AllFreeNovel
Share Us
After a ten-minute video…chat…with Mo, I made my way back downstairs only to see the girls were packing up the game.
“What the hell?”
Avery lifted a brow in my direction. “We weren’t sure you were coming back. We were bored anyway.”
“Sorry, Ports,” Teagh said, grinning. She wasn’t story at all.
“Kids!” came Mom’s voice from the kitchen. “Jonny’s on Skype.”
Like he was the freaking President or something, everyone gathered in the kitchen around the table where Dad set up his laptop and Jonny’s mug filled the screen. He was sitting on a sunny deck somewhere, somewhere bright and warm it looked, with the glass door of a room behind him.
“What happened to your hair, dude?” I asked, squeezing between McKenna and Mom to get a better look at him. His curls were gone. Hell, his hair was gone. What once was a curly mop on his head was now shorn closely to his head.
He grinned crookedly, shrugging. “Time to look more like a grown up,” he answered.
“It looks good, Jon Jon,” Myke said, pulling on my shoulder so I could stand in the back. “Tall kids in the back.”
“Look at you, somewhere nice and warm this Christmas,” Mom said with a tease in her voice when really, everyone knew Mom was actually hurt. This was the second Christmas Jonny missed since marrying Jenna—two years ago.
Jonny chuckled lightly. “Yeah, well.” He shrugged to the camera. “I miss you guys. Well, maybe not you, Cael. I see your ugly mug too much.”
“I love this ugly mug,” Sydney said, and I could see in the monitor as she took Caleb’s face and pulled him down to her, kissing him soundly on the lips.
“Where’s Jenna at, Jon Jon?” McKenna asked, leaning into the computer. “We’d like to wish her a Merry Christmas too.”
Avery pulled her shoulder back so everyone could see the monitor.
“She and her mom went out.” Jonny shook his head and grinned. “I needed the break anyway.”
We talked with Jon Jon for another twenty minutes before the sliding door behind him opened. He glanced over his shoulder and whispered something. We couldn’t see the person’s face, but it was no doubt Jenna. The whispered conversation held a slightly heated tone to it, which had almost every one of us in faraway Wisconsin shifting in our spots.
Jonny turned back to the camera and grinned, but this time it was strained. “Jen’s back. I’m gonna get going. Merry Christmas, guys.”
“We love you, Jonny,” Mom said quietly. Shit, she was going to start crying.
“Love you too.”
“Will we talk to you on your birthday?” Dad asked before Jonny could turn off the conversation. Jonny was one of those lucky kids who was born the day after Christmas.
“We’ll be on a plane, so probably not.”
“Well, happy birthday too, then, son.”
The screen went blank shortly after that and the air in the kitchen was thick.
Caleb eventually broke the silence, stating what we probably all were thinking. “He’s probably paying for that entire fucking vacation. Jenna comes from money, doesn’t work, and expects Jon Jon to hand her everything. I don’t understand what he sees in her.”
“Cael, it’s not the time,” Dad said, shaking his head.
“It’s Christmas. I’m sure Jenna has her reasons,” Mom added.
Everyone disliked Jenna, yet Mom and Dad still found ways to stick up for her. I honestly thought that Jonny stuck around with her because she was the first girl to give him head, but I didn’t know that for a fact.
“Next Christmas he’ll be home,” Mom said with a smile. “He told me the other day.”
“That’s what he said about this Christmas, too,” McKenna pointed out.
Mom’s smile was strained as she stood from the table. “Next Christmas he’ll be home.” No one bothered to correct her as she left the room, Dad quietly behind her.
