Off Day

Miles

“Bro, you seemed off out there. What’s up with you?” Maxwell, our quarterback says to me. He shuts the hideaway compartment to his locker and turns to me. We’ve just finished our practice and even I have to admit. It was a pretty terrible one.

I’m one of the starting tight ends for the Atlanta Crusaders Football Team and although it was just a practice, I’m pretty sure a high schooler could’ve showed me up today. I was wide open all day today and still dropped every god damn ball and even the ones I did catch, were knocked from my hands. My focus has been so off, that if I could get fired for one shitty practice, I probably would have been.

“Smiley Miley’s just pouty ’cause the hottie doctor won’t call him back,” Anderson calls out from his locker. He flashes me a wide grin when I glare at him. I knew I was going to regret telling Andy about Monroe. I, of course didn’t tell him every detail and despite being one of my best friends, he still doesn’t know that Monroe is my ex-girlfriend from college. No one knows, but nonetheless I thought he would understand since he pretty much used to be a fuck up himself and has a wife now.

I was wrong. He’s still the same dick he was a year ago. He’s just a married dick now.

Maxie raises his brow at me but doesn’t say anything.

“Keep talking DeLower, and I’ll make a fake Instagram account pretending to be a model and DM Lolita the explicit details of our hot, six month long affair that resulted in our baby that’s on the way.”

Max busts out laughing and I grin when Andy’s face pales to a Casper-white.

“Don’t even joke like that man...You might as well be signing my death certificate if you do that.” He shudders.

I laugh. Anderson’s wife has four older brothers. If he even thought about doing Lolita dirty we’d probably never hear from his ass again. However, I doubted that would be a problem. He was crazy about her from the moment he met her. Well, at first she just made him crazy, anyway.

“How hot is the hottie doctor?” Max asks as we exit the locker room and head toward the parking lot.

Andy whistles. “I saw a picture and let’s just say Miley’s lucky I’m a happily married man because the old me would’ve done very bad things to—”

I pause and I can’t even help the murderous glare I give him.

“Don’t talk about her like that,” I growl. Anderson’s eyes widen and he’s shocked by my tone of voice.

“Dude, chill. It was a joke... Married.... Happy” he says, holding up is left hand, eyeing me like I’ve lost my mind. I grunt an apology to him and he just shakes his head and walks to his car.

“You were going to take his head off over a girl you just met?” Maxwell says, raising his eyebrow.

I don’t answer him and just climb into my car.

Back at my house, I relieve Melody’s Nanny, Amelia for the evening. Seeing Melody has been the single greatest part of this entire day. My little girl is the sweetest, funniest, most precocious child. She might not be my biological daughter, but she shares my blood and I love her like she’s my own.

Melody Emily-Samantha Aaron is technically my niece. She’s the only living legacy of my older brother Sam and his wife Emily. I unfortunately lost both of them nearly five years ago in a car accident when Emily was nine months pregnant. The doctors had been able to do an emergency c-section and deliver my niece, but my brother and Emily had been DOA.

Being that Emily was an only child and had older parents, no one else could take Melody, but that wasn’t even an issue because I hadn’t hesitated when I stepped forward to adopt her. I wasn’t about to let my goddaughter get tossed into the system like my brother and I had been. Melody was mine the minute that I laid eyes on her and I’d spent countless hours in the NICU, heartbroken and exhausted watching my premature little girl fight for her life.

I had gotten lucky that Melody had been born in the off season because looking back I don’t think I would’ve been able to play in my mental state. I was not only grieving the loss of my only sibling, but my sister-in-law as well. They hadn’t even chosen a name yet because they wanted to be surprised about the sex of the baby and hadn’t told me what names they were considering if their baby turned out to be a girl.

I became a dad overnight and had to name my daughter without Sam by my side.

Right now, as I hold Melody in my arms and feel how heavy she is and hear her strong heartbeat, I can’t help but feel like the most blessed parent in the entire world. Not everyone gets lucky like I did four years ago, and many parents have to say goodbye to their babies before they’ve even had a chance to bring them home. It crushes me to even think about it and every day I am grateful I get to be the father of this amazing child.

However, she’s also the most exhausting child. I’m grateful that the minute she hops into my arms she struggles to keep her eyes open, because I feel the exact same way and I’m not going to lie, I do not have the energy for dolls and tea parties tonight.

I’m physically and emotionally spent from my blast from the past moment with Monroe, as well as my shitty practice. All I want to do is drift off to sleep with my daughter in my arms and pretend like this day never even happened.

Except, I can’t.

And three hours after I’ve put Melody to bed, I’m still thinking about Monroe and how seeing her again has left me with a gaping hole in my chest, like my heart has been ripped away. I know that I don’t deserve to be the one hurting. However, I can’t help it. Because after I lost Monroe Marsailles, I was never the same and that has never been more clear to me than right now.