Page 14 of Between Now and Forever
“We don’t have much to eat,” I say. “I haven’t had a chance to go to the store.”
The door shuts with more force than necessary. I start to say something—to remind him not to be so hard on our things—but think better of it. This isn’t a battle I really want to fight tonight.
“Do we have anything in the pantry?” He spins around and faces me for the first time. “Do we even have a pantry?”
“Yes. We have a pantry.” I point at the tall cabinet beside him. “Again, there’s not much in there.”
“Enough to even look?”
“I don’t know, Dylan. But it would probably be faster for you to take five seconds and have a gander rather than stand here and grill me over it.”
He narrows his eyes, letting them rake over me as he turns away.
“Did you have fun with Kyle?” I ask as he rummages through the few boxes of crackers and cookies we brought from Boston. “You didn’t really say much when you got home.”
“It was fine.”
“Carter seemed to enjoy himself.”
“Well, Carter is seven. Of course he enjoyed himself. He got to hang out with older kids at the rec center.” The pantry door smacks shut. “Must be nice to have that kind of freedom at seven. I barely have it at fourteen.”
I set my jaw in place and remind myself he’s doing this on purpose. He’s poking and prodding, trying to rile me up to prove a point. Reacting won’t help.
“You don’t have anything to say to that?” he asks, lifting a brow.
“I have a lot of things to say to that, Dylan. But I don’t have the energy to rehash a topic we’ve gone over a million times.”
“You mean that you don’t trust me.”
“Dylan . . .”
I look at my son and silently plead with him to stop.
He’s not this kid—this argumentative, sometimes hateful, rule-bending person I’ve lived with over the last year. If he were, I would know. I’ve known him since before he walked this planet.
I know the sound of his breath while he sleeps, the ticklish spot just behind his right knee, and that beneath his hair are two crowns at the top of his head. There are twenty-seven freckles across his nose and a birthmark resembling chocolate milk on his left inner thigh. He likes to build things and take things apart. He hates needles and apples. And somewhere, buried under a lot of anger and frustration, is a little boy who misses his father.
“Trust is earned,” I say carefully. “And you helped your case today by going out with Kyle and coming home on time, not giving him any trouble, and being a good sport about Carter tagging along.”
“You didn’t give me a lot of choice.”
I sigh. “I wanted you to meet people. You’ll be going to school with those kids on Monday. Won’t it be easier if you recognize some of the faces?”
“It would’ve been easier to stay in school in Boston. So if that’s what you’re worried about, you’ve already screwed me over.”
“Dylan ...” I call after him, but he’s on the stairs before I can get his name out.
“Damn you, Christopher,” I say, letting the licks of anger stemming from my ex-husband’s death burn for a moment.
Chris and I divorced three years ago, when Carter was four and Dylan eleven. Our mutual friends said we had the most amicable divorce they’d ever seen. We tried to explain that we didn’t fall out of love—our love just changed. Instead of being spouses, we were more like friends.
“We’ll still do life together. We’ll just do it from different houses.” Christopher smiles at me with the same goofy grin Dylan used to wear. “You deserve a lover, someone to appreciate all the wild goodness you have to offer. This doesn’t mean I don’t love you, Gabs. It just means that there’s someone else out there who can love you better. And I love you enough to want that for you.”
Tears fill my eyes as I fight back a surge of emotion.I miss him so much too.
“You were supposed to be here,” I whisper to the empty room. “You were supposed to help me with this.”
I look at the ceiling through the fluid clouding my vision and fight to regain composure.
