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I went to him and sat down, then I moaned at the soft, but firm conformity of the chair to my body.
“Mhmm,” he said, a smirk of ‘I told you so’ on his face. “It’s a modern reproduction, made with all the good stuff. I’m too old, and I spend too much time on my ass in that seat to have a real antique.”
“Oh yeah,” I groaned again, stretching and leaning back in the chair.
“That’s right, make yourself comfortable,” he said sarcastically, though his lips were grinning.
“Will do, thanks!” I called out, then noticed the stacks of fresh papers for us to go through.
“So, shall we?” I asked him, motioning to the pile.
Owen’s smile sank away a little, but he nodded in agreement.
“Right. That’s why we’re here.”
“Where are you going to sit?”
He shrugged.
“Probably that chaise over there. I’ll take half and you take the other.”
I agreed and got right to it, taking a red marker from the cup of pens on his desk before I dug in and got to work.
“This is stupid, Owen,” I told him as we wandered outside to the beautiful garden in his backyard.
He had to have half an acre, paved in walking paths with a giant water fountain in the center of it.
“Everytime I see a new part of your house, I’m continually blown away. Can I live here too? Like, do you rent to students?”
He laughed at me, then pointed to a little spot that was tucked away near the big brick fence. Vines covered a little hideaway that was built just as a shaded area to sit. Cute little iron chairs sat there with a table in the middle facing the garden.
“No. This place isn’t student approved housing, unfortunately.”
“Dang,” I mumbled, which made Owen’s dimple pop out again on his chin.
I loved that stinking thing.
“I never got to ask you, how did your week with your boys go? Any improvement with the pre-pre teenage behavior?”
He shook his head.
“I guess it’s natural, considering we only divorced a year ago. I know I didn’t handle it well when my parents broke up. There was a lot of struggle when it came to where I belonged for many years after that.”
“Oh, man. That sounds like a difficult thing for a kid to go through,” I told him, feeling a little ache in my heart for the child Owen used to be.
He just shrugged though.
“Kids go through it all the time. We’ve done our best to try and ease them through the separation, and I feel like we’ve succeeded for the most part. We are still civil to each other for the boys.”
I was reaching a point in the subject where I had to decide to either let it drop, or start asking questions.
“Don’t answer if you don’t want to,” I told him, sitting in one of the iron chairs, “but do you hate her? I mean, you must have loved her at one point, right?”
He nodded.
“We met in college, actually. She’d been there on a Volleyball scholarship, working on a degree in childhood education. Of course, I was working toward my doctorates in English language and literature, with a minor in creative writing. She stayed with me all the way to England and back, and even put off having kids until we were finally back home and settled, and I was teaching in LA. But when we got back and life settled down…things began to change.”
Owen sat down, checked his app where we’d ordered lunch to be delivered, then looked up at the green web of vines above our heads.
