“Nope, I’m not going to him.” I laced up my tennis shoes, prepared to do the only rational thing here. Burn it all off at the gym.
My tablet rang and buzzed on my dresser table. Normally, I’d leap to answer it, knowing who it was. But I was moving slowly today. Still, I was no less happy to answer and see the smiling face of my kid.
Jamal grinned from ear to ear. “Hey mom.”
“Hey my baby, how is camp going?” I settled in the small cream-colored sitting chair by the window. I bought the comfy seat with the hopes I’d read books and sit in peaceful silence, but I somehow never found the time to do either.
That was all it took for Jamal to launch into stories about the high ropes course they traversed the day before. His best friend, Jun Hie, who came all the way from Tokyo to take advantage of the program as well. They’d met last summer, and they’d picked up right where they left off, bonding over the latest in robotics and astronomy.
I lived for that toothy smile on his face. To say I was grateful for the program and scholarship, so he could attend, was an understatement.
“You okay, mom?”
“Of course, baby. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know,” he said, studying me as close as he could through a camera. “You seem. . .sad. Are you taking care of yourself?”
My kid. The eleven-year-old going on forty.
“Of course, I am,” I said, a little too defensively.
“Are you taking time to have fun?” He spelled it out for me as if I didn’t understand his original question.
I rubbed my forehead. “Baby, you know I gotta work.” And these days, work was killer.
Ha!I could be funny when I wanted to be.
Jamal frowned. “You don’t work all the time. And if I’m not there to make sure you have fun, you should go play with Vivien and Aaron.”
“Who’s the parent here?” I asked, failing to suppress a smile.
He shook his finger at the camera dramatically, before breaking out into laughter.
Then Jamal turned serious again. “Mom, are you lonely?”
A spike stabbed through my heart. “Of course not.”
If we’d simply been talking over the phone, I would have missed the stink-eye he gave me. “You know you always tug on your hair when you are lying.”
I released braids as if they were made of fire.
Jamal took a deep breath. “I need to go in a couple minutes here, but it’s time we had the talk.”
I straightened in my seat. Oh god, he’s barely eleven. Why would he need to have the talk now? I wasn’t ready. It was all happening too soon.
“I think it’s time you started dating again.”
I would have been less surprised if he slapped me across the face with a live fish.
“Baby, I—”
His tone was stern and far beyond his years. “I can’t be there all the time, and someone else needs to treat you like the queen you are.”
“Hey Jamal,” a voice called from the background.
“Sorry mom, I gotta go. We are preparing to go on a backpacking trip where we can do some serious star gazing. It’s gonna be the coolest.”
I barely had a chance to say goodbye before he hung up.
