Single (Single Dads Book 1) Read online

  I moved closer, seeing it was actually a young firefighter called Adam, the newest addition to Engine sixty-three. He was lying on the gurney, only because the paramedics were holding him there.

  “I’m okay,” he protested, even though blood dripped down his hand and onto the floor. I pushed my way through the accompanying firefighters who’d crowded around him, spotting Eric, so damned happy to see him standing upright. He looked right at me, and I saw the fear in his eyes, but I couldn’t talk. I was listening to the paramedics with the stats I needed.

  “Rebar is stuck between vertebrae…” I listened and assessed at the same time.

  “We can stabilize him here, then get him upstairs.” I patted Adam on the arm. “You’re in safe hands,” I said and marked the chart. This was a triage job, and people better than me would attempt to remove the rebar without paralyzing him, but I wasn’t leaving his side.

  Someone jostled and pushed past me, but I didn’t get a chance to react before a woman with clothes burned from her side gripped hard on Adam’s good arm.

  “Thank you,” she said, “Oh my God, I can’t… my son is okay… you saved him. I owe you everything.”

  Adam coughed, and blood flecked his lips, but he nodded.

  I held Adam’s hand all the way to the OR. He didn’t let go, but not once did he cry or make any other kind of sound.

  “They can do good things here,” I said as the doors shut between us, and he was wheeled away. He gave me a shaky thumbs-up, and my heart broke for him. Miracles were something we could indicate might happen for a patient, but we could never promise to make things right.

  “Think he’ll make it?” Eric asked from my side. I didn’t even realize he’d followed us up, and I turned to look at him. He was exhausted, soot lined his face, and he was grim. “We tried to get him to stop. Damn fool wanted to be a hero. Climbed straight into the car, overpass wall collapsing around him, got the kid out, shielded him with his body.”

  “It’s what you would do,” I said, and he didn’t argue. It’s what we’d all do if it came to it. “The mom came over, thanked him for saving her son. I think Adam was a hero, don’t you?”

  “He should have waited,” Eric murmured and leaned back against the nearest wall. “I could have gone in with him…”

  “He acted on instinct, I guess? He did what he was trained to do.”

  Eric closed his eyes and nodded. “I know that.” With a loud sigh, he pushed himself away from the wall that seemed to be the one thing holding him upright. “I’ll be downstairs with the rest of the guys.”

  There was no point in me telling him to go back to the station or home or to get himself checked out. He was going to stand with the rest of the shift and wait for Adam to come around from surgery. I still had some time left on shift, but already felt like I’d run a marathon. I didn’t hold out any hope that the rest of the night would be quiet, and it wasn’t.

  The bright light on the horizon was that Adam had made it through initial surgery; they’d managed to remove the rebar that was close to his vertebrae and next up was attempting to save his arm, but it was all about the waiting now to find out what would happen next for the kid.

  I arrived home as dawn painted the sky with soft blues and pinks, and bypassed the house, grabbing a beer from the cooler in the garage and heading for the garden, Cap trailing behind me. Heading to the very farthest point from the house, past the pool, I then sat on one of the chairs we’d placed there with the views out over the valley, scratching Cap behind the ears and attempting to relax. I was alone for thirty minutes, and I hadn’t even drunk any of the beer when Leo joined me.

  “Bad night?”

  “No worse than usual,” I lied. Leo didn’t have to know that for one awful moment I thought it had been Eric on the gurney.

  Eric joined us, bringing his own beer, and together we stared out at a new San Diego morning in silence. Last night hadn’t been anything different from what we saw nearly every day.

  “How’s Adam?” I asked.

  “He has his family there,” Eric said, which didn’t answer the question at all. “Docs say he’ll live.” Unspoken was the extra, ‘and that is all we can hope for’.

  There’d been pain tonight; some who lived; others who died, and it was what the three of us dealt with the best way we could.

  And the aftermath? Sitting nursing beers we wouldn’t drink, toasting to the ones we lost or the ones we hoped would live. We would stay until one of us broke the silence again.

  After last night? I knew it wouldn’t be me.

  Leo left at eleven for his shift, Eric had the rest of the day to himself, and after a shower and walking Cap, he went back to the hospital to check on Adam, who was now playing a waiting game. I was due back in the ER for the night shift, but the things that normally filled my day, sleeping, laundry, shopping, eating real food, everything paled next to the insistent need to see Ash. I could hang around in the garden or go and sit on the front porch, all in the hope I’d spot him, but today I felt it might be okay to knock on his door. Instead I called Cap for a walk, and he couldn’t believe his luck that another of his favorite humans wanted to take him out. I sat him down and stroked behind his ears.

  “Cap, I need you to look real cute when we go next door. Okay?”

  Cap wagged his tail, then let out a low woof of agreement, which was probably more of a protest that I had put on his leash and then made him sit down. The woof was more of a “can we hurry up” than an “okay, I’ll be cute” response. I ruffled his fur and headed next door.

  “Hi,” Ash said when he answered and checked behind me. I don’t know what he was expecting, but I hoped it wasn’t Eric or Leo, because this morning he only had me. “Is everything okay?”

  I pasted on my best and most sincere smile and gestured at Cap on his leash. “I’m going for a walk, and I’d love coffee,” I announced. “Do you and Mia want to come to the park?”

  He frowned and looked at his watch, did that complicated math equation whereby he balanced baby sleeps with changes and food, while I waited. Then he brightened and gave me a smile.

  “That would be great. Hang on.” He gestured for me to step inside. “I just need to get Mia.” As he went upstairs, I stayed where I was, right inside the front door, checking all the tiny differences between our house and his. Aside from the obvious one, there was evidence of Mia everywhere—a new pack of diapers at the base of the stairs, two piles of clean pink sleepers on the unit next to it, and the scent of the place was a combination of baby powder and Ash.

  If I bottled this smell, I could be a millionaire. Then again, maybe it was me and my lust for Ash that was making me feel all kinds of turned just by seeing the man, let alone clocking the scent of him.

  He came downstairs with Mia in his arms. She seemed to have changed in the hours since I’d last seen her. Her neck was stronger, she was holding her head away from Ash’s chest, and I swear her eyes widened as I drew closer to kiss her head.

  “I think she knows me,” I said and held out my hands for her while Ash fixed up the stroller and packed enough bags to support army maneuvers.

  “You’re still a blur to her,” he explained.

  Of course I knew that, but the fanciful side of me that kind of needed a baby to know me decided to ignore empirical evidence.

  “Whatever. She knows her Uncle Sean, don’t you, sweetheart.” I tickled under her chin, then broke into an impromptu swaying dance with her around the hall, only stopping when it was obvious that Ash was staring at me with amusement on his face. “What can I say? I like babies.”

  The memory of last night, of the young boy that Adam had saved, and how the other surgeons had nearly lost Adam flashed through my thoughts, but I forced it back. Unless I could compartmentalize everything I saw, then how could I even think of forming an attachment to a little soul like Mia?

  We headed out to the park, taking the shortcut to the back and then walking the perimeter.

  “Can
I ask you something?” Ash asked as we passed the swings.

  I was in the middle of untangling Cap’s leash from where he’d gone around a tree the wrong way from me, and I smiled at Ash. “Of course.”

  “I saw Eric this morning. He came over to say hello to us, but I think it was Mia he really wanted to see.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I thought something might be wrong, and the news this morning was all about the pileup on the freeway. I assume he answered the call?” I nodded, and he sighed. “They said they took the injured to Soledad Memorial. I guess… was that you dealing with it all?”

  “Some of it.” I downplayed what had happened because a civilians didn’t need to know what kinds of things we saw or hear about the people we’d lost. He stopped walking then, and I didn’t realize until I was a couple of steps ahead of him. I turned to see what was wrong, and he was staring right at me.

  “They showed a family being pulled from a car, a child.”

  Shit. This was all of a sudden going to be a hundred kinds of awkward. If he thought for one minute that Eric and I had wanted to see Mia, just to make things balance in our heads, then he’d freak.

  “Yeah,” I said, remaining cautious.

  “Did the boy… was he okay?”

  “He was fine, a few scratches, and his mom came away unhurt. The dad is still in ICU, but he’ll pull through.” I put a positive spin on what had been some impossibly awful details.

  “What about the firefighter who was trapped?” Ash bit his lip. “I thought maybe… I was worried when I heard and they didn’t release a name, that it was Eric.”

  “Adam. The firefighter is called Adam. He’ll be okay.” I hope.

  “I know you can’t talk about it…” He lifted Mia from the stroller and stepped closer to me, taking my hand and lacing our fingers on Mia’s head. “But I get why Eric needed to see Mia, and now you can see her as well.”

  The compassion in his voice undid me, and emotion choked me as I returned his steady gaze over Mia’s head. He wasn’t running for the hills or pulling back from us in terror at what we might tell him. Instead he understood how we might need proof of life, and that was a precious gift to give Eric, and me.

  Only he didn’t fully understand what I needed.

  “It wasn’t just Mia I wanted to be with,” I said, and I dropped the leash and stood on it. Then with my free hand, I cupped his face. We were hidden here behind the trees that ringed the park, alone and safe, and all I wanted to do was kiss him.

  “Really?” he murmured and met me halfway, his head tilted until we fit perfectly. The kiss was everything I felt inside me, the action from last night, the pain I’d seen in Eric’s face, the stoic heroism in Adam as he lay in agony, the joy in the mother collecting her son, warring with the pain of waiting to see if her husband would live. There was lust and need all wrapped up in this kiss, and when we separated, Ash rested his forehead on mine.

  “You’re not supposed to be happening to me,” he said. When he moved back a little way and looked at me steadily, it was as if something passed between us. Maybe a recognition of what was happening between us, a flicker of something that was more than just lust. Something profound and as necessary as my next breath. “It was supposed to be just me and Mia,” he said, “but I don’t want to…”

  He didn’t finish, and instead he kissed me again before moving right out of my reach. He was distancing himself in this public place, but he had a soft smile curving his lips.

  “Coffee?” I suggested and picked up the leash again, scratching Cap’s fur and praising him for being patient.

  “And cake?” Ash asked with a widening smile.

  By the time we sat down with coffee and cake, the emotional kiss and compassion had been filed away, and we talked sports, weather, and even touched on politics before we decided that was way too depressing.

  On the way back, we stole more kisses, and the whole situation was surreal.

  When I yawned, he told me to get some sleep, but there was one thing I needed to make him promise first.

  “My next night off, I want to make you dinner and bring it to your place, so we can look out for Mia.”

  “Okay—”

  “On a date,” I interrupted, just to be clear about what I was asking.

  He dimpled a smile and nodded.

  I backed away then, nearly tripping over a dozing Cap, and tumbling down the steps off his porch to end up looking like an idiot, but his smile didn’t waver.

  “Bye.” I left then because otherwise, I’d have been on his porch all day, and I really needed sleep.

  Asher

  Would you like to meet up?

  The words at the end of the email hung there. The guy in charge of the support forum, Nick, sent me a private email to suggest that I meet with their small group of single dads this weekend. I didn’t have an excuse. I wasn’t busy. There were no planned visits from family. I wasn’t ill. Mia wasn’t ill. In fact I didn’t know what stopped me from saying yes straight away.

  I approached most problems in life in a similar way to game design. I would create a critical path analysis in my head, working out all the interdependent details, and somehow using that process, I was managing my life okay. I was confident, owned my own company, and the only thing that had ever pushed me off track was my momentary madness and need to believe that Darius was good for me.

  So I looked at the reasons why I wasn’t writing an instant reply and analyzed my thought process.

  Nick was a bereaved dad of three, with two boys, brothers, aged eight and ten to move on, of needing to put his children first. Actually, he appeared put together and in charge of his life. He’d adopted both boys when they were little, but his daughter had been born through surrogacy, the same as Mia. He’d been there, done that, and got a million best-dad T-shirts, I was sure of that fact. His daughter was an avid dancer, his boys both played baseball, and they’d vacationed last year in Orlando. I knew all this because his Instagram was full of photos of his family.

  Of course he was grieving; his husband had lost the battle with cancer, and I couldn’t for one minute think what that must have been like for the husband, for Nick or for their kids. Yet he was still running this support group, and he had all this experience, and then there was me.

  I felt I was doing okay, more than okay. I felt more awake and in control, and I wasn’t messing up diapers anymore, although I still struggled to handle the really messy ones because I didn’t think the advice out there would be for me to take Mia in the shower with me to wash her off. I didn’t shave every day, and I was weeks past a decent haircut, but I dressed every day, and I showered, so to me, that was a win.

  Ash: Are you there?

  Brady: On my phone.

  Ash: The San Diego forum members have a meetup planned.

  Brady: I heard it’s a good group, you should go.

  Ash: I don’t know if I’m ready?

  Brady: Don’t be like me and stay inside alone. You are ready.

  Ash: Will you come with me?

  Brady: …

  Brady: …

  Brady: I can’t. Not yet. It’s still too much.

  I never asked him what he meant, and he never told me, but something was going on with him that meant he didn’t want to interact with other people. Or maybe it was just the group, or even just me. I got the feeling that if I ever really asked that it might scare him off forever and I didn’t want that.

  When Brady signed off, I started writing an email, rocking Mia gently on my shoulder where she dozed, trusting that her dad was there for her.

  “Okay, Mia, this is easy. Just send an email back saying you’ll go, and maybe explain how you’re nervous and have reservations.”

  It was all about not having been out in public, and how I felt that people would judge me as a dad on my own, as a gay man who chose to have a child, about surrogacy, about the fact that I haven’t shaved in three days. Everything went down. All my insecurities spilled out o
f me in one long letter filled with adjectives. It wasn’t to send; it was just me getting all my insecurities out.

  Then I backspaced and deleted it all.

  I began again, detailing how it was difficult for me to get there. Which was a lie.

  “Delete, delete, delete, for fuc—fudge sake. Sorry, Mia.”

  So now what? I wasn’t doing anything on Saturday. What if the best thing right now was to meet up with this group and talk face-to-face. Brady said I should go, and this Nick guy wasn’t going to laugh at me or judge me, I was letting my own insecurities color my expectations of what I would find there.

  Hi Nick, I’ll be there, thank you. I signed it Ash, and wrote Ash Haynes under just in case, and that was it. I’d committed to meeting this whole new world of people. I copied in Brady in the hope that he would see it and come as well. I could meet him face-to-face, something we’d been working our way toward, although he seemed reluctant. Something about the pressures of family life and work. Mostly I think that he’d been Lucas and Maddie’s dad for so long now that he’d forgotten how to connect with other people. Although when we chatted, I noticed he very carefully avoided talk of friends or his past.

  Gently cradling Mia, I made my way up to my bedroom and placed her in the crib, tucking her in and watching the rise and fall of her chest. My love for her was overwhelming, and my heart ached with it.

  “Love you, Mia,” I murmured and then lay back on my mattress, turning on my side so I could watch her sleep. She was beautiful, her skin so soft. Her downy hair looked a little thicker now, but not by much. I wonder what color it will be and if she would care that it was her dad who would braid it for school.

  I closed my eyes and imagined the complicated plait that I’d often watched Siobhan do. “I’ll ask your aunty Siobhan about braiding your hair, Mia, and it will be the best hair in school,” I murmured and then fell asleep.

  Siobhan and Mom surprise-visited just past three in the afternoon and woke me up. Before Mia, I’d never have thought of sleeping in the middle of the day, but I felt recharged enough that I allowed Siobhan to hustle me into the bathroom.