Page 56 of Trusting You
“Enough to keep you here? Believe me, I know. Astor’s a lot. But deep down, she’s soft and squishy and won’t bite. I promise.”
I lift my chin. “I wouldn’t say she’s—wait. You’re trying to distract me.”
He grins, and even when laced with a grimace, it’s disarming. “Is it working?”
No, but you are.
My shoulders relax. “I don’t want to be a burden.”
“Do I look like a guy who’d lie down for a chick?” Locke asks with emphasis.
“Uh…”
Locke gives me a flat stare. “Not that kind of lie down. Look, I’m no doormat. If I didn’t want you here, I’d tell you. I’m moody, though. Can’t help you there.”
Lily’s frantically turning herself into a human pretzel to escape her harness.
“I’d better go,” I say.
“Yeah.” Locke waves us off. “Go. But make sure to come back, okay?”
I offer him a small, deflated smile as I push the stroller through the doorway. “I’m not going to abscond with your baby.”
“I don’t just mean the baby.”
The door’s almost shut, but I catch a glimpse of his face as he says it, and in those brief seconds, I detect nothing but irritation.
It makes no sense, his words coupled with his expression, but I’m coming to understand that about Locke. The conflict and layers and constant upkeep it takes for him to keep pretending everything in his life is okay.
I lift the stroller the way I saw Locke do it—surprised by the lightness—and descend the staircase sideways. Lily smacks at my face and tries to palm my nose. I blow a raspberry at her, but I’m thinking about the man I left behind, and how I’m coming to learn that sometimes, it’s not kindness I crave.
Seeing Locke angry is upsetting. But understanding its impact unearths a sexual lust coiled beneath my bones.
I’m used to emotional charge. Usually in the roller coaster form of grief, thinking everything will be all right, like when the treatment’s working and Paige has more energy, before the crash of devastation when told there’s nothing more that can be done.
But this ride with Locke…the leap from anger to happiness to sweetness, then back to anger, in such a short amount of time, has me wanting to lift my dress and deal with the overdrive in an entirely different way. I want to straddle him, to massage and kiss and tame him.
I shudder as I drop Lily’s wheels to the ground.
Maybe…
I can keep looking forward to dinner.
* * *
Lilyand I spend some time at the nearby park, and I’m pushing her on the swings while she ogles the bigger kids making expert use of the playground.
“One day, honey,” I say.
She gurgles, then puts her fist in her mouth as I push her.
“Before you know it, you’ll be big and strong and walking more than you’re falling, and—” The realization is like a throat punch. And I won’t be here to see it.
“Ah!”
Lily’s hands splay out as she cries, her bunny dropping to the soft tarmac at our feet.
“I got it, honey,” I say, picking it up. “Now he’s got park dirt on him instead of just the sidewalks and subways of NYC.”