The True Love Experiment
: Chapter 43

Natalia’s text message is only five words, but I study each of them for a good ten seconds.

“Fuck,” I say aloud in the sealed silence of my car parked outside of her house.

She’s with Juno at Fizzy’s

In the madness of the show, my weekends with Stevie have been sporadic at best. Tonight was the perfect night to pick her up and have a cozy night relaxing at home. But there is nothing relaxing about the prospect of driving over to Fizzy’s. I know it probably isn’t true—and it certainly isn’t fair—but it feels like my ex-wife is forcing me toward Fizzy on a night when I’m not sure my emotional storm doors are sturdy enough to weather any more alone time with her. Today was hard. The confessional was brutal, and watching an easy, chatty double date I wished I were a part of was even worse.

But Nat couldn’t know that, so here we are.

I don’t bother going up to say hi to her anyway, even though I’d love to vent it all out to someone who knows as well as I do what’s on the line for me here. Instead, I turn my car around at the end of the street and head toward the little cream-and-blue bougainvillea-covered house just over two miles away. And once I’m at the curb, I feel frozen again, even though my kid is inside and what I’d really like is to get my daughter, grab a pizza, and make a pillow fort on the couch for some quality television time. I don’t want to think about the show, or the woman who runs constant laps around my mind, or the way she looked earlier when she confessed her feelings again. I was seconds from crumbling. I’d never known that kind of sensation, the way my heart felt heavy but airborne inside my rib cage. I’m so fucking in love with her I can barely take a full breath.

I’m out of the car, I’m up the steps, I’m closing my eyes at the door and taking a deep, calming breath before knocking. Greet everyone, grab my kid, head home.

Protect my heart. Protect Stevie. Move on.

At my knock, three voices yell out a cheerful “Come in!” and I open the door to replace them piled on the couch beneath a mountain of fuzzy blankets.

“I could have been a bad guy,” I tell them, frowning.

“We saw your shadow on the porch through the window,” Stevie says.

Juno nods. “You’re taller than everybody.”

Fizzy gives me a playful I mean, they’re not wrong face, but I can’t engage. I realize it as soon as I lay eyes on her. There is so much pent-up longing and desire in my chest that it feels like if I say anything else, it will come out as a bellow. And if I take one step deeper into her house, I’ll drag her into her room, lock the door, and fuck her into the floor.

“Grab your stuff, squirt.” I lift my chin to where her backpack sits across the room, papers and colored pencils and bright colorful erasers spilling out everywhere.

The room goes quiet; exuberant energy drains. Great, now I’m the moody dick who spoiled the party.

“You okay, Dad?” Stevie asks, carefully extracting herself from the tangle of limbs and blankets. “Are you mad at somebody?”

I go for relaxed but knackered, rubbing a hand down my face. “No, Sass, just tired.”

“Are you sure?” She stares at me. “You’re doing that face Fizzy says is going to make you need Botox.”

I ignore this and try to keep us on task. “Do you have your things together?”

“Because if you are mad,” she barrels on, “remember that you told me people aren’t the same as fruit. You don’t look for new ones if they’re bruised.” I can ask this child a hundred times to pick up her wet towels or to stop using glitter on my bed, but this she retains?

Juno scrunches her nose. “I don’t like bruised bananas,” she says.

“Well, now I’m tired and hungry,” I say, putting my hands on Stevie’s shoulders and trying to steer her toward the door. “Let’s get out of here so we can grab something to eat.”

“Fizzy got pizza!” Stevie says, pointing excitedly to the kitchen. “There’s a ton left because she always orders too much.”

“It is one of my many superpowers,” Fizzy agrees, and I feel the way she’s staring at me, willing me to look at her, but I just can’t. Not after the emotional gut punch of the confessional earlier today.

“I’m good.” I shake my keys in my pocket. “Come on, Sass.”

“Connor,” Fizzy says in this low voice that feels like seduction. It’s too familiar, so knowing. “You don’t have to rush out. There’s tons of food. Come sit for a bit, you had a long day.”

“Thank you, but I’m good,” I say again.

Juno stands, following Stevie to where she’s shoving stuff into her bag. Her little husky voice is hilariously incompatible with whispering: “Is your dad one of the guys dating my Auntie Fizzy on that show?”

I resist the urge to groan, pretending I haven’t heard this. With Fizzy’s eyes on me, I pull my phone from my pocket and open the first app my thumb replaces on the home screen, simply needing something to do. Calculator. I punch in a few random numbers and divide it all by two.

“No.” God. Stevie’s whisper is just as bad. Under any other conditions, Fizzy and I would be making eye contact and absolutely losing our shit. “He’s the producer.”

“What does that mean?” Juno asks.

Trying to look very preoccupied, I randomly multiply everything by four and subtract 15.6.

“He makes it,” Stevie whisper-yells. “He’s the boss.”

Thanks, Stevie, but I don’t feel like the boss of anything right now. I feel like I’m a weather system, under pressure, about to crack wide open.

“Do they hate each other or like each other?” Juno asks, and my stomach drops.

Before Stevie can field this one, I call out from the doorway. “Squirt, let’s go.”

Finally, Fizzy climbs from the couch and pads over to me. She’s wearing sweats and a Wonderland hoodie and looks like brunch and holiday and post-sex euphoria rolled into human form. My body and brain had already started paving the road ahead together and it’s so hard to put the entire operation in reverse. I had already committed.

She tilts her head to meet my gaze, and after a split second of her concerned eye contact, I look back down at my screen.

“Are you…” Fizzy comes around to my side and looks down at my screen. “Why are you doing math?”

With a grimace, I slide the phone back into my pocket. “Just fidgeting.”

“You’re standing here doing math and being grumpy,” she says, and the sunshine in her voice makes me want to kiss her once, lick her lip, so sweet.

Finally, Stevie jogs over, grinning up at me. I see the question in her eyes and pour every bit of love into the smile I give her so she knows I’m okay. “Say thank you to Miss Fizzy.”

“Thank you, Auntie Fizzy.”

Auntie Fizzy.

I smile at Juno as Fizzy kisses Stevie’s forehead and then steer my kid out the door. Bad news: this heartache feels like a permanent stain in my thoughts. Good news: only a few more days of this and I never have to see Fizzy again.