She said, “I hired a good nanny, and I found a good day care. And it’s not like I travel all the time like you do. I like it here in San Francisco. So we’ve just been here, doing it.”

Yeah, San Francisco was the kind of place where you could go on about your business without folks bothering you. It was a wealthy family’s playground. But you definitely had to have money to stay out there.

I nodded. Michelle was an impressive woman. She had found her way to live without getting all caught up. She had a fatherless child and still wasn’t caught up. In fact, she was doing quite well for herself from what I could see.

I asked her, “Did you want to have a baby when I met you?” I still needed to understand that part of it.

“As a family, sure, but not how it happened. Then I read the signs from you, and I knew that I couldn’t count on anything,” she told me. “At the same time, I wondered what it would take for me to get through it on my own. So, I just became more focused.”

Amazing! I didn’t know what else to say. I felt like I wanted to help her just because she had done so well at helping herself. Hell, she didn’t even need me. Or did she?

“But I’m still hesitant to let you do too much now, even if you would want to, because my daughter is very regulated.” So she gets used to things. And I wouldn’t want anyone to come into her life that she can’t…”

“That she can’t be involved with on a regular basis,” I filled in for her. I had already thought about that myself.

“Exactly,” Michelle agreed. “So I take the time to thank you, because I don’t expect it, and I won’t allow my daughter to expect it.”

“So, what are you saying, that I can be a part-time dad? I mean, what kind of father would you want me to be?”

I pretty much had it set in my mind that I was Briana’s father before I went anywhere near a paternity test. So I was already jumping the gun on things, and I needed to know if I was expected to be in or out of my daughter’s life.

Michelle told me, “If you want to be a real father then you already know how it’s supposed to be.”

She caught me off-guard with that response as well. I had to give her all the credit in the world for being frank. There was no sugarcoating the father issue in her book.

I said, “But you didn’t even let me know that I was a father.” I wasn’t all wrong. Like she said, I had no idea.

“You were still too young to deal with it,” she explained.

“And you weren’t?”

“Obviously not.”

This is how she was talking to me. She made me feel like a boy. And you know what? The shit turned me on. Michelle was giving me the facts with poise and no emotional attitude. She was worlds apart from the women I had been dealing with. And she didn’t know it yet, but I was even willing to get involved with her again. Maybe a strong, organized, self-sufficient woman was just what I needed. But I didn’t want a celibate woman or a mother of my child who I couldn’t touch. What had she been holding on to for four years?