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He giggled. “I’m not.”
“Okay then. We’ll just finish cleaning up, then we’ll see what Ally wants to watch.”
“Anything. I’m not picky.” She was lying on the couch, looking through a gardening book.
“Thor Ragnarök?”
“Again? We only just watched it last week.”
Jesse shrugged. “I like it.”
“I’ve never seen it,” Ally said.
There was no mistaking the shocked horror in Jesse’s eyes. “She HAS to watch it. Can we, please?”
I looked to Ally for her approval.
“Hey, I’m never going to say no to Chris Hemsworth. He’s in it, right?”
“Yup. Well, the people have spoken.Thor Ragnarökit is.”
“Yesss!”
“Pajamas and brush your teeth first, though, so you can go straight to bed after.”
“Okay.”
As we settled on the couch with the lights off and Ally and Jesse snuggled under a soft throw rug, I tried not to think about how awesome it felt. A quiet Saturday night in, with my son and the woman I…
Nope, definitely better not to go there.
Toward the end of the movie, I realized Jesse hadn’t said anything in a while and glanced over. My heart lurched hard at the sight of him, his head on Ally’s shoulder, his glasses half falling off his face. Both of them were fast asleep.
I reached over, carefully pulled his glasses off and set them on the coffee table. When I stood up, gently lifting him into my arms, Ally stirred, opening her eyes and gazing up at me sleepily for a moment before her lips curved in a soft smile. More heart lurches. I pushed the feelings firmly away, adjusting Jesse so his head was on my shoulder. In his sleep, he wrapped his arms around my neck and snuggled in, which made Ally smile even more.
She got to her feet, whispering, “I’m going to make some tea. Do you want some?”
“Sure. I’ll be back in a minute,” I whispered back, turning away before I said something stupid, and carried Jesse from the room. Laying him carefully in bed, I pulled the blanket over his shoulders, rubbed his head and without thinking, said, “I love you, bud.” He muttered something I didn’t catch, burrowing deeper under the blanket, and I left the room.
Back in the living room, the light was still off and Ally was in the kitchen, waiting for the tea kettle to finish boiling. Figuring that she’d left the light off for a reason, I left it like that, sitting on the couch in the dark and resting my feet on the coffee table.
When she’d brought in the tea and settled back under the throw rug, we sat there quietly for a while. I liked it. It didn’t feel remotely uncomfortable or awkward, and she seemed to feel the same.
“Can I ask you something?”
I glanced at her, a slight frown between my brows because there was a strange tone to her voice. “Sure.”
“What happened with Sandra?”
Aha, that explained the tone. “Um, not much, really. Except we made a human together.”
That made her smile ruefully.
“It wasn’t too long after Jake’s car accident, and his recovery had been pretty brutal. The ten-year anniversary of Mom’s passing was also coming up, so I needed to get out of town for a bit. Goldsboro seemed far enough away that I wouldn’t bump into anyone that would want to hang out with me. I could drown my sorrows in endless beers, pass out in a hotel on my own, then come home. It all went according to plan, except for the passing out on my own part.” I stared down into my mug, trying to piece together the chain of events. It was a long time ago, and I’d been really, really drunk.
“Do you think she did it on purpose? Like, did you use protection and the condom broke, or…?”
“I’m pretty sure she said she was on the pill, but to be honest, I don’t one hundred percent recall. I wasn’t there looking to pick up, so I can’t even remember if I had condoms on me. So yeah, she could have done it on purpose, I guess. From Jesse’s birth certificate, I know she’s five years older than me. Maybe, being the other side of thirty, she was hearing the clock tick. Not sure why she didn’t want him after all when he came along.”
