An Underestimated Christmas (Underestimated 3) Read online

  We laid the boys down for a nap after dinner at my mom’s and Drew and I walked out to the deck with a glass of wine. I didn’t care what I had to do. I needed my pills. Who was he to tell me what I needed, what was best for me? I could decide that myself.

  My first thought was to seduce him. That would mean intimacy, though. I was trying to avoid anything that might hurt. I wasn’t sure I could handle the rejection without a pill. Drew walked down the steps and to the beach when he got a business call. I listened for a minute, and then darted inside. Where would he have hid them? I frantically looked through anything of his in our room, looking for the bottle.

  Where the fuck were they? They were nowhere to be found. I checked shoes, coat pockets, dresser draws, and even the gray lounge pants that were folded across the foot of the bed.

  “They’re in my pocket, Morgan,” Drew spoke from the door. Damn. The tone he used wasn’t condescending, hurtful, or meant to make me mad. It was defeated. Drew sounded defeated. I dropped his pants and turned to him.

  “Drew, my head is killing me. Give them to me,” I begged.

  “I don’t believe you. I think you’re jonesing and you need your fix.” I took a step back when Drew moved toward me. “Look at yourself, Morgan. You’re a hot, fucking mess. When the hell did this happen? Why didn’t I know about it?”

  “There’s nothing wrong, Drew. Just give me the fucking bottle.”

  “Look at your hands. Look how you’re talking. You’ve been this way all day.”

  I jerked my shaking hands from Drew, trying to figure out what the hell to say to get that bottle. I didn’t care what Drew was accusing me of. He could call it what he wanted. I just wanted the bottle.

  “I’m only giving it to you because I am terrified that you’re hooked on these things, but you’re getting help,” Drew ordered, handing me one. I didn’t want one. I wanted two.

  “Give me the bottle,” I demanded, dry swallowing the one pill.

  “No, I’m not going to give you the bottle. Is there anything you want to pack? I need to get back to the store.”

  “Go.”

  “No, I’m not going without you. Get ready so we can head out as soon as the boys wake up.”

  “Well, since they’re sleeping, we may as well take advantage of it,” I proposed, sliding my arms around his neck. Drew ran his hands seductively up my arms and to my wrists, and leaned in to kiss me.

  His words touched my lips, without a kiss. “Do you still want me to fuck you if I tell you you’re not getting the bottle?”

  Well hell.

  “Let’s just get through this next week and then we’ll talk about me.”

  “So that’s a no? What’s next week?”

  “Nicky’s appointment with the developmental pediatrician.”

  Morgan and I didn’t speak five words to each other in three days. We didn’t even look at each other. Unless it had to do with the boys, we didn’t communicate. We didn’t talk about the new bottle of pills Morgan seemed to have found while getting her hair done, and we didn’t talk about Nicholas. Who the fuck did she think she was to do this? She was ruining everything because she wanted a goddamn label on our son.

  The closer it got to Thursday, the closer I got to snapping. I stayed away from home until I knew the chaos of supper, baths, and bedtime started. I felt like the very foundation we were standing on was crumbling around us. And I couldn’t do one thing about it. Nothing. The lump in my throat matured as the time neared. It was all closing in on me. Thursday was there before I knew it, and I had to make a decision.

  Was I going to let Morgan go through with this? And if I was, was I going to let her do it alone? I read to Nicholas and Morgan read to Tadpole. Hers took about five minutes. I was glad Morgan felt the need to be close to Nicky. It allowed some of the building tension to ease. Morgan slid in behind Nicholas and wrapped him in her arms with a loud cheek kiss. Nicholas wiped it away and smiled, happy to be with his mommy.

  Our eyes caught in a trance briefly before turning my attention back to the story. Every time Nicholas stopped me to ask a question, our eyes met again. I was to the last three pages, ten more minutes and my little man sold me out for sleep. I wanted that ten minutes. I wanted to feel my son between me and his mommy. I didn’t want either of us to leave. So, I continued to read.

  “Drew?” Morgan quietly spoke.

  I kept reading. “Bartholomew the troll didn’t want the new park. He didn’t want little kids tromping across his bridge.”

  “Drew?” Morgan said again, placing her hand over the words. My eyes drifted to her wedding band and I wondered what it all meant. Why? Why would anyone want to go through this thing called life? We do it for love. There is no other explanation on earth that explains why any of us would choose to do this had we been given a choice. You spend your entire life trying to be better for the ones you love. The ones who hurt you the most. I wouldn’t have signed up for this. None of it.

  “I don’t want you to take him, Morgan,” I finally responded. Morgan moved the book and placed her hand in mine.

  She traced my wedding band with her pretty red finger. My silver ring looked dominant next to red. “I have to, Drew. There are things I need to know.”

  “No there’s not, Morgan. Please, baby. Please don’t do this.”

  “Drew. You’re not being fair. I am his mother, and you’re keeping me from protecting him.”

  “You’re keeping me from protecting him,” I countered. If she would just stop with all of this, we would be fine.

  “Drew, I have to learn everything I can to help him grow up and survive out there.”

  “He’s not going out there. He’s five. Just let him be a little boy.”

  “He doesn’t know how, Drew. You have been making excuses his whole life. Nicholas not having any friends has nothing to do with him being like you. Nicholas’s fixation on bridges has nothing to do with the brains you passed down. Not liking his routine ruffled is not a form of something handed down from you. He’s not sick, Drew. He’s different, and I want to learn everything I can possibly learn to help him understand that it’s okay. It’s okay to be different because I am, Drew. It’s okay for him to be different because you’re different, too. You know you are. We’re all different. Just because your hang-up isn’t the same as his doesn’t mean you’re not different, too.”

  I took a deep breath and pulled Morgan’s hand. If she was going to make me feel like an ass, I wasn’t doing it in front of my son. Morgan crawled to me in her boy’s boxers and white tank top. I held her there on her knees and pulled her into my arms. The view of her through the mirror, secured in my arms made me sing a different tune. I wanted to fix this. All of this. I didn’t know how. And I knew Deidra wasn’t the answer this time. This was on me, but what? How? With my eyes closed, I held Morgan in my arms on Nicky’s bed for several moments. I didn’t want to let her go. Ever.

  She was the one to break our contact, but at least she took my hand. That was something. I watched her cover Nicholas with one hand, kiss him on the head, and smile at me for not letting go of her hand. I didn’t want to let it go.

  “Drew, you have to stop looking at it like it’s going to make him less of a person.”

  “It is, Morgan,” I pleaded, letting go of her hand to reach the two mugs.

  “You want marshmallows?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is not, Drew. He’s going to be the same Nicky he’s been since he was born.”

  “With a label.”

  “Okay, answer me this question. If you can answer it without having to think about it then I’ll shut up and do whatever you say. Deal?” Morgan asked with an offered hand.

  “Okay,” I said, keeping her hand after one shake.

  “If you went in there tomorrow and found out that Nicholas does have Asperger’s, and you could tell the doctor to make him better. Different. Would you? Would you tell that doctor to change him into someone else, because he’s different?”
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br />   That was the third time in my life that I ever remembered crying in front of Morgan. I tried to hide it with a quick swipe, but she saw it.

  “Don’t you wish you could hurry and sniff them back in with your eyes like you do with your nose?” she smiled. Only Morgan would think about something like that. Her hand left mine in slow motion while she came to me from the other side of the island. I held her between my legs, holding back the tears I wanted to share with her. I couldn’t do that. Drew Kelley couldn’t do that. My wife was sobbing in my arms and I had to be strong for her. Prevailing over weakness, I soothed her, and set my own feelings aside.

  Something did change in me that night. I knew the things Morgan was saying made perfect sense. It didn’t change the fact that I failed him. She could tell me all night long that it wasn’t my fault and I would still wake up thinking it was. That was a step, a step in what I thought was the right direction.

  Morgan cried more once we were in the still dark night of our room. I might have even hid a couple of my own.

  “Drew?” Morgan whispered between bouts of crying and talking.

  “Hmmm?” I mumbled in her hair.

  “I don’t want to live here anymore.”

  “You don’t want to live where? In this house?”

  “In Los Angeles. I hate all the chaos here.”

  “Do you miss your mom?”

  “No, it’s not that. I think us not living so close to her is a good thing. I don’t think living next door to social climbing bitches is a good thing. I don’t think having to associate with the clientele that you work with is a good thing. I hated that from the beginning. I don’t want to entertain your connections. I don’t like them.”

  “I only ask you to do that once or twice a month.”

  “It’s a lot for me to do it, too. I sit there and fake a smile, wishing I was home with my boys.”

  “You enable him, too, you know,” I accused.

  “What do you mean? How?”

  “You’ve built a shell around him ever since that doctor assumed Asperger’s.”

  “That’s why you need to let me find out what we’re dealing with. I don’t know what I am supposed to do and what I’m not supposed to do.”

  “Okay, Morgan. You can take him with my blessing, but I don’t want to be there.”

  “Okay,” Morgan sadly replied. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to go there and listen to news I didn’t know how to handle. It was better for Morgan to go and let me process it in my own way. I’d rather take it out on my work office than my home office. Although, the last time I did that turned out to be pretty costly. Maybe I wouldn’t do that. “Where do you want to live?” I asked, needing to talk about something else. I didn’t know if I could continue being the strong one if we did.

  “I don’t know, but I think we should talk about maybe a move after the holidays.”

  “That’s less than three months away.”

  “We can start looking. Maybe something in the suburbs with a real yard, maybe a little stream where we can build Nicky a little bridge and Tadpole can play in the water. They would both be in heaven.”

  “I love that fairy tale, but it already takes me an hour to get home sometimes. I don’t want to add any more.”

  “But the closer we get the more congested it gets. I don’t want all the people,” Morgan reminded me of the rhetorical fact.

  “If you’re not happy here then of course we’ll talk about it, but can we do it a little later?”

  “Okay, sure.”

  Morgan and I laid silently still until she finally fell asleep. I held her, kissed her head, and prayed to God to help me take care of my family. After many helpless sighs and soft kisses to my wife’s hair, I gave up. There was no point in trying. I wasn’t sleeping until I knew my son was okay. I slid Morgan off me and surrendered to insomnia.

  Rather than researching autism, I opened up a real estate site. I tried to close out the popup of the same stupid real estate add that kept popping up on my computer.

  “Hey, come here, buddy,” I called to my half-asleep Tadpole, pitter-pattering toward his mommy.

  “I peed,” Tadpole explained.

  I took his hand, grabbing the container of baby wipes left from the earlier sticky ice cream fingers. Best invention ever. After cleaning up Tad and changing his sheets, I tried to get him to climb in. He wanted Mommy. Picking him up, I carried him to the sofa with me, rubbed his back, and looked down at the storefront again.

  New York City. Morgan hated the cold. She would kill me, but the property was perfect. I knew I could turn it into something amazing. It was prime, prestigiously placed on 5th Avenue. What a challenge that could be.

  I kissed Morgan good morning that day for the first time in a long time. The air was frigid with dread and we both stepped lightly. I didn’t stick around for breakfast, using the lie that I had a meeting with a buyer. Tadpole was too busy pretending to be a puppy and literally slurping milk from a bowl to care about his goodbye kiss. Why Morgan let him do that stuff was beyond me.

  “I’ll see you tonight. Do you have to let him do that?” I asked avoiding the conversation we both tiptoed around.

  “He’s just playing. He’s a kitten,” she egged it on, rubbing his ear.

  “No. Me a puppy,” he corrected.

  “I’ll see you later,” I repeated, going down the line. I kissed Morgan, dodging eye contact, rubbed my little puppy’s head, and held on to Nicky a little longer than normal. “Love you, buddy,” I squeezed.

  “I’ll see you at my doctor,” Nicholas replied after sitting him back in his chair. I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to lie to him, and I didn’t want to start something I was going to leave Morgan to deal with. I swiped the hair on his forehead instead. Morgan stared at me, begging me to be there for her with her eyes. No matter how much I argued with myself to team up and be there for my family, I couldn’t go with her. I had to deal with this in my own way. Not hers.

  Traffic was absolutely ridiculous. What the hell was going on? It had to be something; it was never this bad in the mornings. I tried to listen to the traffic report on Kiis FM, but because of my Nicholas distraction, I missed it. Heading right toward the stopped traffic, I went in the direction of the accident rather than avoiding it. That is one thing I wouldn’t miss if I got my family out of here. Traffic. This was freaking crazy.

  My car inched along while my fingers messed around on my phone. New York City. Could we live in New York? Would Morgan hate me even more? Glancing up while my car barely moved, I looked at the photos of the store again. New York. Hmmm.

  At the first clear exit, I got off. The gas light and the long line of cars told me I had to. Escaping the 110 nightmare, I found myself driving around for almost an hour. Not really sure what the hell I was doing, I took street after street, lost in not only thought, but Los Angeles as well. Jesus, where the hell am I? Pulling into a parking lot, I sat there in a daze for a bit, contemplating. It wasn’t just me anymore. I had to think about what was best for my family.

  Morgan didn’t want to be in the city anymore, and I owed it to her to do what she wanted. That’s when I looked up and saw the sign, the sign right in front of me. I saw the sign. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Inglewood Developmental Pediatrician. Dr. T. Inglewood. That wasn’t a coincidence. It wasn’t an accident that I ended up in the same parking lot that my son had an appointment at. It wasn’t an accident that Dr. Inglewood had a cancelation and my wife was struggling with my boys to get them inside.

  Nicholas was fine. He held on to his mommy’s hand like a little man. It was Tadpole this time. He sat on the sidewalk, screaming about something. Morgan squatted with him, trying to reason with him. He cried louder. Whatever it was, he wanted it. My first thought was to get the hell out of there before she saw me. My ethical thought caused me to take a deep breath and get out of the car.

  “Drew!?” Morgan questioned. Tadpole instantly calmed down when I lifted him from now laying on the sid
ewalk.

  “What’s going on with you?” I asked, wiping away his tears with the sleeve of my dress shirt.

  “I wanna have dat,” he pointed to the car, crying again. I looked to Morgan for the correct answer.

  “His bike is in the back. He’s been like this ever since he got up. What are you doing here, Drew?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. What are you doing here? I thought his appointment was at one,” I questioned.

  “It was. They called right after you left, wanting to know if I wanted an earlier appointment due to a cancelation. I said yes. I hated the thought of waiting all morning.”

  “I wanna wide a bike,” Tadpole dramatically reminded us that it was him we were supposed to be paying attention to. After setting him down on the sidewalk, I made him look at me and reasoned with him.

  “You be a good boy in the doctor’s office and you can ride your bike, but you can’t bring it in here.”

  “I want to,” he cried out, trying to sit again. I don’t know who was more surprised, Morgan or me. We were both expecting a long drawn out tantrum, but he stopped. As soon as I told him that I was going to take him to the car and he was going to sit there while Nicky got to read the books and play with the blocks, he stopped.

  “You better hope this doctor has blocks and books,” Morgan alleged, bringing my attention to a fact I never thought about. “Thank you, Drew,” she praised with bright eyes and the smile I missed. I hoped who ever caused the accident on 110 was okay, but I sure did thank them for sending me here. With my wife. Where I belonged.

  “Let me explain how the scoring works,” Dr. Inglewood began. I was expecting Dr. Inglewood to be a man. I guess I was too distracted to pay attention to detail. I was fine with her being a female. I just know how Drew was with women. Rarely did he admit it, but he had a hard time with women being in control. “Did either of you take the Asperger’s assessment to see where you fell on the AQ test?” she asked, looking over all the paperwork I’d filled out before the appointment.