“Mom, Dad, this is Stone,” Payden said as soon as we reached them, eager to get the introductions out of the way. “And Stone, these are my parents, Callen and Elise…oof.”
He was immediately folded into a hug, not that he let go of my hand so I could shuffle so much as an inch away from his side while she clung to him before she stepped back to study his face.
“Well, you certainly look happier than when you left, and he looks tamer than he did in all the videos I saw of him up on stage,” his mother declared before finally letting him go and turning to face me. “And bigger too.”
“Um, it’s nice to meet you, ma’am,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck and feeling my face heat up. “Those videos are from years ago. Sorry you had to see all of that.”
“All of what?” she asked, lips twitching like she was fighting back a smile, then she tsked and glanced up at her husband. “The strutting, the cocky smirk, or that teasing wink when you signaled out someone in the crowd? Please, after some of theshows we went to when we were younger than Payden is now, I was almost disappointed until I saw your stage dives. Now those were impressive.”
“Umm, thanks?” I said, completely thrown off guard now.
“No, thank you,” she said, before hugging me so tight that for a moment, I did fear a bit of fluff and stuffing was going to come tumbling out of my ear. “You brought him home looking way happier than when he left, and you didn’t let him spend his whole vacation brooding over a weasel who didn’t deserve him.”
Then she lowered her voice, and the next words she spoke sent a shiver down my spine.
“You make sure to keep it there too, or you won’t like the mama bear who shows up on your doorstep, because I guarantee it will be claws, not hugs, I greet you with.”
Oh shit.
That was a shovel talk, wasn’t it? Or did I have to wait for the threat to involve actually putting me in the ground? When she let go, a shadow loomed over me, and I had just enough time to get my hand out to shake his father’s before appearing rude. His lips were smiling, but his eyes said to take whatever his wife had just threatened me with and multiply it by levels of pain that would rival mistiming one of those stage dives she’d just brought up.
Yeah, fucking this up was not an option.
“It’s nice to meet you too, sir,” I said, shaking his hand firmly.
“It's such a beautiful day out that we thought we’d eat on the deck while we got to know one another,” Elise said. “I’m afraid I might have overdone it a bit, but we’ve been eager to hear about Payden’s first train ride. It was all he could talk about before he left, and our brief phone calls weren’t enough to fill in the details.”
She shot him a pointed look when she said it, and he grinned and got that sassy look on his face I was coming to know rather well.
“Sorry, Mom,” he declared, which I knew really meant sorry not sorry. “There were so many activities that by the time we’d finished fitting as many into our day as we possibly could, I was worn out and ready to fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.”
“Uh-huh, save it, mister, and get your butt inside,” she tsked, shaking her head at him.
Yet the smile never left her face, like she was not only used to his antics but also fond of them and missed them when he wasn’t around being his exuberant self. Was that what a parent’s love looked like? If so, then it was easy to see why he was close to them.
“Whoa, is this all of you?” I asked Payden as we stepped inside a foyer lined with photographs.
I hoped we weren’t in a rush to get to the meal, because I couldn't take my eyes off what I saw proudly displayed there.
In one image, Payden stood in a leaf pile, a stick held aloft in his hand, pointed at a nearby tree like he was commanding the rest of the leaves to come down and join their friends on the ground. In another, he sat in a bright green plastic VW Bug with stickers all over it, gripping the wheel, the slight blur around his feet suggesting he’d been making it move as fast as possible. In another, just his tiny head and face peeked out from beneath the blankets as he lay tucked under his castle bed, the blankets twisted up and dangling over the side, like he’d crawled out of it and decided to sleep in the moat.
“Pretty much,” Payden admitted.
He had a hold of my hand again.
“Some of them are me and my cousins.”
“What in the world?” I asked, cocking my head to look at one of Payden’s arms windmilling, a bag with what looked to be half a loaf of bread in one hand, and a sliver of bread in the other, running, “Are you being chased by a goose?”
“They’re evil!” he declared, scrunching up his nose. “Do you know that they hiss as well as honk? Because I didn’t until it started hissing before it chased me!”
“It probably wanted the bread,” I remarked.
“Oh, it did,” Callen said. “But Payden wouldn’t hand it over. He insisted that it was only for the ducks, since they were smaller and he felt like the geese were picking on them.”
“How’d the chase turn out?” I asked.
His father chuckled, and there was that same fond look again as he shifted his gaze to Payden. “After he ran around screeching like a banshee, collecting more geese along the way, he made a beeline for his mom, which is how I wound up with this shot right here.”
