something your father would say.”
“Oh no, what did he say?” Peter appeared from out of nowhere behind Jackson.
I stood up from my crouching position. After Peter and I broke up, I wouldn’t have guessed we would ever be standing in front of each other having a conversation again. As familiar as it was, it also felt like we were meeting each other for the first time.
“He’s just telling me how boring my job is,” I answered him, clearing my throat.
“Yeah, that checks out as being something my son would say,” he acknowledged.
“See,” I tousled Jackson’s hair, “like father, like son.”
He giggled. “Are you leaving again?”
I nodded. “I was only in town for a little bit this time to attend your grandpa’s funeral and to discuss Elle’s book edits with her.”
“Aunt Elle wrote a book?”
“No, she wrote a masterpiece, and I drew some pretty cool pictures for it.”
“Okay, your job doesn’t sound so boring now.”
“Jackson,” Amanda called from across the parking lot, waving for her son to come to her.
Jackson turned to make his way to his mother, but every so often, he would turn to look back at me, clearly wanting to say something. Finally, when he was roughly twenty feet away, he turned back around to ask me the question that obviously had been eating away at him. “Will we see you again soon?”
I didn’t know how to answer him. While a part of me wanted to say “Of course, buddy,” another part of me knew our run-ins would grow scarcer as the months ticked away. After the wedding, the odds of me ever spending any time with Jackson again were slim to none. Nonetheless, I produced a sugar-coated response that should appease him for now. “Of course, you’ll see me again soon. I’m Aunt Elle’s maid of honor in her wedding. The wedding where you’re the ring bearer, remember?”
“Oh yeah, right,” he replied, conking himself over the head with the palm of his hand. “Duh, Jackson.”
“Yup, clearly your son.” I waved good-bye to him, watching him run the rest of the way to his mother.
“It means a lot to me that you came today.”
I looked up to Peter’s tired face, my heart beating a touch more. “Your father was a great man. I’m just sorry you and your family have to go through this.”
He nodded, his eyes tearing up. I’ve never been good at handling emotional situations, especially once the tears began to flow. It’s not because I wasn’t sympathetic, because I was. Seeing Peter and the pain he was in tore my heart in two. I’d been reared by two apathetic individuals, and I was just now in my thirties beginning to shed some of their influence. I held out my arms, taken aback when Peter met my embrace, holding me against him as his body shook. Taking in his familiar scent, I closed my eyes and allowed myself to become lost in him the way I used to what seemed like a lifetime ago. But then I remembered why it was a lifetime ago, and why I’d spent months of my own life in tears.
“You need to take a shower,” I said, pulling myself away from him, “and get some sleep. You look like hell.”
A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. Smiling took an effort for him, like his facial muscles had forgotten how to perform the act. “Only you would rag on someone at their father’s funeral.”
“Some things never change, eh?”
“And they never should.”
I smiled, holding back tears of my own so as not to topple the pillar of indifference I had erected. “I need to go meet Elle to talk about the edits her publisher wants her to make to her book, so I should be going. See you at the wedding?”
He nodded. “See you at the wedding.”
*****
A girly girl I was not, and so spending the afternoon at a salon—not only having my hair done, but my makeup and nails done, too—was not exactly something I woke up eager to do. Yet, here I was. I probably needed to get used to it, as in two short months, I would be spending another day being primped for Elle and Luke’s wedding. After that, I would be able to return to my Plain Jane life, where a face full of makeup was a rarity, and false eyelashes were a Halloween costume.
In a garment bag, hanging in the back of the salon, was the dress I’d purchased from Deidre’s, having taken Phineas’s advice