Free Bad Boy Good Man by Abigail Barnette

fridge,
producing a bottle of red wine instead of beer. He held it up for
approval, and I nodded. Opening the bottle, he shook his head.
“That kid could sleep through a helicopter landing in here.”
    We went to the dining table, to our places
from dinner, though he sat a bit closer to the corner than before,
his body angled toward mine. “I hope you don’t feel like you have
to hang out. I realize I’m kind of….needy. But it’s nice to have
another grown-up to talk to. I start to feel like a soccer mom
after a while.”
    “What was I going to be doing?” I shrugged as
he poured wine into my glass. Switching gears, I asked, “Do you
watch him a lot?”
    “Every night except Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
He held my gaze for a long moment, to see if I got his meaning.
    “Yeah, grown-up interaction seems to be at an
all-time high on those nights.” I raised my eyebrows and held up my
glass to clink it against his.
    “Antonia went away for a year. Just got
back.” He lowered his voice, as though the sleeping child would
hear him despite his statement to the contrary. “Possession of
cocaine, first offense. I told him she went to college.”
    “Oh no.” The kid was so adorable and sweet.
As stern and sometimes cold as my parents had been to me, I would
have been traumatized by one of them disappearing for a year.
    “He lived here with me while she was gone.”
He shrugged. “I was actually considering moving out, into a place
that would have been bigger for us, but then Antonia came back and…
Let’s just say that I didn’t want it to seem like I was planning
for the future, like I didn’t trust her, you know?”
    “I understand what you’re saying, but I
wouldn’t say that I know .” I couldn’t imagine being
responsible for someone else’s kid while they were in jail, fearing
the whole time that the same situation could happen, again.
    “She’s got a job now, so that’s good. That’s
why I have the kid every night.” He nodded toward the bed and
leaned his forearms on the tabletop. With the sleeves pushed back,
I could see the flex of his muscles as he toyed with the wine
glass, and the dark hair on them that I’d only been able to feel
the night before.
    “Every night except Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
Which were beginning to make a whole lot more sense. “I can see why
that would make dating hard.”
    “It does. I don’t get out to many clubs or
parties. Don’t get me wrong; I wouldn’t have it any other way. I
don’t like his dad, and I don’t like that the guy gets him even one
weekend a month. But it’s hard to find someone who’s cool with this
arrangement. Tony is always going to be first in my life, and a lot
of women don’t like that. They want to get married, have their own
kids. They don’t want to take care of someone else’s, let alone
someone else’s nephew.”
    “I can see why casual is so appealing.”
    “That’s the thing…” He paused, looking up at
me. His beautiful brown eyes were full of nervous uncertainty. “I
don’t really want to do the casual thing, anymore.”
    “Oh?” I squeaked.
    “Yeah. I met someone.”
    My heart bi-located; it was in my throat and
stomach at the same time. “It seems highly unlikely that you met
someone today between the time we were together and the time I came
over here, but I have notoriously bad luck with guys, especially
guys figuring out that they want someone else after I’ve started to
like them—”
    “No, it’s you,” he cut me off.
    I pressed a hand to my chest. “Oh. Oh thank
god.”
    “You seem pretty relieved,” he teased me,
then turned serious. “This is going to sound crazy, but I knew I
was into you when you accused me of cheating on my non-existent
wife.”
    “That does sound weird,” I admitted. “Was it
my sparkling personality that won you over?”
    “No, I was really pissed off.” He grinned.
“Then, I started thinking about it. You leapt to the defense of my
wife. She didn’t exist,