When his face went hard, I gave him a gentle kick under the table, got his attention and mouthed, “It’s okay. Don’t worry.”
He drew in breath then looked to Mickey. “Uh…Mickey?”
Mickey swallowed and looked to him. “Yeah, bud?”
“I was talking to Joe and, you know, since we both know you’re seeing Mom, we were talking about how cool it was you guys were seeing each other.”
Hallelujah.
I didn’t call out my exultation because my son was not done speaking (and for other reasons as well).
“We were also thinking that maybe, it’s cool if it isn’t okay, but we thought it’d be pretty sweet if we could hang at the firehouse with you one night. Maybe, if you get a call, do a ride along with you.”
Oh God, no.
“First, it’s gotta be cool with your mom,” Mickey told him.
It absolutely was not. Having my guy out on a call was one thing. He was an adult. He was trained. He knew what he was doing.
He still was in danger.
Having him and my son near a blazing inferno?
No way.
“That’d be okay with me,” I chirped.
Mickey studied me, his lips twitched, he knew it wasn’t okay with me but he also knew—for me to give my son indication I knew he was growing into a man—it had to be.
He looked back to Auden. “Then all I gotta do is clear it with the chief, make sure the guys don’t mind, which they won’t, we’ve done it before, and we’ll set it up.”
“Totally cool,” Auden said like it was. Absolutely.
“Just sayin’, buddy,” Mickey started, his voice lower to add weight to his words. “We’d dig you hanging around. But we get a call and you do ride along, you gotta do what you’re told and stay clear. You might be there but only to observe. That gonna be okay with you?”
Auden nodded and he couldn’t quite inject the cool.
He was excited.
“Right, then, you want, you can give me your number and when I talk to the chief and clear it with the guys, we’ll plan,” Mickey offered.
“Okay,” Auden replied.
My phone chirped.
My bag was beside me on the nicked, warped, splinters-assured (though I’d never gotten one) picnic table (this being inside the ramshackle building). So I dug my phone out because we were at Tink’s and nothing was rude at Tink’s.
I glanced at the display and smiled.
I dropped the phone back in my purse to reply later and looked at my kids.
“Uncle Lawrie is coming for Thanksgiving,” I announced.
“Awesome!” Auden said excitedly.
“So cool, Mom,” Pippa agreed then asked, “Mercer and Hart coming?”
As the text said, I’ll be there Thanksgiving. Boys with their mom. That was a no.
“Sorry, honey,” I said as a gentle answer.
“Bummer,” she muttered.
“Pip,” Auden snapped again and with that, my attention became acute on them.
They could bicker. They could also fight.
But mostly, my son had a lot of patience with his little sister. She was a girl. Now she was a teenage girl. She could be flighty. She was admittedly a little spoiled (my doing, but she was also daddy’s little girl so Conrad had a hand in that too).
Mostly, she was sweet and kindhearted and her brother knew it.
This was uncharacteristic and I wondered if he was being the way he was for fear of what Mickey would think of her (when she’d really not said anything that could offend Mickey and further, Mickey was a pretty laidback guy and didn’t give any indication he was easily offended).
“What now?” she snapped back.
“I think we’re good with Uncle Lawr,” he chided. “We haven’t seen him in almost a year and a half.”
“I didn’t say we weren’t good with just him,” she retorted. “It’s just if they all came, we could be us. We could be awesome. And we could show them there’s life after divorce, it isn’t all that bad and eventually everyone could end up happy.”
My hand darted out and curled around Mickey’s thigh as I stared at my baby girl.
We could be us. We could be awesome. And we could show them there’s life after divorce, it isn’t all that bad and eventually everyone could end up happy.
I was about to burst into sloppy tears of joy when Mickey’s hand curled around mine and held it as his thigh.
That gave me the strength to draw in breath and control the tears.
But it didn’t stop me from saying, “I love you, baby girl.”
Olympia’s eyes shot to me, her face went soft, her chin started quivering, then she licked her lips and rolled them together before releasing them to say bashfully, “Love you too, Mom.”