Page 109 of How to Kiss a Hawthorne Brother
Oh my heart. This child.“It’s a little more complicated than that,” I say. “A bar is a place where grownups go to get fancy adult drinks. Sometimes they meet other people while they’re there. But it’s not like shopping. It’s more like making friends.Deciding who you like and who you might want to spend more time with.”
He looks up and studies me. “So if you went to a bar, would you meet a stepdad?”
I shrug. “Maybe. But I could also meet someone anywhere. It doesn’t have to be at a bar.”
He stands up and brushes off his shirt. “Should we go look?”
I narrow my gaze. “For a stepdad?”
He nods, his expression so earnest, it nearly kills me. “What’s going on here, Jack?” I tug him forward and pull him onto my lap. “It’s been just the two of us for a while now. Why the sudden desire to have a stepdad?”
He sniffs and picks at a scab on his elbow, his eyes down. His shoulder lifts in the tiniest of shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Jack,” I say softly. “You can tell me anything, you know that, right?”
He huffs. “I don’t want to. Because you’ll just tell meyoucan come with me, but that won’t be the same.”
“Come with you to what?”
He’s fidgety now, squirming like he wants to get away from me. I loosen my hold, knowing him well enough to give him the space he wants when he wants it. He heaves out a sigh. “The father-son breakfast.”
When I was little, I used to think heartbreak was only something you could experience one time. Once your heart broke, that was it. It wasbroken.But I know better now. Because in the past three years, my heart has broken a million different times.
Make that a million and one.
Just as I expected him to, Jack wiggles out of my arms and goes back to the yard.
“Would it be so bad if I came to the breakfast with you? I’m sure you aren’t the only one who doesn’t have a dad around.”
“Ms. Kennedy says grandpas can go. Or uncles or big brothers.” Jack looks at me now, hope in his eyes. “Could Grandpa Jamison go?”
“I don’t think he’s strong enough to leave the house, sweetie. But we can maybe see if your Grandpa Templeton can come up and take you.”
Trevor’s parents live two hours south in Columbia and are always asking me to bring Jack down to visit. Truly, if they had their way, I’d do more than visit. I’d move in and turn over Jack’s parenting to them. We’re talking private kindergarten for thirty grand a year, private tennis lessons at the country club, after-school tutors for Latin and elocution. All of it.
It isn’t that Trevor’s parents are unkind. I appreciate how much they care about Jack. But I’m not sure their life is the life I want for him. And as much as I want Jack to have every good and nice thing, I don’t think I’d be capable of living a life where, every day, I’d have to pretend Trevor was as perfect as his parents still believe he was.
Jack shrugs and sighs, clearly underwhelmed by the idea. “Yeah. Maybe.”
I stand up, recognizing that sometimes the only way to beat the melancholy is to distract yourself out of it. “Come on. Let’s get inside. If you can help me get the living room clean, we can have an early dinner, then pop some popcorn and watch a movie.”
Jack follows me inside where I clean up his sticky hands and face. Then we crank up the music, cleaning and dancing until the sparkle is back in his eyes. But hours later, after I finally tuck him into bed, I sit at the kitchen counter and stare at his poster, my eyes drifting from Trevor’s scribbled form floating high in the sky to the man drawn right next to Jack.
Logically, I’ve always expected that at some point far down the road, I’d meet someone. Fall in love. Get married again. ButI don’t even know how I’d go about starting the process. How do you date when you also have a five-year-old? If Marley was concerned about me getting personal with business associates, how much more caution should I have when it comes to my personal life? Because it isn’t justmeI have to consider. There’s Jack, too.
And that complicates everything.
I trace my fingers over the dark hair Jack scribbled onto the mystery man in his drawing. For the briefest moment, I imagine my overly professional, dark-haired boss.
The thought is completely laughable. Absurd to the billionth degree.
Me and Perry Hawthorne?
Me andanyHawthorne?
I should know better than to even consider it.
But that doesn’t stop me from going to sleep imagining Perry Hawthorne’s dark hair and the way heapple-laudedmy efforts.
