The Hot One(42)

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The yo-yo soars in a wide circle, around and back down. I punch the air as Carly lands her second trick.

She jumps in the park, squealing.

“Around the world! You did it.” I hold up my palm and she slams hers against it. “Who rocks?”

She giggles and points to herself. “I do.”

“You absolutely do.”

Earlier in the week, she mastered walk-the-dog. Yep, I’m going to teach her a whole slew of yo-yo tricks. Shocking in a world of Candy Crush and Pokémon Go, but we do all kinds of shit that doesn’t involve a phone or a battery. I’m an old-school uncle. She’ll have plenty of time to stare at screens all throughout her life, but it doesn’t have to be on my watch.

“You are the yo-yo master,” I tell her.

“Can you teach me some more?”

“Absolutely.”

We tackle the elevator trick, as I show her how to make the yo-yo look like it’s rising up along the string. It’s a tough one, and after a few tries, she decides she wants to scale the rock climbing wall, so I head over there with her and stand behind her as she climbs.

“How’s second grade treating you, little lady? You learning about complex algebra and writing essays on Shakespeare yet?”

She narrows her eyes as she looks back at me from a purple handhold. “Who’s Shakespeare?”

I set my hands on my hips. “Only the most famous poet and playwright of all time. But you’ll get to him soon enough.”

“Did you know I’m learning how to do big multiplication?” she asks as she grabs a red climbing divot on the wall.

“Tell me more.”

As she moves up and down and across the wall, she updates me on second-grade math, and how she’s moved way past easy stuff like eight times eight and onto bigger numbers like twelve times sixteen, which sounds damn impressive for a second grader to me.

“I’m advanced at math,” she says as she hops down, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Beyond second grade level.”

I arch an eyebrow. “That so?”

“Is so.”

“Well, what’s fourteen times thirteen, then?”

She closes her eyes, and draws on an imaginary chalkboard with her finger, mouthing the multiplication. “One hundred eighty-two,” she says as she opens her eyes.

I nod approvingly.

“My teacher says the key is to follow the steps. Don’t cut corners, and take your time.”

“Smart teacher. That’s not bad advice at all. Matter of fact, that’s great advice on just about everything.”

We leave the park and head through the streets to meet up with her parents, chatting about the type of poetry she’d write if she were a famous poet someday.

“And I’d make sure to take my time,” she adds.

I linger on the notion of time, wondering how much I have with Delaney. What will it take to win her over? How many days or nights will she give me? But I also wonder what I’m trying to accomplish. Sometimes, I focus so much on the doing that I don’t always think about the why. Do I want to go back to the way it was with us or start something new entirely?

And the most important question of all is this—how do I get any of that without hurting her again?

When we meet Clay and Julia at a café for lunch, Carly climbs into her dad’s lap and throws her arms around him. He nuzzles her face, then Carly gives her mom a kiss on the cheek.

Later, when the meal ends and Julia and Carly head off to the ladies’ room, it’s just Clay and me at the table.

I meet his eyes. “You were right.”

“I usually am. But about what this time?”

“It was regret fueling me with Delaney. Not just curiosity. Not just the possibilities.”

He nods knowingly. “Thought it might be.”

“I was an ass when I ended it with her. I fucking regret it. And I want her back.”

He holds up a hand. “One question first. Is it still regret that’s driving you?”

I flash back to this morning in her mailroom, to earlier in the park, to last night at the bar. Yes, I acknowledged my regret, but that’s a damn good thing. Regret can make you change. “It’s that, but it’s also something more. Something deeper.” I tap my breastbone. “Something in here.”

I don’t name it. Not yet. Instead, I give him a quick overview of what’s transpired in the last week. “Tell me what to do next,” I say, wanting, needing his insight. The man is older, wiser, smarter.

Clay chuckles deeply and leans back in his chair. “How much time do you have to win her back?”

“That’s the question. I don’t actually know.”

He sets his elbows on the table and looks me square in the eyes. “Look, there’s no roadmap. There’s no set of instructions to follow. You hurt the woman before, but she seems to be giving you another chance. Let’s start with this—don’t be an asshole. The world is full of pricks and selfish fuckers and far too many man-children. Then, you’ve got the guys who are so goddamn self-absorbed you wonder if they were raised by coddlers, and then you’ve got men who have so little fucking backbone they can’t wipe their own ass.”

I shudder, and he points at me, that intense look in his dark eyes. “You’re not any of those, Tyler. You’re a man, and you behave like a man. The number one rule that most men today forget is this —don’t be an asshole. The world is full of assholes. Be a man.”