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By the time we arrived back at my dad’s, I didn’t have a clue what he’d bought. He’d shooed me away and forced me to cover my eyes the one time I entered the kitchen. Treating me the same as when Aiden and I played peekaboo.
I could hear my two guys having the best time while I was forced to stay in the living room. Anarchy!
Wait—
Mytwoguys? The weight of this hits me like a ton of bricks. Slamming as loud as the pans clashing around in the other room. The force knocks, panging as it pushes into my stomach.
With shaky legs that I force to be strong, I enter the kitchen. Words I know that are ready, fresh on Finn’s tongue, never get the chance to escape because I already have Aiden in my arms and am carrying him back to the living room with me.
Aiden shoots me a disapproving glare, his time banging the pots on the floor coming to an end, but I ignore that too.
The shaking hasn’t stopped, not even as I grip him. I can’t have it from the one person who, at times, seems to understand me better than I understand myself. The one only a room away…
Another ripple of shock waves hits me. What is going on?
“Hey, I’m heading out. I’m meeting up with Megan,” Dad says, peeking his head around the wall of the kitchen where I started cleaning up dinner.
He ended up making a vegetable pesto pasta. The sauce was fresh from the ingredients he’d picked out. Finn added grilled zucchini, corn, and some tomatoes to give it more texture. His description.
I listened, fascinated, as he described everything. I had no clue he was such a wizard in the kitchen.
“Alright, catch you later,” I say, waving him off with the rag I’d been using to dry off the plate.
After I’d forced myself to calm down and just enjoy the moment, things became easier. The three of us enjoyed dinner. Aiden even finished his meal.
“Don’t wait up,” Dad finishes with a wink, and I throw up in my mouth.
Gross.
We’re all adults, but that’s my dad, and it’s…weird.
I have zero interest in knowing the ins and outs of his sex life. I am, however, grateful he’s being more forthcoming about who he’s seeing. And shocking enough, it’s been more effortless of a process than I expected. The idea no longer burdens me as heavily.
I’ve even been the one to bring her up in conversation. The strain on my father’s shoulders loosened, relaxing after I asked the first time. I hadn’t realized how much he was weighed down by this.
They met after she needed a realtor, looking to downsize after her youngest child went off to college. She has two boys of her own and is a single parent. After selling her the house, he’d asked her out for coffee, and the rest is history, according to him.
He seems happy and it’s refreshing to see an added bounce to his step that I hadn’t taken the time to understand until recently. It’d been missing for a while, possibly even the last few years of my parents’ marriage.
Grabbing another plate, I begin to dry it off.
How blind had I been? Had I only been seeing a mirage, a smoke screen shielding me from what was really happening between them? Am I the one who needs to wake up?
With how often Dad’s gone, it’s made me think things are more serious than I assumed. A part of me wonders if he’ll ever introduce me to her and a bigger part hopes he does someday.
My hand stalls on the plate, startled a second time tonight by my own thoughts. Is this something I’d be okay with?
…I think I would be.
That thought is not as unsettling as it should be.
Has mom moved on too? Am I the only one still wandering around in an abyss, looking for the way out? Has everyone moved past something that still sits so fresh in my mind?
“Here, I’ve got one more,” Finn drawls, pulling me from my thoughts as he sets down Aiden’s sippy cup. “He went out like a light.” Joking, he reaches around me to start to put the dried plates away.
I laugh, but it has no foundation.
“Was your dad heading out?” Finn asks, trying to make conversation, unaware of the war plaguing my mind.
