another person in my home.
And, yes, fine, the nearness of a man.
Every weeknight when he would show up, his fluffy dog in tow. I would leash Tuna up and take him on a walk, sometimes sit by and watch him swim laps in the pool. Then I would order ‘too much food’ and invite Owen to share it with me.
He came on the weekends too, spending long spans of time working while my occasional guests cooed over his dog. And I fielded the comments my cousins or aunts made about the hot guy upstairs.
The hot guy that had started to do more than make my conscious world just a little more pleasant. Because now he was in my dreams. Though, in that quiet, private place, he wasn’t just fixing my bathroom and having dinner with me. Oh, no.
He was grabbing me, yanking me into the bathroom, and pinning me to the wall as he kissed, touched, squeezed, licked, and slid inside me.
He was pulling me into the bedroom, pressing me into the mattress, and coming over me.
He was grabbing me on the couch, pulling me over his lap, and telling me to ride him. Which I did. Happily. Greedily, even.
Honestly, a part of me was almost relieved to feel desire again. I’d been afraid that I might never feel comfortable or safe enough with a man to have that again.
Was it appropriate to be having steamy dreams about my handyman? Probably not. But it felt, I don’t know, healthy. Normal. Validating.
In a weird way, fantasizing about Owen gave me an identity back that wasn’t, well, ‘single mom.’
I felt less like a sleep-deprived, diaper-changing, milk machine and more like, well, a woman again.
It made me shower more often. Occasionally do my hair or my makeup. Make sure I wasn’t always in pajamas.
It was nice.
Maybe that was part of why I was so reluctant to admit how much I liked having Owen around.
He didn’t know me very well as the woman I’d been before Adelaide. He hadn’t met me in a boardroom with my hair perfectly styled and my calendar packed down to the minute. He mostly knew me as the woman who sometimes answered the door in pajamas with spit-up on her shoulder.
And somehow, I didn’t feel like I needed to impress him.
I could be tired around Owen. Frazzled. Barefoot. Burping a baby while he talked to me about bathroom tile.
He looked at me as the woman I was. Not the one I used to be.
That mattered more than I wanted to admit.
And it was probably important if I was going to be going back to work eventually.
I’d already not only needed to handle Dave, but also work on two other clients when they refused to work with anyone else.
I’d resented it in the moment. I was entitled to my time off with my baby without work stress. But a part of me had enjoyed it, maybe even craved it. Something to think about other than sleep schedules and preschools (yes, this early, if you wanted to get into one of the good ones), and when it would be okay to slow down and cut out nursing. The list of baby things to obsess about was endless. It was nice to have other things to think about again. Even just here and there.
Though I was actively trying in my waking hours not to think about Owen in any kind of sexual or romantic way. Sleep was out of my control. But I could consciously refuse to think about him when I was awake.
“I feel like she is bigger each time I visit. Even when it’s only a few days,” Gracie said, jiggling a fussy Adelaide in the living room.
“I only notice it when I look at pictures,” I admitted. “Days are impossibly long. But the time is also somehow flying. It’s like postpartum has its own sense of time. I don’t know how to explain it. But I guess you’ll find out eventually. You know, Adelaide would love a cousin to grow up with.”
“Adelaide has a hundred cousins to grow up with already. We’ll get there. It’s definitely in our plans. But things are still new. We want to enjoy just us for a bit.”
“Yeah, that’s definitely the way it should go.”
“Shoot. Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Stop. Stop. I didn’t take it the wrong way. I just agree. Time building a solid foundation is the smart way to go about this. I wouldn’t trade my time with Adelaide for anything, but I imagine it would have been a lot easier with a loving partner to pick up some of the slack. So do what you’re doing. Cultivate that. Then babies.”