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With a smile, she points to his room, and as quietly as possible, I set my gear by the door and head straight for him. The door’s open, but his back is to me, headphones too large for his head covering his ears. He’s on his iPad, and when I come close enough, I can see he’s on YouTube, watching videos of me. My heart dips in my chest, but just as quickly, it rises, swells, beats to the rhythm of whatever pride he must still hold that I’m his dad, and that he’s my son, and there’s a bond that no amount of time spent apart could ever diminish.
I tap his shoulder and step back when he turns around, his eyes wide and smile all-consuming. “Daddy. I didn’t know you was here!” he yells, ripping his headphones off his head as he stands. He jumps the few steps separating us and lands right in my arms, and for a second, he’s just like the kid I left behind on the first trip I made without him—three years old and needing me as much as I needed him.
I don’t exactly know why I get the sudden urge to cry, or why his laughter makes that urge stronger, but I miss him. I hadn’t realized how much I’ve missed him until this exact moment. Maybe it was the threat of another man taking my place in his life, like Mom had said, or maybe I just missed being Josh, the dad, and not J-Ward, the skater.
Whatever it is, it’s not really relevant anymore.
“Are you leaving again soon like last time?” he says, pulling back so he can hold my head in his hands, his palms pressing into my cheeks.
I shake my head. “No, bud.”
He reveals his perfect teeth behind his grin. “Remember last time, you said we would build a fort. Ma’am said you could. In her yard! Remember that? Like last time?” He shouts every word, each one with more excitement than the last.
“Yeah, I remember that,” I say, placing him back on the floor. I settle my hands on my knees and bend down so we’re eye to eye. “You think we should do it?”
Tommy taps his chin with his finger. “How long would it take?”
“A few days. Two if we get Uncle Rob to help.”
Tommy frowns. “And if we don’t get Uncle Rob to help and it’s just you and me, maybe it would take one whole entire week. Like, a infinity of one minutes! And then you don’t has to go to work for a whole infinity.”
“Just you and me?” I ask.
“Yeah. Like last time!”
* * *
It takes a week to build a fort, which, technically, I could’ve built in a day. But Tommy and I took our time planning the build, talking about it, gathering the supplies, and on the fourth day, we finally got to building it, just him and me, like he wanted… like I didn’t know I needed. I’d missed so much in my absence that spending that time with him was like re-getting to know him. The more I looked at him, spoke to him, watched him from afar, the clearer it became that he was getting to be more like me. When I told Becca about it on one of our late-night chats, she mentioned that she thought the same thing, and that maybe it was his way of trying to be close to me, or maybe his way of trying to get my attention, my approval, something I never want my son to be searching for. Still, it made sense, and that just made it harder for me to think about my future plans and my stupidly hectic schedule—a schedule that would keep us apart. So the night before I was meant to leave, I told Chris I wanted out. He told me I was stupid. I was. But, he did offer to go through my schedule and cut back where he could. Summer was the busiest time for us, and he couldn’t do much with what I had going, but after the summer, he’d look at cutting back. He offered twenty percent, I said seventy. He said I had sponsors and relationships to maintain—ones that had been with me from the beginning, and it would be unfair to disappear off the face of the earth. A valid point. We negotiated and ended up on fifty.
So with that knowledge, I spent the final night sleeping under the stars of a newly built fort in a two-person sleeping bag with my son. “Did you know My Becca was home?” he says, turning to his side, his hands clasped together beneath his cheek.
I match his position and face him. “I did know that. Did you have fun with her?”
He nods, his eyes wide.
“And how was Ma’am?”
“She was good. She kept thinking I was you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Her and Becca stole a bunch of your shoes.”
“They what?”
He cackles with laughter, making me do the same. Once he’s settled, he grabs the flashlight from beside him, switches it on, and aims it at the ceiling. “Daddy, look,” he whispers, pointing up. “It looks like a boobie.”
