Single (Single Dads Book 1) Read online

  Not one single sign of the cereal I’d spilled, or the plates I’d left, or the bottles that had needed cleaning and sterilizing.

  “Thank you,” I said with so much gratitude I came off as sarcastic.

  “I’ve held babies before,” Siobhan deadpanned.

  I took Mia from her and held her close. “And you managed to clean the kitchen at the same time? I swear I’m still at the point where I can barely remember to breathe, let alone multitask.”

  She raised a perfectly shaped brow. “This wasn’t me, Ash. Are you forgetting what you’ve done?”

  “No. I didn’t…”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Also, Ash, your front door was unlocked.”

  “Shi— Oh.” Stopping myself from cursing was hard enough when I was awake, but tired, the words were slipping out.

  “I just walked in.” Then she smirked at me. “But not before I got jumped by the hottie from next door.”

  “Huh? Who? What? What do you mean a hottie jumped you? Do we need to call the cops?” I was spiraling into panic.

  She placed a hand on my chest, her usual message that I needed to stop and listen to her. “I parked, and this gorgeous blond sprinted out of the next house, vaulted the perimeter fence in one bound, and honestly, I’m a married woman, but that was a hundred kinds of sexy.”

  “Huh?” I repeated.

  She shook her head. “Sean something. Tall, blond, striking bright blue eyes, all kinds of badass as he stalked over.”

  That sounded like the caring doctor guy, but I hadn’t recalled his name. I might have forgotten that, but I wasn’t going to forget he was sex on legs. I was tired, not blind.

  “Why did he jump you? What do you mean?”

  “He said he had to leave you in the house with an unlocked front door, so he’s been monitoring anyone who arrived, which turns out it’s just me. He was very charming, but he asked me why I was here. So I told him I was your evil twin and I was coming to steal the innocent baby to take her back to the cult.”

  I massaged my temples to release the pressure building there. “Siobhan, what the hell—”

  “I’m joking. I explained I was your sister, that I was the better twin, and how you were a complete idiot and a new dad, and I was coming to check on you because you only left my house two days ago, but I had a twin-feeling that you were struggling.”

  I groaned. I couldn’t help it; Siobhan had this way about her that was all sass and confidence, and now my next-door neighbor, my hot next-door neighbor, probably thought I was an idiot.

  He already knows that from last night and this morning.

  “Why did you tell him I was struggling?”

  She stared at me as if I was talking an alien language. “Ash, you have a new baby, you’re managing this on your own, it’s new to you, and you’re running on limited sleep. Of course you’re struggling, so I just wanted to check in on you. Don’t you remember when Evan was born, and Dan was overseas, and I was doing everything on my own? There’s no shame in admitting you need help.”

  I tried to think of something clever to say, but she had a point. Dan was in the military and had been deployed for both of his babies’ births, and Siobhan had done everything alone, including nearly dying giving birth to Debs, her youngest.

  “Also, interesting fact,” she said as she made a bottle and closed the nearest cupboard doors with her feet, all at the same time. One day I, too, may be able to multitask with that much agility. “The hottie is gay.”

  I didn’t put that statement in context, too envious of her ability to juggle all the things I struggled with at the moment. Then it hit me.

  “What? How do you know that?” I felt a stab of interest, but was unsure how the hell my sister had found that out already.

  She shimmied toward me, shaking the bottle of formula and running her free hand from her face to her ass. “He never looked twice at me, and have you seen me?” she said in her most sultry, sexy voice.

  I couldn’t help myself. I was punch-drunk with tiredness. This whole situation was ridiculous, and I snorted a laugh. Then I pulled her close with my free hand and side-hugged her.

  “Love you.”

  “Love you too, but seriously, the hottie is gay. He told me so.”

  “Yeah, right. He just came out and said, ‘hey, I’m creepily watching my neighbor’s house, and by the way I’m gay’?”

  “Of course not,” she said with theatric flair. Then she leaned in and fake whispered, “He came out and said he loved cock.”

  I covered up Mia’s ear as best I could. “Don’t use that word in here,” I loud-whispered back, but she just laughed at me.

  “Seriously, I explained that you, too, like cock.”

  I pivoted and left the kitchen, heading for the sofa and my quiet space, away from annoying sisters. The only problem was that she followed me. At least she brought my coffee with her and a plate of sandwiches. My stomach rumbled, and food sounded good right about now.

  “All joking aside, he handed me a load of bandages, and I explained you were on your own here, and he told me he already knew that. But I might have added that you weren’t in a relationship, and one thing led to another, and he said something like…” She screwed up her nose. “Being a single parent has to be hard, but being gay, if I wanted to have kids, I would have to blah blah.”

  “Blah blah what?”

  “Oh, it was all…” She waved expressively, then reached for Mia. “Let me feed her, and you try feeding yourself, then you can both get some sleep. After I leave, I’ll report to Mom that you are handling everything like a pro, and I can maybe get you an extra twenty-four hours before she decides your estrangement is something that she can ignore now that you’re home.”

  “We’re not estranged—”

  “Don’t even go there, Ash. She hasn’t seen Mia since the hospital—”

  “When she told me that I was holding her wrong—”

  “She’s a mom—”

  “—and criticized that I was using disposable diapers.”

  She shook her head sadly, but Mom was always a hard thing for me to talk about.

  Siobhan wasn’t the child who mom said had decided they were gay or who had chosen to bring a child into an ungodly house. Nope, the one who’d done all that was me. It didn’t matter that I’d explained everything, that I’d been born the way I was meant to be. Mom hated that I was gay, that I wasn’t religious, and that I’d broken the worst rule in the Good Book. When I’d snapped one day and shouted that she thought lying with another man was worse than murder, she didn’t say that wasn’t true.

  That had been the day I’d left for college, and since then, I’d seen her ten or so times on family occasions, and each time I’d left fuming. Siobhan still had a limited relationship with her, but that didn’t mean I had to.

  “So, changing the subject, what happened to my masterpiece?” She picked up an old blue ice-cream tub and tilted it so I could see the remains of the citrus yellow bowl she’d made me.

  I held up my hand in answer. She put the container down and picked up bandages that were piled neatly on the counter.

  Do I need them? What if Mia gets hurt? I should get bandages.

  “Earth to idiot-twin? We need to get this cut covered.”

  I didn’t argue as she passed Mia to me, who I held in my good arm. Then Siobhan wrapped me up like a mummy, making me feel as if I might never see my hand again.

  “Mom says she would love to see Mia again, but she understands that it’s difficult for you,” she said, just when my defenses had lowered a little because she was caring for me.

  My heart sank and I wanted to stop her from talking about mom because a whole load of crappy memories crowded into my head of years when Mom couldn’t even meet my eyes, let alone talk to me. True, Mom had visited me and Mia in the hospital and a big part of me hoped she would have something profound to say—something that would mend the past. Of course she loved Mia, cuddled Mia, and she was
my mom, so I was okay with her holding my daughter for the longest time. But when it came to the serious stuff, the part where she was supposed to say to me that I would be a great dad and that I had this, there had been nothing.

  “She knows where I live. Not that I want her to visit.” Fuck, I sound like a heartless bastard. I was just trying to protect my heart, and most of all Mia, because all I could imagine was Mia turning to her grandmother at age sixteen and explaining she was gay. Would she have the same heavy weight of disapproval thrown at her? Would she be told it wasn’t God’s way?

  I had Mia to think about, and I didn’t want Mom anywhere near her. That small window of opportunity at the hospital when Mom could have spoken to me and supported me had gone in the blink of an eye. How fucked up was that for what was supposed to be a mom/son relationship?

  Siobhan glanced up at me and gave me the stare. The one that only a twin can give another—the one that gave sympathy and support while calling me on my shit. “Mom knows you don’t want to see her, But I really think she understands it’s her fault now; she’s changed.”

  “She didn’t seem changed in the hospital,” I said, bitterly. “She was an awkward mess, couldn’t look me in the eye, and didn’t have anything positive to say to me.”

  Siobhan frowned. “The way she told it was that she tried to show you how to hold Mia in the hospital, and talked to you about diapers and that you shut her down.”

  “Jesus, sis. Let me remind you that she told me I was holding Mia like a football, and that disposable diapers are the work of the devil.”

  “She actually said they were the work of the devil?” Siobhan raised a single eyebrow.

  “Something like that,” I lied.

  “Well, she thinks she tried.”

  “Tried? She never wanted me to decide to be gay. She never wanted me to have boyfriends. She never wanted me to have Mia.” I was working up a head of steam now, but Siobhan pressed her free hand to my chest.

  “I know, Ash. I know all that. But for Mia’s sake, don’t shut Mom out. Things have changed at her church, and… look, it’s not my place to tell you what to do, but call her. For me? Maybe you can be the bigger man and extend an olive branch, okay?”

  “Like I said, she knows where I live.” We’d never gotten back onto a level footing. She’d never even met Darius, who’d been a long-term boyfriend. Not that she’d missed out there, because he was a grade-A dick. When I’d split with him but had decided to go ahead with the surrogacy, she’d been apoplectic. Although I’d only found out about that secondhand through a friend of a friend. It all went back to the church, back to her rigid stance on homosexuality and the whole thorny complex argument over what the definition of a family should be.

  “You know she won’t just visit on her own.”

  “Do you know what she said back when I told her my surrogate was pregnant?”

  “Ash—“

  “In the middle of one of her bible quoting tirades, she suggested the surrogate should lose the baby. Her own granddaughter.”

  Siobhan cradled my face and sighed.

  “We all say things in the heat of the moment. Look at my reaction over you not wanting to have me as your surrogate.”

  I winced at the memory. Mom was different. She was institutionally set on the fact that man-plus-woman-plus-baby was what a family looked like. We’d circled right back to the fact that I was going against God’s law, or whatever she’d said after I’d shut down and refused to listen to any more.

  “But Ash, you know she won’t just drop in, not after you and her—”

  “What?” I snapped, and she stroked my cheekbone with her thumb to calm me. It worked. Siobhan always knew what to do to stop my anger and anxieties fighting to surface.

  “Mom didn’t understand how beautiful your little family would be,” she said. “How precious Mia is, but I honestly think she wants to. She just doesn’t know how. So, what if you make her understand?”

  “It’s not as if she tries to listen to me.”

  “Maybe you need to be the one to build a bridge and help Mom to understand.” Siobhan faced me, stood on tiptoes, then pressed a kiss to my cheek, “Because I swear, if you don’t call and invite her by tomorrow, I’ll lock you both in a room until you get through to each other.”

  I didn’t doubt for a minute that was exactly what my stubborn sister would do.

  “Why are you pushing this thing with Mom on me?”

  “For Mia. Everything you do now is for her. That’s just what being a dad is.”

  I closed my eyes briefly, and the sigh that left me was full of a desperate need to make everything right for Mia. Siobhan had it easy, married to a man, a soldier, a hero, with two gorgeous children, a minivan, and a cat. She even had the ubiquitous white picket fence.

  “I’ll try and call her,” I said after a moment’s pause. Siobhan looked at me steadily, and she would see through the lie. “Okay, maybe one day you bring her over, and we can possibly talk,” I added, and she relaxed a little.

  We exchanged glances, and then she smiled at me. “I will always be in your corner, Ash,” she reassured. “Now I need to go. I love you.”

  Mia and I waved Siobhan away. Then I closed the front door as all my energy left me in a rush.

  One thing that could be said for my bratty, in-your-face, teasing, annoying sister?

  She only wanted me to be happy, and through everything, she’d always had my back.

  Unlike my mom who hated me and my baby.

  Asher

  With Mia in my arms I stared at my calendar.

  “Wow, you’re at day forty-five,” I told the inanimate object.

  It was the same calendar that I’d used to count down the days until Mia’s arrival into this world, and now it marked each day that Mia had been alive. Each day in which I tried my hardest to be a good dad. That was all I could think as I circled today. “Not that I need to tell you it’s day forty-five, because you’re a calendar.”

  After I’d spent two minutes yesterday telling the sterilizer that it played an important part in keeping Mia safe, and explained how tired I was, it hit me that I’d begun talking to lifeless objects. Yesterday the sterilizer, today the calendar.

  Neither had said anything in return, but I honestly believed that talking about things out loud was enough for me to make sense of them. I wasn’t sure that I was ready to be sociable with real-life people.

  Guilt flooded me, and even though I knew there was no such thing as guilt-free parenting, I wallowed in the feeling for as long as it took for the bottles to be done. I scooped Mia from her crib and sat at my desk, opening my laptop so I could try some of that multitasking that Siobhan had done so well. After a few tries at making Mia comfortable, I finally managed to log in, then opened my email. There was the usual content in there, a couple of contract emails that I dealt with first. I’d deliberately cleared the decks for three months so nothing would come between me and Mia’s time, but there would always be the odd question. I owed my career a huge debt; without the payoff from one of my first game designs, I wouldn’t have been able to afford over one hundred thousand dollars to go through the surrogacy.

  After work mails I dispatched any spam. Finally, all that was left was an email from someone on the forum I’d signed up for, who was obviously stuck in the nineties by the state of the Hotmail address which was “[email protected].” Firstly, not many people the right side of forty used Hotmail now, and secondly, did no one tell this person that shorter was better? I’d already formed an impression of the sender, as some tech dinosaur, and that wasn’t fair. Not everyone was a computer geek like me.

  I opened it, expecting the sender to laugh me off, something to make the loneliness worse.

  “Let’s see what they say, Mia,” I said and shifted her a little when I noticed she’d stopped feeding and that she’d nearly finished the bottle. I placed her up on my shoulder, burp cloth in place, and rubbed her back as I read
the email out loud.

  “Dear Asher, welcome to Single Dads Together. I’ve given you access to the forum and sent a note to a couple of dads on here in a similar position to yours. It’s okay to feel alone. I know I feel alone every day, and that is what we are here for. You indicated that you live on the West Coast, and we have thriving sub-groups from Seattle down to San Diego, so I hope you’ll update your profile to be more specific, and in that way, you can find people in your locality who you can talk to. I’m here if you need help and my details are at the end of the email. I’m a father to three though, so it might not be an instant reply. You know what it’s like to be a dad.”

  The name at the end was Nick. He lived in Del Mar, only half an hour’s drive away. Was it wrong that I felt weird that this stranger who knew I was lonely lived way too close for comfort?

  I followed the sign-in link in the email, changed my password once I was in, then scrolled to the forum subjects. This forum was as old school as Hotmail, but that didn’t make the impact of what I was reading any less.

  There was a chat group, and I opened up the latest thread, which dealt with sibling rivalry. Nick had started the subject, talking about a heated situation in a supermarket. I didn’t post a reply, but the responses were even-tempered, useful, and everyone seemed super friendly and supportive.

  I scrolled down other posts, and one caught my eye.

  The Dating Game.

  Nick had started that thread as well. It was about dating but more specifically about how, after five years, Nick was thinking of dating a friend from work.

  It slowly became obvious that Nick had lost his husband five years ago, and that grief was only just ebbing enough for him to consider ever being with a guy for something more than a hookup. He had three children, twelve, ten, and eight, and he was lonely.

  Some of the replies broke my heart. Stories of dads who’d lost partners. Some who said they would never love again. I had to click away.

  I was looking for something on this forum, support, but also agreement that my ex was a waste of space and that I was right to do this alone. I couldn’t read about other people’s grief and not want to do something about it, and what did I have to offer in the way of help? Nothing.