Impress Me Not: The Handyman

Chapter 48

Downtown really was beautiful when the sun was setting. It was half alive as the day wound down. Some had their lights on already, to welcome people in from the potential storm that could happen, while others simply waited calmly for the day to fully end. Some stores were closing, the owners getting ready to go home for the day. Since downtown was almost completely made up of family-owned businesses, it was easy to meet the owners if you shopped around enough. Usually, they were talking to the other owners about some drama that was going on.

Niko usually didn't go around downtown that much. At least, he never really walked around. There were always too many things to do, and too little time to do it. He never had someone who wanted to go shopping with him either, so it wasn't like he could browse through stores that way. His company was close to downtown. He just never had a reason to walk around there.

Now it seemed like it was all he could do. His house, even though it was big, felt like a cage at the moment. He had spent the whole day in it since he left Solomon's. That was normal for him, though. When he wasn't partying or out with someone on a date, he was home relaxing. But now was very different from all the other times. Because now his mind was going on the impossible mission of sorting out his thoughts.

It was impossible because of two things. He had not only come to one major realization, but two. The first was that he actually wanted to try and father James, as much as he was nervous about that. He told Matilda that he wanted to if she was okay with it. She wasn't just okay, she was ecstatic. He still wasn't sure what Clay would think about it, but he would understand if he gave him shit for a bit. He hadn't really been there for James before, and Clay took most of that on his shoulders.

He had already thought about some things that he could go and do with Jay. It wouldn't be bad to take him out to get new clothes for one thing. The boy was always staining his clothes. And Matilda's mother was getting tired of patching up the boys pants with all the rough housing he did.

Oh boy. Matilda's mother was a woman that he did not wish to see again. She probably hated his guts.

No. There was no 'probably' about it. She was another person who yelled at him that whole year. His parents were trying to get him to have nothing to do with the child or convince her to abort. But Matilda's mother was the opposite. She was the one who pushed for child support payments and yelled at him for being so irresponsible if he didn't want a child.

That woman wasn't a headache: she was a migraine.

The second realization was another thing that he talked to Matilda about. He didn't know why she would want to hear him say all of this stuff, but she did. She was far too caring for her own good. He was sure that Clay would be in the background of that phone call yelling 'Who cares!' or something. But it seemed like she was alone thankfully.

When he told her that he thought he was falling in love, he hadn't truly realized it until a few seconds after he said it. It was one of those realizations that had to settle for him to truly process. And it was a mess. Niko didn't know what to do with love. He had never been in love. Matilda was the closest thing he had to it. And the feelings that he had for her when they went out were nothing compared to the ones he was now getting for Solomon.

Niko sighed. If only things could be as simple as the sun setting on the horizon. It tried to tell people to go to bed. But most take the darkness as a reason to stay up. He was one of those people. At least the stores were beautiful. They were unique and wonderful. He used to always go to downtown when he was a teenager, just to see the magic that it had with it.

He stopped when he saw a familiar face. A red head sitting down on one of the benches, staring at the sunset with the same lost look in his eyes that Niko was sure he had.