“Awesome!” Auden said excitedly.
“So cool, Mom,” Pippa agreed then asked, “Mercer and Hart coming?”
As the text said, I’ll be there Thanksgiving. Boys with their mom. That was a no.
“Sorry, honey,” I said as a gentle answer.
“Bummer,” she muttered.
“Pip,” Auden snapped again and with that, my attention became acute on them.
They could bicker. They could also fight.
But mostly, my son had a lot of patience with his little sister. She was a girl. Now she was a teenage girl. She could be flighty. She was admittedly a little spoiled (my doing, but she was also daddy’s little girl so Conrad had a hand in that too).
Mostly, she was sweet and kindhearted and her brother knew it.
This was uncharacteristic and I wondered if he was being the way he was for fear of what Mickey would think of her (when she’d really not said anything that could offend Mickey and further, Mickey was a pretty laidback guy and didn’t give any indication he was easily offended).
“What now?” she snapped back.
“I think we’re good with Uncle Lawr,” he chided. “We haven’t seen him in almost a year and a half.”
“I didn’t say we weren’t good with just him,” she retorted. “It’s just if they all came, we could be us. We could be awesome. And we could show them there’s life after divorce, it isn’t all that bad and eventually everyone could end up happy.”
My hand darted out and curled around Mickey’s thigh as I stared at my baby girl.
We could be us. We could be awesome. And we could show them there’s life after divorce, it isn’t all that bad and eventually everyone could end up happy.
I was about to burst into sloppy tears of joy when Mickey’s hand curled around mine and held it as his thigh.
That gave me the strength to draw in breath and control the tears.
But it didn’t stop me from saying, “I love you, baby girl.”
Olympia’s eyes shot to me, her face went soft, her chin started quivering, then she licked her lips and rolled them together before releasing them to say bashfully, “Love you too, Mom.”
I smiled at her and turned my smile to my boy. “Since I’m being gushy, I’ll say I love you too.”
“It okay I don’t look like a dork and get all weepy and say it back?” Auden asked jokingly.
“Yes, if in your memoirs you share with the world your deep adoration for your mother,” I allowed.
“Whatever,” he muttered, but he did it grinning at his burger before he picked it up and took a huge bite, this indication of how much he liked it because wrestling weigh-ins were soon and around that time, things got dicey for Auden to maintain the weight he needed.
Perhaps this was why he was short-tempered with his sister.
Having experience with Auden and his weigh-ins, I put it down to that.
Back on good footing with my kids, the rest of the night went great. Even when we got back and the kids talked Mickey into “hanging out awhile” whereupon Pippa took that opportunity to point out we’d all be a lot more comfortable if we had another chair up there. Auden didn’t even rise to the bait. But this could be because we sat comfortably with Auden in what had become my chair, Pippa at one end of the couch, me in the middle, Mickey at the other end.
Mickey and I even did some minor cuddling and the kids didn’t blink an eye.
However, with the kids there and the stained glass window in the door, we only got to whisper goodnights and give lip touches rather than make out, which was disappointing.
That was the only disappointment. The rest was all good. We all had enjoyed it. And Pippa had even asked Mickey back around so she could cook for him.
A success.
Which meant more happy for me.
And by the way he was acting, more importantly, for Mickey.
*
I got the news by text the next day that Mickey had got the go-ahead from everyone for Auden and his friend Joe to hang at the firehouse on Friday night.
The boys had gladly given up any Friday night activities, including the high school football game, to go hang with the guys of the MFD.
I had been a wreck until I got a text from Mickey at midnight that said, They’re asleep in bunks. It’s all good, babe.
I got more the next morning when Auden came home (that was to my home as in our home), full of talk about how he and Joe thought Mickey and the guys were “the bomb” and they couldn’t wait to do it again.
This “do it again” business did not fill me with glee. Mickey had told me the last major fire they’d been called to before the one at the jetty had been during a heat spell that came with a drought that had meant some 4th of July fireworks had taken a house with it, this happening three years before. They’d had many minor incidents, but no major ones.
I still fretted about my son liking hanging in a firehouse and what that might mean.
But he was discovering who he was and what he wanted to be. As Mickey told me, he had to have the space to do that and I had to find the strength to let him.