Page 97 of Soft
"Yes, he did. He said, and I'm going to quote this directly because it was a good sentence, 'He's going to feel responsible for something that isn't his fault, and I need someone to go remind him that he's a person and not just a professional.’ Of course I agreed to call, which means I didn’t lie earlier. I figured if you weren’t answering for other people, then I’d likely be ignored too. It was nothing to get my butt up and come here.”
My eyes burned with unshed tears. I didn’t want to break down in front of this man. It would be embarrassing.
Then again, considering how much he was like his son, he’d likely not be bothered at all by it.
"He knows me too well," I said after a moment.
"He does. That's what love looks like when it's real. It pays attention." He nudged the plate toward me again. "Eat something. I can't have a serious conversation with someone who's running on coffee fumes and guilt. You won’t know to laugh at my corny jokes."
I took a bite mostly to smother the snort I knew would turn into a sob if I let it out. The food was good. Buttery and flaky in a nostalgic sort of way.
"I'm his agent," I said, once I'd swallowed. "That's not a small thing. Whatever happens to his career, I'm connected to it. And if an article like this makes things complicated for him?—"
"Then he deals with it. Same as he'd deal with any other thing that came at him. That's who he is."
"He shouldn't have to."
"Nobody should have to deal with the hard parts of life. And yet." He spread his hands. "The hard parts show up anyway, and we find out what we're made of."
He said it without any edge. Even so, I could feel the heavy energy that came with the admission. It reminded me of what Paxton had said about his mother—how his father had kept going after she passed, kept the family moving forward because that was the only direction available.
I thought about the version of myself that had believed for years that wanting a Daddy was shameful. That needing support made me less. That the parts of me that required gentleness were liabilities.
"Can I tell you something?" I asked.
He chuckled softly. "That's generally why I'm here."
"Before Paxton." I stopped to get ahold of the words. "Before all of this. I had convinced myself that the best I could hope for was managing everything quietly. My work, my vision, the Little side of me. All of it would just be under my control. I’d keep it to myself."
He nodded, listening intently as I continued.
"And then this person shows up and he just—" I laughed a little despite myself, which felt strange in the middle of this conversation but also exactly right. "He showed up with donuts and a bear, and he fixed the lightbulbs in my conference room before I ever told him why that mattered, and somewhere in between all of that I stopped being able to remember why I thought handling everything alone was a better option."
"Because it wasn't a better option," he added. "It was just the only option you'd been given up until that point."
I looked at him, unsure how he could deliver such a blow so nicely.
"My son is a lot of things." He leaned back in his chair. "He's stubborn, and he's loud when it comes to things he cares about, and he has a ridiculous number of opinions about baseball that no one can change his mind about. But the thing he is most, more than any of the rest of it, is steady. I think you know that by now."
"I do," I admitted.
"Then let it hold you up. That's what steady people are for. You don't have to earn the right to lean on him, Grizzly. He's alreadydecided you're worth showing up for. All you have to do is stop finding reasons to argue with him about it."
Silence descended at his words. It wasn’t loaded with anger or anything. More like… understanding.
"He's lucky to have you," I said.
Paxton’s dad snorted. "I know it. Though I'll tell you, it's been the other way around more times than I can count." His expression shifted into something softer and more private for a moment. "Raising a kid on your own, you spend a lot of time worrying you're getting it wrong. That the gaps are too big. That they'll hold it against you eventually." He shook his head. "He never did. Not once. Just kept being an amazing kid, then later an amazing young man. I learned as much from him as he ever learned from me."
I thought about Paxton on the floor of a playroom at Jake Bellport's house, sitting cross-legged with his hands folded in a gesture of patience. I thought about him tucking Wells into my hands and saying he wanted me to have something good waiting at home. I thought about him reading the menu in the diner without fanfare or comment, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world to notice what someone needed and quietly provide it.
I thought about the day before. The way he had held the reporter's gaze and said he wasn't going to reduce something that mattered to him.
"He's going to be fine," I said, and realized as I said it that I meant it. Not as a reassurance for Paxton’s dad. I actually believed it. "The article is going to be what it's going to be, andthere will probably be more of them. It’s either breakup, which neither of us wants, or understand this is part of our lives."
"There he is." Approval coated his tone.
My phone buzzed on the table between us. I turned it over out of habit, expecting Cheyenne or one of the many people who’d already texted today.
