11. More Than It Should

11

MORE THAN IT SHOULD

M ichael shouldn’t be shocked that his date was being interrupted.

Before he slid his finger over it to answer, he saw it was close to seven at this point. Time had been flying today and he’d had more fun than he would have expected.

“Hello,” he said to his ex.

“Daddy,” Ty said. “I’m scared.”

His heart sunk into his belly and threatened to bring his dinner up. “What’s going on, Ty? Where is your mother?”

“She’s here. She told me to call you.”

“Are you hurt? Is your mother hurt?” he asked urgently.

“No. It’s the shark. They are going to get me. When I shut my eyes I keep seeing them.”

He made a fist. “Can you please put your mother on the phone?” he said through clenched teeth.

“Mom,” Ty said. “Dad wants you.”

“Hi, Michael. I’m sorry to call. Ty has been crying for thirty minutes. He fell asleep when we were watching a movie and then woke up screaming and now he won’t stop crying.”

“What movie were you watching, Electra?”

“ Jaws ,” Electra said. “He told me he liked sharks. I thought it’d be fine.”

“He’s four,” he growled. “Watching a shark cartoon or a show on Discovery about sharks isn’t the same as watching a movie where a killer shark is grabbing people out of boats and off docks.”

“I didn’t realize it would be like that,” Electra whined. “I’d never seen it.”

“Maybe you should have read the rating or the reviews then,” he said. “Or better yet, just stick to animated films. There are enough of them out there.”

“I’m sorry,” Electra said. “But he wants to come home. He won’t calm down. I’ve tried. I told him he could sleep with me, but he said you would save him. He only wants you.”

And since he could hear Ty still crying in the background and calling his name, he had to go get his son.

“I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” he said. “I’m in the middle of something. Put Ty back on the phone.”

He waited while his son got on. “Are you coming to get me, Dad?”

“I am,” he said softly. “But it’s going to be about thirty minutes.”

“That’s okay,” Ty said, sniffling. “Now that I know you’re coming, I’ll be fine. I won’t shut my eyes.”

“Don’t shut them,” he said. “Put your mother back on, please.”

“He already stopped crying,” Electra said. “He probably would have been fine if you wanted him to stay.”

He looked at Kelly sitting next to him. She didn’t seem upset. If anything, she had some sympathy in her eyes over what was happening. He hoped it wasn’t for him but rather for his son.

“Is it worth finding out?” he asked.

“No,” Electra said. “I told him to stop crying a few times, but he wouldn’t.”

“Telling him to stop isn’t going to make it happen,” he said. “Can you put a cartoon on for him? Ask him what his favorite is or let him pick. That will distract him.”

“I should have thought of that,” Electra said. There was wonder in her voice as if she didn’t know why she didn’t do that.

“Just do it and I’ll be there soon.” He hung up and then turned to Kelly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she said, her hand reaching for his. “If that call didn’t come in, I might have broken a rule I made for myself.”

“Not what I want to hear,” he said. He was already sexually frustrated just being around her. He hadn’t had sex in over six months, if not longer and the thoughts of her were making it harder for any self-relief to do much good.

“We’ll get another shot,” she said.

“We will,” he said. “Because next week I’m going to see if my parents will take him for a night. This would have never happened with them.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not,” he said. “It’s just more of the same. This stuff happens more than it should.”

Kelly stood up and he did the same. “You can make it up to me.”

“I plan on it,” he said.

She walked to the mudroom and got her jacket. “You just let me know what works for you. If I have to wait until next weekend, that is fine.”

“Tuesday. Ty should be at Electra’s for a few hours. I leave work to bring him there.”

“How long is he there for again?” she asked.

They were climbing in his SUV, but then he turned and went back into the house. She wasn’t sure why and he came back out with the desserts they’d bought. “Here. You have them. I don’t need Ty asking me where I got them.”

She took the caramel apple and fried Oreos. “Not that I need them, but they won’t go to waste. I expect you to show me how to lift weights sometime too. I’m going to need it with just today’s food intake alone.”

“You’ve got a deal,” he said, pulling out and driving her back home.

He got out and walked her to the security door, gave her one more scorching kiss, and promised to be in touch sometime tomorrow.

“I’ll be thinking of you and this kiss tonight in bed,” she said. “And I may or may not go to sleep frustrated or relaxed. I’ll let you guess.”

“I’ll be frustrated,” he said. “Just letting you know now.”

She laughed and leaned up to kiss him one more time. Then he got back in his SUV and drove to Electra’s.

Ty was at the door when he knocked. He was in his pajamas with sneakers on his feet, his backpack on too.

“He’s ready,” Electra said.

“Where is his jacket? It’s not that warm out.”

“Oh,” Electra said. “It’s in his backpack. I didn’t think he’d need it for that short of a walk.”

Electra pulled it out of the backpack. It was a wrinkled mess since a jacket wasn’t meant to be stuffed in there like that.

Ty slid the bag off his back and Michael caught it before it hit the floor. His son put his jacket on and the two of them left.

He didn’t even tell Ty to give his mother a kiss or a hug. He was too pissed off to have his night interrupted for something so stupid yet again.

But he wasn’t going to let his kid be screaming with nightmares either.

“Can I sleep with you tonight, Dad?” Ty asked.

“Can we try your room first?” he asked. He didn’t want Ty getting used to this any time he had a bad night.

“Will you lie with me on my bed?”

“Of course,” he said. “Don’t I always?”

“You’ll save me, right?” Ty asked.

“You know it, bud,” he said.

Michael drove home trying to think of ways to relieve his son’s mind so that they both could get some sleep tonight.

“I need to brush my teeth,” Ty said when they were upstairs in his house.

“I thought you were ready for bed?” he asked.

“Mom says I don’t have to brush my teeth at night. Just in the morning. But I like doing it at night too.”

He let out a sigh. “If you want to brush your teeth any time at your mother’s just do it,” he said. “That isn’t something you have to ask.”

Ty ran to the hall bath and brushed his teeth. Then he heard his son going to the bathroom. Ty always left the door open and they’d have to deal with that at some point too.

The toilet flushed and his son ran out and to his room next door.

“I’m ready,” Ty said, climbing into bed. At some point he might put a TV in here. That could have helped Ty, but he didn’t want to get into those habits just yet.

“Do you want a story first?” he asked.

“Can I?” Ty asked.

“Why don’t you pick one out while I shark-proof the room?”

“Shark-proof the room?” Ty asked. “How do you do that?”

He pulled a small spritz bottle of peppermint hand sanitizer out of his pocket. “Did you know sharks don’t like mint?”

“They don’t?” Ty asked, his eyes wide.

“Nope,” he said. “I’m going to spray it around the doors and windows and then under your bed. There won’t be a spot in the entire room they can go to without ending belly up and vanishing into smoke.”

“Cool,” Ty said. “I asked Mom how long a shark could survive out of water and she didn’t know. She didn’t even look it up like you would have.”

All Electra had to do was make some comment about them not being in the water so the shark couldn’t get Ty. It wasn’t that hard to convince a four-year-old of things.

“That is how I found out about the peppermint spray,” he said. “Good thing I had some in the house. Did you get the book you want?”

Ty just grabbed one at random while Michael spritzed peppermint spray around the room like a fairy with pixie dust. He might have gone overboard as the room smelled like a tube of toothpaste exploded next to a bottle of mouthwash.

His son got under the covers and Michael stretched his legs out on the bed, his back to the wall, so that he was next to his son lying down.

Before the book was done, Ty was sleeping steadily.

He pulled his phone out and angled it at his sleeping son with the bottle of peppermint spray in it and snapped the picture. It was easy enough to see he was on the bed too. Then he sent it to Kelly labeled “shark repellent.”

He kissed his son on the forehead and left the room. His phone went off and he wished he’d never sent the picture when she sent one back of her in bed in a tank top, with no bra and the sheets up covering anything else. Guess we both didn’t get the bedmate we wanted tonight.

He growled and hoped it wasn’t loud enough to wake his kid up.