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“Sure. I’ll probably be dead by then anyway.” He waved his hand as he poured himself a drink.
“That’s only in six years, Dad,” Michael said. “What’s going to take you out?”
“Probably a heart attack from all that Viagra he takes,” Gloria said, rolling her eyes.
“Mom!” Sean looked horrified.
I fought the urge to give a startled laugh.
“What? You’d think after forty-four years I’d have earned the right to be left alone with a good book at midnight.”
Bud moved over to his wife and kissed her cheek. “Then stop being so damn sexy.”
She waved him off, but she looked pleased.
Unlike Sean, Michael just looked amused, like he appreciated that his parents did still genuinely love each other.
My stomach clenched again. I had the feelings of both horror that I was lying to these people and desire for what they had. Forty-four years. It was astonishing and be
autiful.
“Michael, you might want to invest in the little blue pills yourself,” Bud said. “You are no spring chicken and Felicia is what, a dozen years younger than you? You need to keep her happy.”
Now that made me actually laugh out loud.
It was Michael’s turn to be outraged at his parents. “Wow, thanks, Dad. Way to undersell me.”
Sean was also grinning. “I think it’s a fair point, Mike.”
“Kiss my ass, Sean.”
“I’m actually fourteen years younger than Michael,” I said. “But I have no complaints.” I turned to him and gave him a smile, biting my lower lip. “He makes me very happy.”
I meant it as a flirty innuendo but the minute the words left my lips, they sounded much weightier than I intended.
His eyes narrowed, like he heard it as well. He actually leaned in, gaze locked with mine, filled with lust and something else I couldn’t define. “You make me very happy, too.” He gave me a soft kiss. “I do have one complaint though,” he murmured in my ear.
I knew what he meant. My no-sex rule.
I was already rethinking the damn rule. But it was the smart thing to do.
Bud uncorked the anniversary wine. He poured glasses for everyone and passed them around. He raised his glass. “To Michael and Felicia. May your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow.”
Touched, I raised my glass to that and took a small sip.
“And to our wives and girlfriends,” Bud continued. “May they never meet.”
It took me a full ten seconds to get the joke. Michael was groaning. Gloria was glaring. Sean eye rolling.
But when it sank in finally, I let out a laugh because thank God for a good old Irish Dad joke when you were feeling like a hideous imposter.
* * *
“Where is Michael?” Leah asked me as she stood in the doorway of her old bedroom, shoving a box out of the way. “I really wanted to meet him.”
I pushed my hair back and eyed the room to make sure everything was properly packed and ready for the movers who were arriving in just a few minutes. “He had a surgery he didn’t want to reschedule. I can’t deny some poor old woman a new hip. Besides, he paid for the movers and he would just be underfoot here. As you know, this isn’t the biggest space. We can’t take many more bodies.”
It felt very bizarre to be leaving what had been my home and office for the last three years. Though I would be back tomorrow to work. That made it less unnerving and sad.
