“You’re telling me.” He laughed. “How is the munchkin?”
“She’s doing better,” I said. “She is smiling again, laughing, playing with her friends, and all the stuff a normal 7-year-old is supposed to do. She turns 8 on the Fourth of July, so make sure you leave your calendar open for her party during the day.”
“I will, and you can meet Maria,” he said. “She’s starting to think I made you up.”
“Maybe you did,” I said, raising my eyebrows over my mug of beer and laughing.
“How about you? How is your love life?”
Immediately, my heart dropped, and my face cringed, Alissa immediately flowing back through my mind. I wasn’t bitter. I had been the one to make the decision, but I thought about her every day. Talking about it only seemed to make it worse, though I hadn’t really talked about it with anyone. Juan and I had been so busy that the conversation hadn’t come up at all. I was hoping I would get through the time at the bar without it coming up as well, but I should have known that wasn’t going to happen. I gulped my beer down and ordered another, instantly wanting to stop the aching in my belly. Juan sighed and patted me on the back.
“That bad, huh?” He shook his head and took in a deep breath. “I don’t know a lot, but the last I heard was that you had hired Alissa to redecorate your house and you guys ended up turning it into a real relationship. I was really happy for you. I knew that if you got yourself in a real relationship, that meant you really cared about the girl. I’m sorry that it didn’t go the way that you wanted it to. These things can be tough after going through the situation that you went through.”
I didn’t want to talk about this, even though I thought it would make me feel better. I wanted to pretend like it never happened, and that my heart wasn’t broken all over again. To be honest, I was really shocked at how sad I was when things ended. I didn’t realize how much I had cared for Alissa. At the time, I chalked it up to the fact that my heart was already in a sensitive position, and I had gone headfirst into it without thought or worry that it wouldn’t work out in the end. I was so sure of myself and of my feelings for Alissa. I really thought that Kayla would be okay with it in the end, but her crazy outburst made me realize I was thinking with my chest and not with my head. I was living in a dream world, thinking that life was going to be that kind and that simple for me.
“I tell you, man, I don’t even know where to start with all of that,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not really sure whether we are on a pause or completely broken up. Everything happened so fast, and I was forced to make a split-second decision that I wasn’t prepared to make. I walked into things headfirst with Alissa and was so damn sure that there was nothing that would end how happy we really were. I blinded myself, I think.”
“So, what happened? Did you freak out? Did she?”
“No, man, nothing like that.” I sighe
d. “Everything had been perfect. I mean, we’d spent weeks dating on the down low, not ready to tell Kayla yet. We really got to know each other on a whole other level. It was really special. Then, one night at dinner with Kayla, I just felt like I couldn’t lie to her anymore. She deserved the truth. Well, the truth seemed to be a bit more than she was ready to handle, and she broke down. She screamed at me about Mother’s Day, and then just started sobbing uncontrollably, blaming me for not trying hard enough with her mother. I asked her if it was too soon, and she said yes, so I let Alissa down gently.”
“You know,” he said with a deep breath. “I highly respect the fact that you care so much about your daughter that you would make your decisions based on her happiness. That being said, you have to remember something. You are never going to be the best father you can be if you, yourself, aren’t happy.”
“I know.” I sighed. “Well, I thought I knew. It just broke me that she thought I was the reason her mother hadn’t come back yet. I don’t want her to think that way about me.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But breaking up with Alissa may have given Kayla the belief that getting back with her mother was an option. Letting her believe that is going to hurt her a lot more in the long run than letting her understand now, and grow in that understanding as she matures. It is a hard thing to swallow, breaking your child’s heart, but life is tough, and one day, she will appreciate that you told her the truth. Every day that her mother doesn’t walk back through those doors is another day her heart aches. If she doesn’t expect it, she might be able to move forward.”
“She just started feeling better,” I said, rubbing my face. “To turn around and break that all over again is unthinkable.”
“It’s going to happen sooner or later, whether it comes from you, or she figures it out on her own,” he said. “It’s much better to come from a gentle hand that is there to catch her when that world collapses on top of her. On top of that, you can’t stay single forever. You will be miserable. Whether it’s Alissa or some other woman, if you start dating and she still believes her mother is coming back, you will put your significant other in a terrible place with your daughter. She will hate your new love interest, and knowing Kayla’s sass, she will make her feel really bad about herself.”
“This sucks,” I said, drinking my second beer. “I feel trapped in my own life. I still feel trapped under the weight of Christina and her decisions. She put me in a position where moving on like she did a long time ago made it impossible for me to do so without hurting my daughter, and all after I had to take the brunt of the blame from Kayla when Christina first left. It’s not fucking fair, man.”
“Very true,” he said. “But you have to make the best of what you have. Kayla will come around, and she will learn to love whoever you love, but only if she understands that your ex is not coming back. She needs to understand that she is not coming back because she chose long ago that she didn’t want to be there. It’s a lot for a little girl, but it will be even heavier if she gets older and finds out she was lied to. She will be angry at you for lying, angry and hurt with her mother, and she will feel guilty for the way she treated you as a child. That, my friend, is the really unfair part of it all. Unfortunately, Christina did this to her own child, and now, it has to be brought to a head so she can really start healing.”
“I understand,” I said with a sigh.
“Good,” Juan said, drinking the last of his beer, throwing some money on the counter, and slapping me on the back. “I gotta get home, or Maria will start questioning what I ate.”
“All right.” I laughed. “Thanks, man. It’s always helpful to talk.”
“You got this,” he said, smiling. “I have faith in you.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Alissa
I straightened my skirt and walked carefully across the parking lot to the front doors of the restaurant. It was the first time I had put on clothes outside of work that weren’t sweats or yoga pants since Ryan broke our relationship off. Tonight, though, Bella called me out to our favorite Italian joint to have dinner and get me out of the house. I didn’t tell her, but I knew she knew I was moping around, feeling like absolute shit for the last few weeks. I hadn’t even had the balls to really talk about how I was feeling about anything.
“Hey, beautiful,” Bella said, standing up and kissing my cheek. “Guess what I got in the mail today? A postcard from Mom.”
“Oh, yeah? Where are they now?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Somewhere in the tropics, but that isn’t the best part. Mom is coming home in July. I’m so happy to have her come home.”
“Aww, that’s fantastic,” I said, trying to muster a real, genuine smile. “That gives me another month to pull my head out of my ass so Mom doesn’t see me and instantly know that I have a broken heart. You know how she is. It’s like she can peer into my soul or something.”