“Right. Sleep good. See you in the morning.”
“Junk Sunday,” Shaw mumbled.
Hix took his gaze off his son and grinned at his TV.
“Dad?”
Hix looked back to his boy, now standing in the mouth of the hall, turned again to face him.
“Yeah, kid?”
“I’m here.”
He felt his brows draw together. “See that, Shaw.”
“I mean, I’m home. Nothin’ will happen, but if one of the girls needs anything, I’m home, you wanna go to her.”
Hix felt a burning in his chest.
“Sorry?” he forced out.
Shaw stepped one step from his place into the room.
“Wendy and her mom go to her at the salon. Her mom heard from someone, and Wendy heard her mom talking to a friend about it. I don’t think the girls know, but Wendy told me just in case someone said something to me about it.”
Shit.
“Shaw—”
That was all he got out before his boy hurried on.
“Wendy says she’s super cool, Dad. Says she’s funny, and she’s like you, she’s old, but not old old. And she wears really cool clothes that Wendy says a lot of girls at school try to copy. But her clothes aren’t like trying-too-hard cool. Like she’s old but she doesn’t get that she’s old so she still tries to be young.”
“She isn’t old,” Hix said low.
“I know, I mean she’s older, like you,” Shaw said quickly.
So maybe things with Greta had filtered down to at least one of his kids.
That was unfortunate.
But thank Christ the one it filtered down to was the oldest and his boy.
He still wasn’t going to have this conversation with Shaw.
So Hix shook his head. “Shaw, I don’t think we should—”
“I went by the salon. Stood across the street so she wouldn’t see me. Looked at her. Dad, she’s real pretty.” He paused then whispered, “Even prettier than Mom.”
That sent Hix to his feet and he slowly walked to his son, stood close and put a hand on his shoulder.
“I know you’re angry with your mom—”
“It’s not that.”
“It probably is, kid.”
“I just . . . just . . .” Shaw couldn’t finish.
“You just what, buddy?” Hix asked quietly.
“I just . . . well, I like Wendy. She’s cool too. But I think . . . well, what I think is, I like who I am when I’m around her.”
Oh yeah.
He had to have another look at this Wendy.
“And you are . . . I’m you,” he went on.
“You’re me,” Hix stated, not quite getting it.
“You’re better if you have a woman to look after.”
Hix drew in a breath and took his hand from Shaw’s shoulder.
“It’s like, well, like . . . like . . .” Shaw kept on. “Like you’re a little lost, not havin’ that.”
Yeah.
He was.
He was not that guy who got off and took off.
He was also not that guy who built a life with a woman and a family but did it always wondering if the grass would be greener with some other woman, living some other life. And he was not that guy who was about making his woman look after him, take care of his needs.
He’d never been any of those guys.
He’d been what his father had taught him to be.
A man whose reason for being was to look after his woman and his family.
He’d lost half of that and he didn’t know how to be that guy—the guy who didn’t have that half.
He just hated that his boy had noticed it.
“Son—”
“Wendy’s dad is sick, Dad.”
“Shit,” Hix whispered.
“She doesn’t want anybody to know. There’s some treatment he’s gonna try. They don’t know how it’s gonna go but they think maybe it’ll be okay. But she doesn’t talk about it. Not to anybody. Not to any of her crew. But she does talk about it to me. And I like that.”
“You should, Shaw. Says a lot about the trust she’s got in you. And you should take care of that, son. It’s maybe the most important thing you’ve ever had to do.”
“I know.”
After his boy gave him the weight of that, Hix felt Shaw’s attention intensify.
“Should I not have told you?” he asked, sounding concerned.
“No. It’s between you and me and it’ll stay that way.”
“Right,” Shaw whispered. Then he said, “I know she sings at the Dew Drop and I’m just sayin’, you should go.”
Hix beat back a sigh. “I’m not gonna go.”
“You should.”
“I’m not.”
“Okay, but you should, and you shouldn’t not do it because you think you’re protecting us or something. We get it.” He lifted his shoulders and when they fell, they fell farther than he normally held them. “It’s the way it’s gonna be now.”
Hix didn’t like the look of that shoulder droop.
But he couldn’t cure that. That was one of the many things only time could cure.
So he had to focus on what else was on his boy’s mind.
“I hope you understand that I’m not showing you disrespect because I don’t wanna share with my son what happened between me and Greta,” Hix said. “But what I will share is that I think what you think happened is not what happened.”
“Okay.”
“So you can stop thinking about it.”
“Right.”
The way Shaw said that made a slither of something unpleasant drift down his spine.
So he asked, “What?”
“Nothin’,” Shaw muttered, looking like he was going to make a turn back down the hall.
“Shaw, we share honesty, remember?” Hix pushed.
He stopped moving and looked to his dad.
“You hooked up with her,” he stated.
“Again, kid, I’m not gonna share—”
“And that’s it?” Shaw cut him off to ask.
“Sorry?” Hix asked back.
“So, you . . . what? You meet a pretty lady and get yourself some then scrape her off?”
That burning sensation came back to his chest.
“Shaw,” he growled, thinking the way he said his son’s name said it all.
He thought wrong.
“So, like, Corinne, Mamie when she gets old enough . . . Mom when she starts dating again, it’s okay some guy hooks up with them and then just blows ’em off?”
“We’re adults, and I’m sorry, Shaw, but this is something you don’t know about.”
“Everyone says that. But then everyone says you learn all you need to know about life in high school. I get that. I get that it’s all real concentrated, all the cliques and unfair teachers doing crap that’s not cool and you gotta put up with it, and losing at football games and learning how to live with that, and breaking up with girls or having them break up with you and beginning to have to worry about your future. I’m almost through all that and you don’t think I get how it is?”
He had a point.
“It’s more complicated than that,” Hix informed him.
“People say that when they’re trying not to see how simple stuff really is.”
Shit.
He had a point there too.
“Greta understands how it is,” he told his son.
“Really?”