Egomaniac(74)

“What’s your first?”

He came up behind me, brushed my hair to one side, and kissed my neck. His word vibrated against my skin. “You.”

“Control yourself. You need to enjoy a homemade meal when you can. Your next few weeks are going to be busy.”

I opened the drawer to the right of the stove to get a spatula and found two matchbox cars and an old flip phone in with the cooking implements.

“I wondered where you kept the toy cars.”

Drew chuckled. “When I tell Beck to clean up, he just shoves shit in drawers. Last year I found crayons in the spoon section of the utensil drawer. He’d taken the spoons and thrown them all in the garbage. When I asked him why, he shrugged and said we didn’t need them because we could scoop things better with our hands but nothing else made color on paper.”

I smiled. “He has a point.”

Drew reached into the drawer and took out the flip phone. “Remember when we first met, and I looked through the pictures on your phone?”

“Yes. You told me the best way to get to know someone is to look at their cell phone pictures when they least expect it. Then after I let you look through mine, I found out yours was empty.” I exaggerated a sigh. “Jackass.”

Drew opened the flip phone, pressed some buttons, and offered it to me. “I’m gonna go wash up and change before dinner. This is Beck’s cell. It doesn’t have service, but he likes to use it to take pictures. Every time I start to doubt whether I’m doing the right thing by staying in his life, if I’m confusing things by not backing off and letting his biological father step in, I scroll through those pics. Take a look.”

Drew went to the bedroom, and I poured myself a glass of wine and sat down at the dining room table to look through the pictures.

The first photo was of Drew shaving. He stood in the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. There was shaving cream on the left side of his face, and he held the razor near his chin after shaving one line down. The other cheek was already cleanly shaven. Off to the side, in the reflection of the mirror, I could see Beck holding the camera with one hand, and the other held a spatula covered in shaving cream up to his face, which was also half cleared of white foam.

The next photo was of Beck standing in a stream. It looked like it could be upstate somewhere. It was probably taken a year ago, given how much Beck’s face had matured. He wore waders and smiled huge for the camera as he held up a small fish he must have just plucked from the stream.

I kept scrolling—photos of Beck and his dad ice skating, a shot of them sitting together on the subway, one of Drew reading Harold and the Purple Crayon in Beck’s bed, them riding bikes with Roman in Central Park, one that I had to turn the phone upside down to realize I was looking at the picture right side up—it was Beck taking the photo of the two of them while on Drew’s shoulders. He’d leaned over to snap the shot of their faces.

Photo after photo revealed their life together and showed just how much Drew was Beck’s father, no matter what a lab test said.

The very last photo surprised me. I hadn’t even known Beck had a phone at the time it was taken, much less that he had snapped a picture. It was the afternoon we’d gone ice skating—prior to my falling and injuring my ankle. Beck must have been standing on one side of the rink, while Drew and I were on the other, and I attempted to skate. My legs were spread wide—something I couldn’t seem to stop that day—and I was laughing on my way to falling into an ungracious split. Drew had one arm wrapped around my waist, trying to hoist me back up, and was looking down at me while he too was laughing. We looked so happy—almost…like we were falling in love.

My heart swelled in my chest. Drew was right. The best way to get to know someone was to steal glances at their pictures. He looked through the pictures and saw the love of a father and son—a reminder of why he needed to fight. I saw a good man, one fiercely passionate about the things he loved and who would do anything to protect them. Rubbing my finger across the screen as I stared at the picture of us, of me falling, I realized I’d fallen in more ways than one that day.

I had to blink back tears to keep my emotions from getting the best of me, and decided I should get up and cut the lasagna to busy myself.

Still preoccupied, I wasn’t thinking and grabbed the side of the hot lasagna pan to turn it so I could cut.

“Damn it.” I shook my hand and flipped on the kitchen faucet to run cold water over the mild burn. I’m batting a thousand around this stove.

Of course, Drew appeared at that moment. “What happened?”

“I touched the hot pan. It’s not bad, just stings a little.”

Drew took my hand out of the stream of running cold water, inspected it, and returned it when he was done.

“I’ll serve. Go sit. I don’t want to end up in the ER for a third time already this year.”

We spent the entire dinner catching up, since we hadn’t exactly spoken too much last night or this morning—unless you counted communicating with our bodies. Drew filled me in on his custody-trial strategy, and I told him about some new clients I’d taken on. The entire thing felt bizarrely domestic and natural. After we were done eating, Drew loaded the dishwasher while I cleaned the counters and table.

“Where was that picture taken of Beck fishing? He looked so adorable in his little waders.”