Back to You(27)

That was all he needed.
Eventually, Michael got used to harboring questions he knew would never be answered. It just became a part of who he was, and he became very good at ignoring his feelings.
It wasn’t until eight years later, sitting in the middle of Miss McCarthy’s third-period science class, that he finally understood.
They were learning about Punnett Squares.
And suddenly he knew why the man he thought was his father left him when he was five, and why he never wanted to see Michael again. Just like that, after all the years spent wondering, it was suddenly crystal clear why his family had fallen apart.
It was all his fault.

October 2011
“Have a good day, baby girl,” Michael said as he leaned over and kissed the top of Erin’s head.
“Bye Daddy!” she beamed before she turned and ran through the door of her classroom, and Michael straightened with a sigh, torn between feeling relieved at her newfound independence and saddened that she no longer clung to him.
The director of the day care facility gave him a knowing smile, and he smiled sheepishly in return. Just as he turned to leave, he { display: block; text-indent: 0%;ou fo
He could see that she was laughing too, although he couldn’t hear it, but he remembered so perfectly what her laugh sounded like that it didn’t matter.
And then Erin came into view, dropping her backpack and sprinting over to the circle before throwing herself into Lauren’s lap and hugging her tightly around the neck. Immediately Lauren wrapped her arms around Erin, rocking side to side, and when Erin pulled away, Lauren reached up and took her face in her hands, saying something to her with a smile. Erin nodded enthusiastically, and Lauren laughed, moving over to make room for her in the circle.
He turned quickly, ignoring the ache in his chest as he held the door for a woman entering with her two children before he crossed the parking lot to his car.
It was a short drive to West Linn Street, where his crew was working on the new medical offices that were going up. Michael parked his car in the designated off-site area and walked down a small hill to where two utility trucks were stationed.
“What’s up?” Dean called from behind the truck as he slid a piece of sheet metal to the edge of the truck bed. Dean was tall and dark-skinned, a few years older than Michael, and they had become fast friends when Michael joined the crew a few months earlier. It was clear that Dean had a questionable past, and Dean seemed to recognize that Michael did too; it was one of those things that was understood between them but never discussed. He also had a daughter, six months old, and was in the middle of a nasty custody battle with his ex-girlfriend.
“Hey,” Michael answered absently, and Dean stopped.
“You okay? Your girl have a hard time getting dropped off again?”
“Huh? Oh, no. She’s good,” Michael said, reaching into the truck and grabbing the measuring tape and an oversized black marker.
Dean looked at him for a second and nodded, never pushing. “Get the measurement of that union,” he said, sliding the sheet metal off the truck and laying it on a wooden board on the floor.
Michael walked inside, weaving around the construction horses and wires, and he climbed up the small ladder with the tape in his hands.
The task was rote and monotonous; it kept his hands busy, but his mind was free to wander, which wasn’t a great thing today.
It had been two months. Two months of seeing her almost every day. Two months of polite, pleasant formalities. And each day it became harder and harder to endure.
He missed her.
He’d spent the last eight years missing her, but this was different. It used to be that it just existed somewhere on the edge of his consciousness; it was always there, but it was like background noise. He had learned to ignore it, to function around it. But now, seeing her everyday, watching her with his daughter, she was in the forefront of his mind all the time. And no matter what he did, he couldn’t function around it anymore.
Michael climbed down the ladder and out to Dean, giving him the numbers, and together they rolled the sheet metal into a long tube on the wooden platform. Dean held it in place while Michael walked down its length, measuring it with the tape, marking certain spots with the marker and jotting down lines to be used as points of reference. a little tighter around herselfyn the
He’d had enough of the torturous formalities, he realized. He wanted their friendship back.
And he was going to try.
If she wouldn’t, if she refused, he would understand. But if she allowed him back into her life, despite everything that had happened, he would make sure he made things right.
He would never betray her again.
When Michael reached the end of the tube, he nodded at Dean and they unrolled the sheet. Michael knelt down on one side and Dean crossed to the other, taking a marker out of his back pocket, and together they began marking where the rivets would go.