And then I was saved, or so I thought, by my phone ringing. All it took was a quick look at the screen to show me I was, in fact, more screwed than before it had started playing a song from Sesame Street. Wylda. Not mom, not mother, not anything personal like that, just Wylda.
“Maybe you should program a special ringtone from her, like the theme tune from The Shining?” Ellis muttered, not even pretending to have not seen her name. “You gonna answer it?”
The storm was still going strong outside with winds hitting the side of the house hard enough to make me picture us taking off like something out of The Wizard of Oz, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to say I hadn’t heard it go off. With that decision made, I shook my head and went back to watching Deadliest Catch.
“I want to go crab fishing on the Bering Sea.” And this was why I didn’t watch TV that often. That was mostly down to the fact that I’d always been the only one working, so I couldn’t miss a day because then I wouldn’t get paid. But also, because I had a tendency to want to do what I saw on it. Jump off of K2? Wanted it. Crab fishing? Wanted it. Race cars around cities and meet Paul Walker? Still wanted to do the first one, would have loved to have done the last one. Make a table out of pieces of wood I found around the streets? Tried it, it looked awful, color me informed. Go jet skiing with sharks? Actually, no, I didn’t want to do that one. All it took was watching Shark Week once, and I realized my shark conservation efforts were best done from the couch, but you got the point of it all. Watching television made me have delusions of grandeur in huge ways.
Unaware that this was a trend with me, Ellis shook his head. “It’s cold as fuck, and you could get frostbite or hypothermia.”
Mulling this over and watching a chunk of ice hit a deckhand at that moment, I reconsidered. “You’re right, I’d probably lose a nipple to frostbite and wouldn’t notice until I skidded on it and broke my ass on the deck.”
I just couldn’t leave well enough alone, could I? I couldn’t have stopped at telling him he was right, I just had to walk right into mentioning my ass.
Jumping on that opening, he turned to face me. “Speaking of which, why did you have it done?”
“Because I wanted to?”
Rolling his eyes, he muted the TV and gave me his undivided attention. “Seriously, why did you do it?”
Sighing, I tried to think how to put it into words. I knew what was going on in my head, but was I ready to put it out there and make myself that vulnerable? I’d also spent months trying to hammer it home that I wanted to just be friends – did this make me one of those women? Yeah, it did, and I hated that. My emotions had been all over the place for a while, and I was stuck in a constant tug-of-war just now between taking the step with Ellis and not taking it. It wasn’t just me who I had to consider in all of this, there was Olivia, too, but I knew he would be good to her and that he loved her, so I couldn’t count that as the biggest problem here. No, the biggest issue I had was – was it fair on him? I’ll never understand how single parents let their walls down and took that step, because it was the hardest thing to do. We want someone for us, but we always put our kids first and want someone who will truly love them and do the same. It’s what I call a parental priority, and there’s a long list of things that we prioritize over everything else. That’s all fair and well, but the question once you find someone who ticks all those boxes is: how fair on them is it to expect them to do that? It took a very special person to put someone else’s child first and to love them as much as the parent did, and someone who did that deserved to do it with a kid of their own, so would I be depriving him of that? It’s a repetitive question and explanation, but it’s true all the same, and it was weighing heavily on me. Plus, I had hang-ups about myself. I’m not saying that I’d had the body of a supermodel or porn star before I had her, but since I’d been pregnant with Liv, my body had changed. I’d been fortunate and hadn’t developed the massive stretch marks that some women get, but I had a couple on my sides and hips. With regular moisturizing – a lot of the shit – they were now down to faint lines, but I was very aware of them. I was also aware of the good old mammaronis – they may have given my daughter what she needed, and I was proud of that, but they also resided on my body and were different to normal ta-tas. I had that extra ten pounds, at least, that I couldn’t shift, and I now owned and was a devout believer in Spanx. I had the ones that went from boobies to knees, the thong versions, the normal panties that came to just above your belly button, basically I had all of them and wore them pretty much religiously. All of those women beating their fists in the air telling me not to be vain, and that I should be owning it and accepting of the fact I’d had a baby, so my body was bound to change, were looking at my situation the wrong way. I was proud of what my body had achieved, but I also wanted to not feel self-conscious when I was outside my home or sitting down. Wearing them kept all the areas I was embarrassed about in check, they made me feel back in control of it all, and I didn’t have to lie down to zip up my jeans – where exactly was the harm in that? Basically, underneath it all, I was well aware of what I was working with, and all of that meant that I was just stuck in a yo-yo of emotions when it came to the situation with Ellis. I’d voiced all of this to Tabby earlier today and she’d given me some great words of advice: no one could tell you how to look and feel, what you should and shouldn’t be doing, or anything like that. I needed to take each step as I was ready for it, but I also needed to trust in the fact that Ellis wouldn’t be the key figure that he was in our lives if he didn’t want to be there. “You’re a great guy,” I started, then shut my mouth with a snap when I saw how hurt he looked at those words. Quickly realizing how it had sounded, I backtracked. “No, no, wait, I didn’t mean it. I mean, I meant it, but not like that. Shit, give me a second because it all sounds so much better up here,” I tapped my head to show him what I meant. Eventually, I found the words I needed, and tried again. “I like you, and if it wasn’t for Liv, it would be so much easier to just jump right on in without a care in the world.”