“Fine. I was checking to see if we could adjust the Thanksgiving schedule. I have him for Thanksgiving this year and was wondering if he could just stay with me through the weekend? Then he’d come back Sunday night.”
“What? Absolutely not. You have him on Thanksgiving Day. I have him on Friday for my family’s dinner. We’re having Thanksgiving a day late so he can be included.”
“Really? That’s it? You’re not going to even consider it?”
“Not just based on you asking,” I say. “You’re bombarding me with this.”
“Welcome to my life, when you suddenly need me to take him for another day because of your work and travel schedule.”
“That’s different.”
“How so Maeve?”
“Because mine is work.”
“Well, mine is a trip with my son. You know, maybe showing him you can have fun in your life.”
That dig stings, and he knows it. Josh has never been a malicious guy, but in the times over our lives we’ve argued, he’s always known what daggers to throw at me.
His go-to? That I used to know how to have fun and have a work-life balance. And if I keep this up, our son will think a good time is hanging curtains.
I didn’t used to think that. In fact, part of the reason Josh and I first hit it off is because I worked hard and played harder. I didn’t want a commitment, so a friends-with-benefits situation with the hot bartender who wasn’t looking to settle down was perfect for me.
Everything changed, though, the day I found out I was pregnant. We had always been safe, but things happen.
At that point, I was thirty and starting to get the itch to settle down. I chalked it up to the universe telling me it was time. And I was ready to be a single mom, because there was nothing in the two years I’d been sleeping with Josh that made me think he was ready to be a dad.
Needless to say I was shocked when he mentioned that we should get married for the baby. I tried to find a reason to sayno, but it seemed like the right thing to do. Two people raising a baby together had to be easier than one, right?
Wrong.
I was constantly working because we needed a stable income, and Josh hadn’t figured out yet that he didn’t have to spend all of his tips the second he earned them. I quickly realized I was going to be the one to support this family, so my entire focus became my business and Jayce.
Goodbye to the Maeve Banks who used to dance on bar tops and pour liquor into guys’ mouths. Enter the woman who was designing houses while breastfeeding.
Josh couldn’t figure out why I was a different person. I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t see it. Which is why eleven months and three days after we got married in a courthouse, we signed divorce papers.
Luckily, we didn’t have many assets to split. And because Josh wasn’t in the financial situation or had any real desire to have more than partial custody, he didn’t bat an eye at every other Sunday and Monday. It worked for him. It worked for me. Even now that he’s gone from part-time bartender to owner of a very successful bar in downtown Nashville, it’s the schedule that has worked for us.
He’s never asked for extra days. Hell, any time I ask him to pitch in when I’m out of town is pulling teeth. So the question is, why now?
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?” he answers. “Can’t a dad want more time with his son?”
“He can. But you never have. So something’s up.”
The sigh he lets out means I hit the nail on the head. “Vivian and I want to take him away with us for the weekend.”
And there it is. This is Vivian’s idea. I should’ve known.
Vivian is Josh’s girlfriend of about a year, which is eleven months longer than I thought it would last. I figured she was just another one of his bar hookups that would fizzle out.
And as a former bar hookup, I felt I had a keen sense of insight on how that plays out. The ones who usually last the longest are the ones like me—can party hard but are also people he could take home to his mom when she wonders why he hasn’t settled down and he wants to appease her. But the ones like Vivian? The ones whose jobs are “influencers,” even though they couldn’t convince a cat to chase a mouse and their real jobs are working part-time at the tanning salons? Those are the ones who fizzle.
Vivian, though, has been the needle in the haystack. I don’t know what she does for work these days. She made her name by finishing fifth place in a failed country music reality singing show, but caught some attention on social media because she was the one who caused all of the drama between the contestants. After the show ended, she started getting booked at bars downtown because her name carried a slight bit of weight. This is how she and Josh met. I hoped it wouldn’t last long.
I’m still hoping.
