Taxi: Sarah & Tom

Chapter 1: Sarah

I blow out a frustrated breath.

"Tom, can you come here for a moment?" I call to him from the bathroom, where I'm looking at yet another shattered eyeshadow palette and ruined brushes.

"What's up?" He sounds a bit distracted, but I just gesture to the cosmetics carnage in front of us.

"This is the third time that this has happened, and I can't keep paying to replace things. I had my bag hidden behind the towels in the cabinet, so he must have been looking for my things. Nothing else in here has been messed with."

Tom and I have been seeing each other for almost 18 months, and everything is going well except for the fact that his 4-year-old son, Jackson, doesn't like me anymore. Tom introduced Jackson and I when we had been together for about 9 months, and it seemed to go well at first. As Thomas and I continued to build our relationship, we both made it a priority to involve Jackson in the things that we were doing. Museums, waterparks, and movie nights were all spent together forming inside jokes and finding a new routine.

We saved our adult dates and romantic weekends for when Jackson went to his mom's house. Tom and his ex-wife, Michelle, have 50/50 custody so Tom and I were still able to spend plenty of time with just the two of us. I met Michelle before I met Jackson and she wasn't particularly friendly, but if I were watching my gorgeous ex-husband move on I wouldn't be happy, either. Because I would be helping Tom with Jackson's care and transportation, Tom and I got lunch with Michelle to ensure that she felt comfortable with me as well.

She agreed that I could help out with Jackson, but she also laid out a lot of rules and boundaries for me to follow. Tom said that allowing her to have some sort of control would appease her and stave off a potential legal battle if she decided that she didn't like me and didn't want me around Jackson. Their divorce had been relatively amicable, but I knew that Tom initiated their divorce and Michelle hadn't wanted them to separate.

Michelle had cheated on Tom, which never made sense to me. Tom is the entire package; driven, funny, family-oriented, and so attractive I sometimes have to pinch myself. He was a diver in college, and still swims a few times a week. Broad shoulders, trim hips, and dark curly hair mean that Tom is aging like fine wine. He is also a genuinely good person and when I met him I knew that I could easily grow to love him.

Either way, Tom, Jackson, and I were getting along well until about 3 months ago when Jackson's behavior started changing. When we would talk about our weekend plans or fun things that we wanted to do during the weekend, Jackson would ask Tom if I had to come with them. The first time that it happened we were both taken aback, and asked what he meant. Jackson told Tom that he didn't want me to come with them anymore, and he didn't know why I was always at the house.

Then my things started moving, going missing, or being destroyed, always when Jackson was home. I didn't want to bring it up with Tom, but we both noticed and it was obvious that Jackson was having more trouble with my presence than we previously realized. We brought it up with Jackson and asked him why he didn't want me there anymore, but he would start crying or would just tell us that he doesn't want us to make a new family without him.

We had no idea where this was coming from, but then Michelle started telling us that Jackson was always upset when he came back to her house and she was concerned about him. We all agreed that Tom and Jackson would do at least one thing without me every week or weekend so that Jackson felt more secure in his relationship with his Dad, and then we would do one fun thing all together. This helped for a little while, but in the last month 2 of my eyeshadow palettes have been broken and my keys have been found in the flower box twice. Tom just said that we had to keep going but what we're doing doesn't appear to be helping Jackson.