Page 70 of Keep Me Close

Everett

Coming to Aria’s for dinner is nerve-wracking. It was strange to spend time with Owen before he knew who I was. Now that he knows…what should he call me? What should I call him? Is he gonna hug me? Is he gonna hate me for not being around? Who knows?

Never in my life have I felt insecure, and I appear to be making up for that all at once.

When I knock on their door, my heart drops to my stomach and I can’t help but wear it on my sleeve at the same time. She opens it, but he darts out around her and wraps his arms around my waist, and I’m at a loss for thoughts. Kid’s got a tight grip, but that’s not it. My heart swells and leaks out of my eyes. It’s hard to comprehend what’s happening, but I love it. I love him.

And her.

She smiles warmly. “Owen, let him come inside. It’s freezing out there.”

He looks up and grins a private smile. “Hi!”

“Hey, kiddo.” It just rolls right off my tongue. That might be my nickname for him. Not sure right now.

“What was that look?” Aria asks.

Owen lies, “Nothing.” He grabs my hand and pulls me inside. “Let’s play dinosaurs, Dad.”

Oh my god, whatever you want.“Uh, yeah, okay.” I wipe my eyes before pulling my coat off and hanging it on their coatrack. Whatever she’s made smells incredible.

“You guys can play for fifteen minutes, but then dinner,” Aria says firmly.

“Okay, Mom,” he says before hauling me away. Once we’re in the living room and she’s in the kitchen, he whispers, “She’s always so weird about the cold.”

“How’s that?”

“It’s like she thinks the cold is gonna hurt or something.”

“Your mom gets cold easily. A lot of women do.” I shrug. “I read a thing about it a while back, but it’s just because their bodies are different from ours.”

He looks up from his brachiosaurus. “Mom says boys and girls are the same.”

Oh hell, what political nightmare did I just butt into?“We should treat them the same, as in, we should be nice to everyone. But when you get older, your body gets very different from girls, and one of those differences is how your body handles the cold.”Please let it go.

“You mean like, how boys pee standing up and girls sit down?”

“Kinda. Yeah.”

He nods, then goes back to his dinosaur. “Mom shouldn’t go camping with us, then. I don’t want her to be cold.”

Thank god, he’s letting this go. “We could wait to camp in the summer.”

But then his eyes fire blue at me. “I wanna go camping soon.”

Shit. “We’ll make plans around your mom’s schedule. What she says, goes.”

He sighs. “But you’re my dad. You should get a say.”

“That’s something for me and her to talk about. We’ll figure it out. In the meantime, where’s the T-Rex?”

He digs into his backpack and passes it over. “But we have to build the wall first. That’s what the trolls are good at.”

“You got it.” So, I stack the thick Legos into a decent enough wall, and he hides his herbivores behind it, before I smash it down.

When he claps, it’s like all the approval I never knew I needed to get. “It’s just like the movie!”

“Did you know there areLord of the Ringstoys? We can get them and do the whole movie, if you want.”

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