Page 10 of My Big Fat Shifter Wedding

“Your answer to my question sounds like more of a question than my actual question.”

“If you say question one more time, it’ll stop sounding like a word.”

“And if it stops sounding like a word, does that make it easier for you to dodge the question or...?”

I shrugged, which wasn’t exactly the most grown-up thing to do. For all that I adored my mother, sometimes she saw through me a little too easily. “I’m just not sure.”

“I understand, dear, I do. You and I have been fighting for so long to get ahead, and now that we’re finally comfortable, it feels a bit like being in freefall, doesn’t it?”

I closed my eyes and let out the tiniest of breaths. Of course my mom had figured out how to express my complicated feelings so easily. “Yeah. It feels petulant to complain when we’re fairly well off compared to a lot of other people now. Like, oh no, poor me. What a tragedy.”

“I know, I know,” she said. “Sometimes I look around at this fancy place here, and all the wonderful things I’m getting to do, and it’s hard to believe there was a time where we had a rotation of which food banks to visit and would wear multiple layers instead of turning on the heat because we couldn’t afford the bill.”

“We’ve come a long way,” I agreed.

It wasn’t that we were rich now, but the house had been paid off a while ago, saving us any sort of mortgage payment, and my carpentry business had gone from barely making ends meet by flipping damaged or old furniture finds from Facebook Marketplace to building one-of-a-kind pieces that could cost anywhere from a couple thousand all the way up to sixty thousand. Certainly nothing to sneeze at, that was for sure. That, combined with my mother’s retirement, had given us a kind of financial freedom neither of us had ever experienced before.

“We certainly have. But while I’m in the twilight of my life, I want you to remember that you are in the prime of your life. I know it took us some time to get here, but I really wanna make sure you’re being your own person, okay? Will you make an honest effort, and I mean a really honest effort, to do that for me?”

I nodded. Because even if I felt a bit lost, even if I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do now that all my energy wasn’t dedicated to trying to get by, if my mother asked for something, I would make sure that it happened. After all, she’d spent her life fighting to be the best parent she could for me, the least I could do was be the best son she could ever ask for.

“I will, Mom, I promise.”

“That’s my boy. Now what do you say we blow off this painting lesson and see if we can take one of the outdoor motorized wheelchairs and go off-roading with it?”

I cackled, because how couldn’t I when my mother was getting up to her mischief? “Whatever you want, I’ll make it happen.”

I meant that to the very bottom of my soul.

***

My mind was full as I shut the door of my house behind me, the space feeling empty without my mother even though she’d moved out over a year ago. The house wasn’t huge, but with four bedrooms—one of which I’d converted into a sort of office—it was a lot of space for one person. How had I never noticed that before?

Probably for the same reason I’d never made the time to have a serious relationship. I’d always told myself I was too busy, or when the right one came along I would know it, but that had never happened. I’d had flings and entanglements, but nothing went beyond friends with benefits, and even the friends part was dubious.

How had so much of life passed me by? I knew my mother believed she’d relied on me too much as a single parent and that it had stunted a bit of my independence, but I didn’t know whether I believed that. Yes, we were close, and maybe I had to worry about bills and her health more than the average kid, but I wasn’t the way I was because of her. If anything, I was so much better because of her.

“Maybe I’m just inherently a fuck up,” I groused to the empty space, and even though I knew it wasn’t technically possible, it felt like the room and hallways echoed the phrase back at me.

Fuck up… fuck up… you’re a fuck up.

“Okay, I didn’t even use the word ‘you’,” I argued to nothing. And in turn, nothing replied. “Whatever.”

I was in a mood, and when I was in a mood, the best thing was to do something with my hands. Luckily, I’d been working on a project ever since my mother brought up the idea of moving out.

It was nothing special, no grand staircase or false wall, but rather a simple canoe. Just a canoe. Granted, any boatswain worth their salt knew that no well-made watercraft was just a canoe, but it was what it was. Working on it helped me calm my mind and center myself, which I needed. Even if, like my mother’s abuse of the word ‘question’ before, it was beginning to sound less and less like a real word.

“Canoeeeee,” I drawled, because who was there to stop me? If I didn’t make noise or talk to myself, I would live largely in silence. Which wasn’t the worst thing, but also not what I wanted right now.

If I was being entirely honest with my nearly forty-year-old self, I was a bit embarrassed that my mom was flourishing in her new environment, that she’d become a queen bee, and I was… stagnant.

No partner, no children, nothing like that. A flourishing career, yes, and a house, yes, but there was more to life than that. There had to be. Things like patching up scraped knees and comforting a loved one after a bad day. Eating a warm meal together. Reading bedtime stories.

Was there something wrong with me that it had taken me this long to feel like I might want that in my life? Was it too late for me?

Ugh, these thoughts were not helping to settle my mind. So, instead of talking to myself, I turned my music on full blast and let my body work on my project. It was a temporary escape, but one I desperately needed.

I kept myself busy until dinner, and after that I went to the gym. I was spotty with hitting my workouts, as I was with anything outside of the home.