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“Well, we’ve actually decided to becomemorethan friends.”
“Like you and Auntie Jo?” he asked, tilting his head at me. “She’s more than your friend.”
I chuckled. “No, buddy. Auntie Jo is more than my friend because she’s mysister. This is more like … Grandma and Grandpa. They’re more than friends.”
He took a bite of his cereal and chewed, a little crease forming between his brow. “So, like, you guys are married now?”
“No.” Hope stirred in my chest at the thought of that. I wanted it to be true. “Not yet, but it’s the same kind of thing. Like, we love each other the same way Grandma and Grandpa love each other, and someday, yeah, I want us to be married.”
There was no sense in making it seem less serious than it was. Obviously, if we’d really been only a couple months into a new relationship, I wouldn’t take this talk in the marriage direction. But the fact was what Layla and I had was real, regardless of our plan to treat it like it was new.
“But my friends haveparentswho are married.”
My chin dipped slowly. “Yes, that’s true.”
“And you said some kids have parents who are married and some don’t.”
“Also true.”
“So, then, I’d be a kid who had parents who were married, but she’s not my mom. My mom passed away.”
Pain sliced through me at the truth of that, and how bluntly he’d worded it. It was probably a good sign; like he was probably decently adjusted to it after living half his life without her. But still, it hurt me on his behalf.
But again, I simply nodded. “That’s true, too. Layla’s not your mom. But if we got married, she’d belikea mom to you. She’d do all the mom stuff your friends’ moms do.”
I sat back in my chair, trying hard to keep my face even and my breathing normal. Why hadn’t it occurred to me that telling Grayson I was dating Layla would turn into this? I mean,Iknew the implications of us dating and what it meant for him, but his meaningful questions and the depth of his thinking caught me off guard. I felt like a moron.
“Would I call her Mom?” he asked.
I shrugged, playing it off like it wasn’t an insanely intense question. Like it wasn’t yet another thing I hadn’t thought about. “You don’t have to worry about that right away, Gray. If you want to call her Mom someday, I’m sure she’d love that, but if you’d rather keep calling her Layla, that’s fine, too. But hey, listen, the original question was whether or not you’re cool with her coming with us to shop for costumes today. We can just start there, you know?”
“Oh. Yeah, she can come with us.” He lifted a shoulder and took another bite, then his eyes brightened, and he sat up straighter. “Bryce’s mom and dad are dressing up with him for Halloween. He’s going to be Buzz Lightyear and his parents are going to be Woody and Jessie. Can we do that?”
All of the air left my lungs in a rush, and I gave him a shaky smile. “Uh, I don’t know, I guess we’ll have to ask Layla.”
I’d never dressed up with him for Halloween before. Not because I was too cool or anything, it just hadn’t come up. Jo and I had taken Gray trick-or-treating in the military housing neighborhood we lived in before, but picturing doing it here, with Layla … all of us dressed up like a family … well, it had my pulse racing. Telling Grayson about Layla had taken us from zero to sixty in two seconds flat. I knew I was ready for it, but I really hoped she was, too.
