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“It’s okay. Sometimes, we have to say goodbye to our friends.” I hated to break it to him.
“Like Lila,” he said her name with such disgust.
“What did Lila do?” Lila was a cute girl in his class.
“She said she wanted to skate with me and hold hands.”
Once a month the school had a skate night at the local rink, which was more like an eighties museum, complete with strobe lights and old arcade games like PAC-MAN and Donkey Kong.
I giggled at my son. “You hold hands with me when we skate.”
“You’re my mom. I’m not going to hold a girl’s hand. Then she’ll want to kiss me.”
I liked his train of thought. Yep, nip Lila in the bud. “You don’t have to skate with her, but please be nice to her.” Every girl deserved that.
“As long as she doesn’t kiss me.”
“I want you to be even nicer to her if she kisses you. Just don’t kiss her back. Okay?”
“No way.”
That’s what I liked to hear. I snuggled him closer. “I love you, Jameson. You are the very best thing that has ever happened to me.”
“I’ll be your friend,” he responded ever so sweetly, melting my aching heart.
“Thank you. You are my bestest bud.”
“So can I stay up late?” Oh, this kid, always looking for the angle.
“No.” I laughed.
“Aw, man.”
I kissed his head before crawling out of his treehouse bunk bed. He was still upset that I wouldn’t let him sleep on the top bunk. Maybe I was a tad overprotective. I pulled his plaid comforter up and tucked him in, taking a moment to look him over. I silently thanked God for him, before kissing his nose. “Good night. Love you.”
“I love you, Mommy.”
I loved it when he called me Mommy. He rarely did now, so I treasured it even more.
With a partially mended heart, thanks to my son, I turned off his light and headed out to the living room where Izzy had promised me a chick flick and some spiked hot chocolate. Normally we would work after I put Jameson to bed, but after two nights of no sleep, I was going to be lucky if I made it through the movie, Never Been Kissed. It was Izzy’s fave.
Izzy was already set up on the couch, with a big bowl of popcorn and two steaming mugs of hot chocolate. Or maybe hot bourbon. Holy hangover, it smelled like a distillery.
I plopped down next to her. “You realize I have to get up in the morning and take care of a child, right?”
“Of course, which is why the mug on the right is for you. It’s the mommy version. Me, on the other hand.” She grabbed the huge blue mug. “This is the middle-aged I-think-my-boobs-are-starting-to-sag version.”
I snickered. “Your boobs are fine. Totally perky.”
She puffed out her chest. “I’m wearing a push-up bra. You should see them when I take this bad boy off, which I’m totally doing now by the way. The girls need to be set free.”
I grabbed my hot chocolate. “Do what you got to do.” My bra had come off a long time ago. It was the beauty of dressing in oversized sweatshirts half the time.
Izzy went to work under her shirt and pulled her bra out. Or as Jameson called them, breast blankets. Poor kid had seen his fair share of bras, living with two women. Izzy and I tried to be good about teaching him proper names for all body parts. When he was three, he’d asked me if I had a penis too. When I told him I had a vagina, for days he would tell everyone he met that lovely piece of information. Good times.
We settled in on the leather couch, sipping hot chocolate and watching Drew Barrymore make a fool out of herself. It was part of the charm of the movie, as cringey as it was. The part that always got to me, though, was the way she described “the kiss.” The kiss that says you never want to kiss another person. The kiss that makes you so inexplicably happy, yet so afraid it won’t last. I’d had that kiss. And I’d lost it. I wanted to yell at the screen and tell Drew to run off the baseball field. Don’t wait for the kiss. I bet if there were a sequel, you’d find out that Michael Vartan had dumped her. Ugh. I chugged my hot chocolate. Oh, it burned my throat and not because it was hot. I set the mug down on the coffee table. That was definitely not a mommy drink.
Meanwhile, Izzy was going to town on her midlife-boob-crisis drink.
“You might want to slow down there,” I suggested.
“Why? I’m not driving.” She stared down at her chest. “Do you think Jared left me because of my boobs?” she whined.
