“Take a breath,” I said, shaking my head.
“I’ve had a few of those,” he shot back.
“Mmm, try a few more, deep ones. I’m told they help.”
“And what helps with people getting on your nerves?”
“Mmm, a stiff drink,” I said, eyeing the one on my desk and turning back toward the window. I raised my brow when I saw one of our guests, Cade, give Reggie a hug that probably crushed a few organs, then pick him up and swing him around. Reggie, who had never really been worried about a sense of propriety or dignity, was still red in the face as he was put down. He shooed Cade off while another of the guests laughed and followed close behind Cade. That one I recognized as Clay, who, according to Reggie, was not shy about working his way sexually through whatever guests were interested. “Can’t say I’d advise that at the moment.”
“You know I don’t drink,” he said in a perfect approximation of his mother’s slightly haughty, indignant tone. If it wasn’t for the rumble of his voice, I might have thought I was talking to her.
“Stop mocking your mother,” I told him, but I knew he could hear the smile in my voice as I tried my best to be a responsible father.
“You don’t even like her,” he muttered so low that I wouldn’t have heard him if I had been anywhere but the quiet of my office.
“I think you’re old enough to know the difference between disliking someone and simply not liking them,” I said. He was old enough that I could at least confirm that no, I would never be a fan of Charlene.
That stopped the day I discovered she’d been cheating on me for years and had been having a six-month affair with someone half our age at her office. Our marriage had already felt like two strangers who sometimes liked each other and sometimes couldn’t stand the sight of one another, but mostly just existed side by side. Jude was an only child, and it had put me in a difficult position, at first anyway. Originally, I had been worried about what I was going to do and how best to handle it, but in the end, the answer was simple. Not easy, but simple.
After thinking it through and deciding there was only one way to proceed, I had drawn up the papers for the divorce, along with the evidence to prove she had been unfaithful. Not that I had used it in court. I had compiled it because I knew it would keep Charlene from fighting me too hard in court and be willing to come to the table with a little more patience and caution when it came to the custody proceedings. If there was one thing I had learned about her over the years, it was that the only way to ensure Charlene would behave reasonably was to flash the bigger weapon but allow her to maneuver; nothing was worse than an injuredandcornered Charlene.
The part I thought would be the hardest was explaining it to Jude without stating the catalyst. It was the part I had been fearing most; he wasn’t stupid, and although he was a lot more verbal as a teenager than he’d been as a child, he had always been observant as hell. It turned out that all my worrying had been for nothing; he had apparently been expecting it and admitted to being relieved it was finally happening. Even now I didn’t know how to feel that my own son had been eagerly awaiting our divorce, but at least it spared me from telling him what his mother had done to bring it about. There were some things children didn’t need to learn about their parents.
“I mean, yeah,” he said with a huff. “But I’m old enough to know you guys only play nice because of me.”
“Is that so?” I wondered, glancing at the phone curiously. “I can’t recall a time when either of us has openly shown any dislike toward each other. And I have never spoken ill of her around you.”
Now, whether she had shown the same courtesy to me was still a mystery.
“It’s just the way you guys are,” and I could picture the lazy shrug, his attempt at pretending to be disinterested, but while he could be quiet and thoughtful, he could never manage aloof.It was my fondest hope that he never mastered it; I was fond of the somewhat quiet boy who hadn’t learned how to hide his earnest heart. He wasn’t so sensitive that I worried about him navigating the world when he left for college next year. Charlene was worried, but with Jude, she had always worried. It had been easy to point out once that if she’d taken half the energy she’d burned raising Jude and put it into our relationship, we might have made it, and Jude would still have been the great kid he turned out to be.
But I guess it was hard to blame a mother, even an overly enthusiastic to the point of being overbearing one, for putting so much into her only child.
“The way we are,” I repeated, raising a brow. “And how long have you been thinking that?”
He snorted. “Dad, c’mon, this isn’t like…this isn’t a reason to have aconversation, okay? I’m old enough to know my parents don’t like each other without needing to be sat down and talked to, alright?”
“Alright,” I said quietly, smiling to myself. “I’ll hold off on finding you a therapist for at least another month.”
“Ha ha, very funny.”
“I suppose I should probably talk to your mother about it, though, as she sees you more than I?—”
“That’s not funny. That’sreallynot funny.”
“I thought it was pretty funny,” I said with a grin.
“That’s because you have a sick sense of humor,” he grumbled. “God, I don’t even wanna think about what she would be like if you said something to her. I’d never get any peace…not that I do now.”
“You know she worries about you,” I said, but I could sympathize with him. Charlene could be…a lot when she had a target locked in, and it wasn’t hard for her to lock in on Jude. I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t a couple of texts on hisphone right now from her, and if he didn’t respond within the next fifteen minutes, our call would be interrupted by her. She meant well, and she worried about him, but she was also having a hard time understanding that he was nearly an adult and if she wasn’t careful, she might watch our son disappear from her life and her attention for a few years after he escaped to college.
A college on the other side of the country from her, no less, so it might be smart for her to play it safer with him.
“I don’t like how quiet you just got,” Jude said, and I realized I could no longer hear him typing away at the computer, which meant his full attention was on me.
“I was thinking,” I told him as the last of the men filed onto the buses and Reggie stood there, waving at them. I couldn’t see his face, but I was sure he had a goofy grin as he waved with more enthusiasm than most of the men usually saw. He would hold that smile until they were out of sight and then when he was sure no one could see him, he would let out a little sigh, sad to see them go yet preparing for the next couple of weeks as we went through our off season.
“I hate when you say that,” he said with a sigh. “Or when Mom says, ‘I had an idea’. Either makes me nervous.”
