Feels Like Falling - Kristy Woodson Harvey Page 0,60
with Dad and Brooke?”
He shrugged. “Nah. Brooke’s cool. Dad too.”
In the land of eight-year-old boys, that was a pretty deep talk. I would take it.
“All right, cutie. You know Dad and I both love you more than anything in the world, right?”
He smiled. “I know, Mom.” Then he said, “I’ll be down as soon as I finish putting this stuff up,” gesturing to postcards and trinkets he’d collected from the trip.
That meant: Get the hell out of my room, old woman.
I smiled. In the doorway, I turned to look at him another moment, my baby who was growing up so fast. That familiar fear, that terror at the thought of losing him, rushed through me. I thought of my mom again, of her joy over having another boy in the family, as though Wagner were going to be the reincarnated soul of my brother, Steven.
As I walked downstairs, I felt my phone buzz in my hand. Does Wagner by chance go to bed at six?
I smiled. And I realized that I was really looking forward to that good night kiss.
diana: cliché for a reason
The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. It’s a cliché because it’s the truest damn thing of all time. Doesn’t matter if he’s five days or five years or a hundred and five years, a man will love you more if you can feed him well.
I knew that Wagner probably wasn’t going to be all too thrilled about some strange woman taking up residence in his guesthouse, so the importance of this dinner wasn’t lost on me.
“Did Mom tell you that fried chicken is my favorite?” Wagner asked.
He startled me. I guess I hadn’t expected him to walk right up without his mom and start chatting with me.
“She might have,” I said.
“My grandma’s fried chicken was the best in the whole world.”
He was wrong, but I didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot.
“Well,” I said, “no chicken can replace your grandma’s chicken. But sometimes when we can’t have the real thing, something kind of like it will do.”
At that, my mind wandered to Frank. I’d sure as hell spent the better part of a lifetime convincing myself that whoever I was with at the time was as good or better. As I looked down at today’s TJ’s Salvage Yard T-shirt, I remembered the time that TJ had left me at the bar without telling me because he’d won fifty bucks on a scratch-off and went down to the gas station to turn it in. He ran into his buddy Sammy, and they’d bought beer with the winnings, gotten drunk down by the pier, and forgotten all about me. I’d had to thumb home.
At the time, I was just looking to fill that huge, Frank-size hole in my heart with anyone and everyone. But I was old enough now that I’d accepted that some wounds just don’t heal, never ever in your whole life. Same as Wagner was never going to taste chicken like his grandma’s again, I’d never love like I’d loved Frank, no matter how many T-shirts I had to prove I’d tried. That love I had for Frank was infinite. Even when both of us were gone, it’d still be out there floating around in the universe. That part of me couldn’t reason out why I had refused to answer his calls or see him since that night outside the Beach Pub.
But it boiled down to one thing, a thing I didn’t like admitting: I was scared. When you’ve been nothing but left your whole life, it’s what you come to expect. And with Frank, it wasn’t just being scared of what could happen. It was being scared of what could happen again.
But I didn’t say that to the kid, obviously.
“So, kind of like Brooke,” Wagner said matter-of-factly.
“Kind of like Brooke what?” Gray asked, making her way into the kitchen, head wet from the shower.
Wagner shrugged. “Diana’s chicken is kind of like how Brooke is the replacement for you.”
I could tell it was taking all the strength in Gray’s little body not to get persnickety about that, but she did a real good job hiding it.
“Sweetie,” Gray said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I don’t think that’s it at all. I’m me and Brooke’s Brooke and Dad’s Dad, and none of us are chicken. We’ve all made some choices this year that I’m sure have been tough on you.”