There are six phones and a Gucci purse on my sofa table.

This explains why I have half a dozen numbers for him in my phone. Noah. Noah James. Noah New Phone. Noah called on this. Noah new 512. He was currently using the Noah called on this number.

I’d assigned him the couch, second nature since childhood when “The Pull-out”, a 1960’s twin size hide-a-bed I’d gotten from my 80 year-old clients was his bed of choice. At fifteen, he’d be on the leather sofa, Family Guy had lulled him to sleep.

He’d left rehab two weeks ago and was sleeping on a couch in San Antonio. Relocating to a couch in Austin, he stayed three days with a dealer and his baby momma pregnant with their third child.  The courts in possession of one and two.

I was the back-up couch.

If I could tell young parents one thing it would be this: Pay massive amounts of attention to what your toddler is telling you, because who they are starts in utero.

Noah needed one person from the time he was a baby. When Autumn was born, he switched his preference from me to his dad. He was two. Always having a best friend, he never established a group of friends, even though he was popular, handsome and a natural born leader.

Soccer, tennis, soccer again, he’d pour his existence into one thing, get bored and change. Loyal to a fault, his heart broken from a world of unfaithfulness.

I wish I knew then what I know now, but, it wouldn’t matter, I just like to think it might.