Life After Claire

Fairy Tale

Shane

You know that feeling when you have to have conversation you just don't want to have? Your heart heart rate goes up and your palms get sweaty, you keep tapping you fingers on the table and you keep licking your lips. The feeling when someone tell you 'we need to talk'. You wake up and don't want to get out of bed, you take all the time you can to get ready, you try to rehearse the conversation in your head and you keep re-doing it a million times. Yeah, I'm feeling that right now.

Hannah texting me saying we needed to talk and I couldn't say no. I don't want to fight with her, but I'm afraid if this talk is going to be the end of my relationship. I use to not care about stuff like this but my life is different now.

Hannah and I agreed to meet at some restaurant where the kids can play and we can talk. I think she picked that place so we couldn't scream at each other. My parents use to do that, but in the end we always had to leave because they would scream at each other.

"Daddy!" Claire runs to me while I'm getting my stuff ready, she took it apon herself to get dressed this morning.

"Claire, what are you wearing?" I chuckle. She's got on, a purple shirt with a frog on it with a blue skirt, green tights under and two different colored socks, and her shoes are on the wrong feet.

"Here, let Daddy help you." I fix her outfit and then fight her so I can do her hair.

Not so soon after, Claire and I are walking into Charlies Fun house. I hate this place but the kids can run around and have fun while we talk. If we can even hear each other, this place is louder then a football game.

We walk in and I set Claire down so she can walk and she see's Dillion and run after her. You have to do a lot of running when you have a toddler. I let the girls play and I walk over to the table where Hannah is.

Why does she have to look amazing in that outfit? She curled her hair, did she did that for me? Wow, she looks really good in those jeans. She's dressed like a typical mom, but to me she looks so beautiful. She is one of those girls that doesn't need anything to look pretty because she's already perfect by herself.

"Um, Shane." She says waving her hand in front of my face.

"Hey." Is all I can manage to mutter out.

"How are you?" She asks, I know she's trying to find words to say.

"Good. And you?" I ask

She nods. " Shane...-"

"I'm sorry! Okay, I'm sorry. Look, guys are stupid, always, there is no getting around that. You know I don't care about Mia at all and I didn't mean to call you that. Hannah I'm crazy about you."

Hannah says a small smile on her face and we are just staring into each others eyes. I don't notice anyone else but her, that is until the waiter comes up to us.

"Welcome to Charlies, how may I h- Hey, don't I know you?" He says studying my face. He must have went to my high school or something. He looks familiar but I can't place a name to his face. The it hits me, my friends use to beat him up and called him 'Germy' instead of Jeremy.

"Jeremy? Right?" I say and he shakes his head.

"You're Shaun right?"

"Shane, close enough." I say to him, hopefully he doesn't remember what my friends and I did to him.

"You're the one that had the kid! Right? With Mia Henderson!"

"Yeah, that was me." I say look down. Sometimes I hate he fact that we live in a small enough town so almost everyone knows me as the 'guy that had a baby in high school'.