There’s a picture of him in a bar, the caption claiming it was a few days ago. He’s standing beside Serena, and she’s holding her drink out, offering it to him.
I flip through it, finding more pictures. More of us. More of them. Close to midnight on Monday—the day of his appointment. It says they met up at a hotel in the city, when hours before, he finally broke his silence about their relationship while walking his daughter to school.
Closing the tabloid, I toss it aside.
A few minutes pass before I hear the front door, Maddie’s laughter filtering through. She runs through the apartment, into the hall, yelling, “Hi, Mommy! Bye, Mommy!’ before disappearing into her bedroom.
Jonathan comes to the bedroom, asking, “So, how’d it go at the store?”
I look at him in silence for a moment before saying, “It went about like I thought.”
“Good? Bad?”
I shrug.
His brow furrows as he steps closer, noticing the tabloid on the bed. Grabbing it, he groans and sits down beside me. “You bought this shit?”
“No, I kind of just took it.”
“You took it.”
“Yes.”
His eyes scan the cover before he flips through it, going straight to the article. He skims it, scowling, before tossing it aside.
“Since when do you shoplift?”
“I don’t,” I say. “It was a mistake.”
“A mistake,” he says. “I’ve made my fair share of those.”
“You make any lately?”
“Maybe a few.”
“Like?”
“Well, for one, that article I just read.”
“Which part of it was the mistake?”
“The part where I wasted brain cells reading it,” he says. “For the record, I didn’t drink that night. I know it looks bad, but I was waiting for my car and she happened to be there. There’s nothing going on between us, which is what I told that asshole when he claimed I broke my silence.”
“Good to know.”
Reaching over, Jonathan grabs my hands, placing his over mine. I’m fidgeting, I realize.
“Don’t do that,” he says. “Please. Don’t ever doubt me over something they print.”
“It’s just, you know… the photos.”
“It’s a split second snapshot,” he says. “Anything can be made to look bad if taken out of context. And they’ll do it, every chance they get.”
“I know.”
“But back to the subject. Another mistake is spending even an ounce of energy entertaining their bullshit when there are much better things we could be doing.”
I close my eyes as he pushes me back onto the bed. His mouth meets mine, and he kisses me, tongues mingling together. His hands roam, stroking my side, one slipping beneath my shirt. He palms a breast, squeezing it, sliding beneath my bra. I moan when his fingertips brush against the nipple, sending sparks through my body, but it’s gone again, drifting south.
His fingertips trail along my stomach before slipping past the waistband of my pants. I inhale sharply when he starts rubbing, stroking me through the soft cotton of my underwear. Heat rushes through me. Tingles consume me. Just a touch from this man sets my world on fire.
“Oh god,” I whisper, arching my back as his fingers work their magic, sparks flowing down my spine. I’m getting close already. I can feel it building up, tightening in my gut. I bite my lip to keep from making too much noise.
So close…
So close…
Oh god, so—
“Daddy!”
Maddie’s voice shouts down the hallway as footsteps head our direction. At once, Jonathan pulls away, standing up. “What?”
She bursts in as I force myself to sit up, still breathing heavily. I feel my face heating. I’m shaking, aching… clenching my thighs together to try to make it stop.
“I’m ready to do some lines!” she says, grinning, again wearing her Breezeo costume.
Jonathan laughs. “Ready to run lines, you mean.”
Her brow furrows. “That’s what I said.”
“No, you said…” He trails off. “Never mind.”
“You’re running lines again?” I glance between them as Jonathan goes to the duffel bag he lives out of and starts digging through it. “That’ll take, what... five minutes? Ten?”
I’m trying to gauge how long he’s going to leave me hanging.
Jonathan pulls out a thick stack of papers, waving them at me. “Probably a bit longer than that.”
The Breezeo script. Ghosted.
“Whoa,” I say, reaching for it, but he yanks it back, away from my grasp.
“No touching,” he says before handing it to Maddie. “It’s top secret material.”
“What?” I scowl at him. “How come she gets to read it?”
“Because I’m Breezeo, duh,” she says before running off with the script, not letting me near it.
“Yeah,” Jonathan says, leaning down to kiss me—just a brush against my lips. “Duh.”
He tries to move, but I’m not done with him, yanking him down on top of me.
Laughing, he kisses me some more, real kisses this time, and presses himself into me. He’s hard. “Is that what you want, baby?”
Baby. Hearing him call me that makes me shiver in his arms. “Oh god, yes…”
“Daddy!” Maddie whines from the living room. “Hurry up!”
“Pity,” Jonathan says, biting my bottom lip before he pulls away. “Guess we’ll have to reschedule.”
I gape at him as he heads for the door. “You son of a…”
“Bitch?”
He laughs.
“This is cruel,” I say. “Cruel and unusual punishment!”
“Don’t be mad, Mommy!” Maddie yells across the apartment. “Maybe Daddy will give it to you later.”
She’s talking about the script, I know, but dang it, I blush when Jonathan glances back at me from the hallway, cocking an eyebrow. “Maybe Daddy will.”
I give him the middle finger.
He laughs again.
I’m flustered, no doubt about it, and parts of me still ache, but when I hear Maddie’s excitement as they start reading, I’m overcome with this sense of peace.
I can’t help but smile.
It’s all I’ve wanted for years.
Getting up, I go to the kitchen and cook dinner. When it’s finished, they take a break. The three of us eat together at the table. Afterward, they jump back into it, and I make my way to my bedroom.
Picking up the discarded copy of Hollywood Chronicles, I tear out a photo from the cover, the one where Jonathan is smiling. The rest of the paper, I throw in the trash. Pulling out my broken box of old mementos, I set the photo in. As strange as it may seem to keep, it’s our first real picture together as a family.
“You want to run some lines with me?”
It’s after dark when Jonathan reappears in the doorway to the bedroom, leaning against the doorframe, holding the script. I’m sitting in bed, propped against the headboard, knees pulled up and notebook in my lap. “Don’t you have a daughter for that?”
“She fell asleep,” he says. “Must’ve bored her unconscious.”
“Must’ve,” I agree. “So, what, you think you can just come crawling back to me? Think I’ll welcome you back with open arms? Give you yet another chance?”
“Was damn sure hoping so. I’m banking on the fact that some part of you actually likes me.”
“Most parts of me like you.”
“What part doesn’t?
“My brain, usually.”
He laughs, strolling closer, his brow furrowing when he sees what I’m holding. “Are you writing?”
“Just thinking,” I say, closing the notebook when he sits down beside me on the bed. I take the script from him, and he doesn’t resist this time, letting me flip through it.
“I used to wonder what could possibly be worse than being invisible,” he says, and I know he’s reciting a line, because it’s word-for-word from the comic. “What could be lonelier than always being by yourself?”