Page 78 of As The Shifter World Turns

78

HOW HARD CAN IT BE?

Ryder

“How hard can it be?” I’d said when Ivor needed me to bring Dyani to work twice a week. “How hard can it be?” Famous last words.

I should’ve seen the error of my ways the second those words formed in my mind. How could I not have? I mean, we struggled balancing getting the laundry done and having a small babe. How could I have thought that being in the office with her was going to be easier?

The first day, it wasn’t so bad. She loved seeing the new things and I had not a ton to do, making me her constant companion. I felt like I could conquer the world by the end of day one.

Day two? That was an entirely different situation altogether. Was Dyani completely taken care of and loved? Absolutely. But my productivity was non-existent.

By the time I got home, I was exhausted. Beyond exhausted. I was lucky to hit the bed before I fell asleep. I was only going to lay down for a minute. Just one.

Yeah, that didn’t happen.

“Ryder.” Ivor’s hand brushed my arm. “Maybe you might want to put your pajamas on or at the least take your shoes off?”

I opened my eyes and glanced at the clock. “It’s eight? I just…” I pushed myself up to sit. “It was my night to cook dinner.”

“And I managed just fine.” His lips brushed my forehead. “Do you want to go to sleep for the night or eat?”

“I need to help around here.” The defeat I felt stung. I wanted Ivor to not have to worry about our sweet babe while he worked and the very first week I managed to fail and flail. “I’ll figure it out.”

“What you need is a way to manage your time around her naps.” He wrapped his arms around me. “Archer says that’s the key to it all. Not that I’ve been able to accomplish it yet.”

“Yeah. That’s true. And maybe… how would you feel about having someone who comes to the office to watch her while I work. So that way I’m there with her, but also I have help if I need to pee or take on an important call.” Which really I should be able to reschedule given I was the boss.

“Maybe working and having a family don’t go together.” My poor mate let out a sigh, his defeat so evident on his face it nearly broke me.

“No. You keep doing what you’re doing. I’ll figure out a way to make this work. And really, it might just be because it’s new. Remember how hard it was when she first came home?”

He snuggled into me more. “It was the hardest thing.”

“And now?”

“And now it’s not.”

“That’s where I am at with work.” I hoped I was telling the truth. “Did you eat?” Managing and eating were two different things.

“Cereal,” he confessed.

“Let me make something better.” I pushed myself up and off the bed. “We have some ground beef… how about spaghetti?”

“You don’t have to…” His stomach said otherwise, grumbling loudly.

I padded into the kitchen and started to cook. Dyani was sound asleep in her crib, the monitor showing me her sweet face as I chopped and stirred and it gave me an idea.

What if there was a way to combine this monitor with a scheduling app? There was no way you could make a baby follow your schedule, but maybe, just maybe there was a way for an app to help predict theirs and therefore make the workday easier.

By the time I was done cooking, I had half a notion of what I wanted to do. It wouldn’t be as easy as that, of course. I wasn’t a coder or designer, but I had an idea and that was a start.

“What changed?” Ivor sat across from me at our small table.

“What do you mean?”

“When you came out here you were so… I don’t know… not broken, but also not whole.” He twirled his spaghetti with his fork.

“I was… I wanted to make everything good for you… to take everything off of your shoulders so you could focus on your career while you were at work and I was afraid I couldn’t do that… that I couldn’t be the mate you needed.”

“Ryder, don’t you see? You already are.” He set his fork down and reached across the table for my hand. “When I told you I needed help and for you to take her twice a week, you did it without question. It’s hard… all of this pa renting stuff is really hard. That’s how it is. Anyone who says it’s not, is either not doing it right, or they’re lying.”

I pointed to his spaghetti, needing him to eat and feeling bad that all he’d had before this was cereal.

“You’re so forgiving of me and my faults.” And I meant more than just me falling asleep on a night I should have been cooking. I meant the whole Kellan thing, too. My inability to let go of the toxic nearly cost me everything.

Sure, Ivor wasn’t blameless, but unlike me he sought some help.

“It’s easy to not think about anything except how lucky we are when we have our sweet baby girl sleeping in the next room and a belly that’s about to be filled with your fabulous sauce.” Ivor took a huge mouthful of his dinner and smacked his lips as he did.

“When you asked me what changed… I had an idea about working parents who have babies. I don’t know if anything will come of it, but I think if I can pull it off, it will make a ginormous difference to parents like us and also for those who work remotely.”

Ivor leaned in closer and I told him all of the half notions floating in my head.

Between the two of us, we turned those notions into a fully fledged idea and were writing out specs far too late into the night. The next day I began to look for potential designers for the app that we temporarily named, When do I have time for that?

There were a ton of levels to getting it created from the tech person to the visual designer and so much money. I’d put it out to bid hoping it would only be a couple thousand dollars… it was not. But if it worked, it could be a game changer for working parents, at least in those early years.

“We should launch it in BETA.” Ivor suggested. It was something I hadn’t thought about, but it made a ton of sense, allowing us to recoup some money as we found all the bugs.

Only instead of recouping a bit of money, it had our app exploding onto the scene. We were even featured in a local news segment. It was hardly the big league, but it was so much to be proud of.

“Where are you going this morning?” I asked Ivor who was wearing a tie. He never wore ties on days that work didn’t require them and those were rare. Less than rare, it was one. One day. But damn he looked good.

Not that he didn’t always.

“Dyani and I were invited to speak at a local baby and me group.” He fixed his tie. “I took the day off. It was meant to be a surprise, but you slept in.”

It wasn’t so much sleeping as it was staying in bed with my mate doing other things, but Dyani was in the room and while she would have no idea what we were talking about, she would one day. We figured it better to start too early than too late.

“That wasn’t my fault.” I raked my eyes up and down his body. “That was all yours. ”

“I’m fine taking all responsibility.” He winked. “Wish me luck on the presentation.”

He didn’t need luck. He nailed it, our app not only getting a ton more hits, but so many media tags. We’d created something the market needed. It might be simple and it wouldn't be suitable for everyone, but for those it worked for, it truly worked. And one of those people was me.