I just didn’t want to fuck it up.
My biggest secret was that I doubted I could do it, which made me defensive for no reason. They were my own doubts, why was it someone else’s fault?
I envied how easy Santana made it look when, for me, it was the biggest challenge of my life. That didn’t mean I had a right to snap or act like a dick, and I knew that, but sometimes I caught her watching me with him with that same look of pity and concern that’d been on people’s faces the day I’d gotten him, and my defenses would go up.
I’d apologized to her so many times, but it wasn’t until Marcus pulled me aside a few months ago and had told me I was going to lose her if I didn’t shake off the self-pity and get my ass in gear that it’d truly hit home. Just the idea of that happening was enough to get my shit in shape, so now I was working to ingratiate myself to her.
It just wasn’t working. Then again, months of dick fuckery would take a while to fix.
But a date? A fucking date?
“Man,” I sighed, rubbing Toby’s belly. We were watching some cartoon thing on the couch before I put him to bed, his back to my front and his head tucked under my chin. “I think I messed up, son. I need to find a way to get Tana to forgive me.”
My boy nodded his head and then followed it with some noises. I wish I could understand what they meant because I was out of ideas on how to fix it.
Not knowing what to say back, I stared blindly at the characters dancing on the screen, lost in thought until he grabbed the neck of my t-shirt and pulled hard, indicating that he wanted to stand up. With my hands around his waist, I lifted him onto his feet and then grinned when he spun around with his fist in his mouth.
“Hey, bud. You wantin—”
Whatever else I was going to say was broken off as he head butted me on the nose, making me see stars as he began screaming. In fact, it’d be fair to say all hell broke loose. Not only was my son crying hysterically, but my head was spinning, and my eyes were watering. My whole face felt like a bowling ball had hit it, and I could feel something running out of my nose.
This was the multi-tasking part of parenting that I struggled with. Bleeding nose and screaming kid? No. Kid in the bath and a turd appearing in the bubbles? Fuck, no. Bottle time and the purple squeezy face of poop? No again.
I could cope with one thing at a time, but anything else was overload for me.
Which was why, with my eyes streaming along with my nose, I tried to make shushing noises to calm Toby down and accidentally sprayed blood on his white bodysuit.
“Shit, shit, shit. What do I do?”
Instead of giving me the answer I needed, my son just continued to scream, making me panic even more.
“Do you have a fractured skull? How many fingers am I holding up?”
Yes, I held three fingers up in front of him, forgetting he couldn’t even say dad, let alone count three fingers.
Ordinarily, I would have called Marcus and Addy for help, but they were in Florida for the weekend, so I didn’t have them to fall back on. And of course Santana was on her ‘date,’ so I couldn’t call her either.
Dropping down onto the couch, I inspected Toby’s forehead and winced when I saw the bump with a bruise already forming on it.
“Okay, bud. We’re going to go to the hospital to get you checked out.”
Picking him up, I stumbled over to the door with the ‘burpy’ cloth, as Tana called it, that’d been hanging over the edge of the couch pressed against my nose. If I took him to the ER covered in blood, they’d probably arrest me, so this would have to do to catch what was coming out my nose. A small amount on his clothes I could explain, but anything more than that just wouldn’t look good at all.
Shoving my feet into my sneakers, I only just remembered to pick up the diaper bag with all of Toby’s shit in it.
“This is going to suck,” I sighed as I strapped him into his car seat, the pounding in my head getting progressively worse.
Santana
I’d met Brodie by accident a week ago when I’d been picking up some stuff from the store with Addy. It was kind of clichéd, but we’d both reached for a watermelon at the same time, and it’d ended up with us exchanging numbers at Addy’s encouragement.
Did I want to date him? Well, kind of. He’d seemed like a nice guy and had the cutest black-rimmed glasses I’d ever seen on a guy. I could honestly say, though, that my participation tonight was half-hearted at best.