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I'm lying on Milly’s couch where I fell asleep after the doctor left. He said Milly has the flu. He gave her an antiviral and wrote a prescription for a dose I needed to pick up today so she could start the ten-day course.
She was sleeping. I couldn’t leave until I knew she was well enough to look after herself. I’d forgotten about her son and seeing him looking down at me, with a face so much like his mother’s, is disconcerting.
“Hello,” I say cautiously, not sure whether his smile is a prelude to a meltdown over finding a stranger on his couch.
“I’m a friend of your mother’s,” I continue as I sit up all the way. I wince inwardly at the lie. I'm hardly her friend, but I can’t explain to a kid how I’m in love with his mother and she’s not speaking to me, but I plan to win her back.
“Yeah, I know.” He frowns and then climbs up to sit next to me on the couch. He looks at me with avid curiosity.
“You look like you do in your picture.” My head jerks back a little. I'm well known in the talent world and appear on trade magazine covers. Hell, Esquire did a feature on me when I was named CEO, but he couldn’t have seen it. So I ask him, without any guile, “What picture?”
As soon as the words leave my lips, his face falls and his shoulders sag.
“I wasn’t supposed to say anything. I’m not supposed to look in that drawer.” He falls in to a full-blown pout, and I decide my curiosity is less important than making sure I don’t have to deal with a crying kid.
“I’ll pretend you didn’t say anything, okay?” I pat his shoulder awkwardly, but my proposal appears to do the trick. He perks up immediately and says, “Okay! Can we watch cartoons now?”
“Do you normally watch cartoons on Saturday morning?” I glance at my watch and find it’s just turned 7:00 a.m. Why is this kid even awake?
“Yes. I watch them while Mommy makes breakfast. She's still sleeping, though. Are you going to make me breakfast?”
I blink. I can cook a little, but cooking in Milly’s house, in Milly’s kitchen with Milly’s son, seems like an impossible task.
I'm not quite sure how old this little guy is, but I know he can’t cook himself anything. So, I stand up with a smile on my face. “Sure, what do you normally eat?”
He stands up, grabs three of my fingers in his small hand and leads me toward the kitchen.
“Come on, I’ll show you,” he says as he pulls me behind him.
11
* * *
I’ve fallen into a nice routine over the last three days. Milly has been sleeping a lot and only really wakes up to take her meds. The doctor said to expect her to be groggy when she wakes up. I think delirious is a more apt description of Milly when she's awake. This virus has laid her flat, and I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn’t come by.
Anthony, it turns out, is excellent company. He’s also very protective of his mother. On Saturday, after I made him breakfast, I thought things were going well with us. We ate in companionable silence, and when I was getting up to put our dishes in the sink, he dropped his little kid sized bomb.
“If you want to be my friend, you have to make my mommy happy first. You can’t make her cry.”
I stopped dead in my tracks, my hands full of dirty breakfast dishes and turned back toward the table.
His face was set in a stern expression that gave me a glimpse of what he’ll look like when he’s older. He looks a lot like Milly’s dad except his hair and eyes are both dark brown.
“Well, little man,” I begin slowly, unsure how to answer this. “I would never intentionally make anyone cry. And especially not your mom. She’s my best friend.” I try a smile and hope that my answer will cut this conversation short.
He doesn’t smile back. He just studies me with an awareness that belies his age.
“If she's your best friend, where have you been all this time?” he asks me, his eyes never leaving mine.
I exhale a big breath, sit back down, and close my eyes for a moment as I try to gather my thoughts.
“Well, friends don’t always have to see each other. I lived in a different city, a different state, so I wasn’t always able to be here for your mom.”
I don’t think he understands everything that happened with his grandfather, and that’s a can of worms I don’t think is my place to open with him. So, I tell him the closest thing to the truth I know.
“I’ve known your mother a long time. I have always been her friend and she has always been mine, even though we didn’t see each other. But, now, I’ll be around, as long as it makes your mom happy.”
