A few weeks had gone by and I had finished my first semester for my doctorate and was well into my second semester. Tina and I continued to see each other behind Eric’s back and Aimee’s patience was dwindling. On more than one occasion she had threatened to tell Eric herself, under pressure we told her the end was soon. Tina was close to serving divorce papers to Eric, they were rocky and it started to show at work. I kept my distance and I tried to keep my cool around the gossipy women.

Tina and I went out two or three times a week, most of the time she told Eric it was a girl’s night. Whereas I was simply courting her, even though we had already moved passed the dating phase. Jackson was getting used to spending time with me and the framily I so fondly call my family of friends. He enjoyed cooking with Dana’s girlfriend Lara, running the counter at The Planet with Kit, surfing the net with Alice, playing sports with Dana and hanging out at the skate park with Shane. How fond Tina and Jackson was with the framily and I didn’t go unnoticed by Eric, in fact he was happy that Tina was doing something other than fighting with him. As the end of the marriage was approaching, Eric reached out to me.

“Hey Porter.”

“Hey Eric,” I said, my heart beating fast, “you look tired.”

“Yeah, I haven’t been sleeping much.”

“I hate when that happens. Sometimes I just can’t get my brain to shut down at night. It’s insane, work and school have my brain running marathons,” I said trying to steer the conversation away from where I knew it was going.

“Well mine is Tina,” he said and I gulped, “I know she’s been talking to you. Has she said anything?”
“Um, anything like…?”

“Well for starters, me. We’ve been fighting an awful lot these last few months and all of a sudden she wants to have another baby, and we never talked about having children before Jackson. He’s a happy blessing, but I don’t know that I want more. So we keep fighting circles around each other.”

“I know that she wants a big family. But she hasn’t said much concerning the both of you.”