“You’re overthinking this. You’re a pro at essays. Just chill out?—”
“This matters.”
His fierce tone had me sighing. “I know. And I know you have a twenty-year plan and everything hinges on that, and sucking at Oakwood would be a disaster, but if you let the pressure hit now, then quite frankly, your plan’s fucked.”
His lips twisted into a grin. “Kat’s still collecting. I can give her ten bucks if you want.”
Nowthatwas a relationship that concerned me.
Kat had the power to hurt Shay in a way I didn’t think she understood yet.
Still, that was a conversation for another day, maybe a-never day, so I stuck out my tongue as I clambered to my feet and headed over to the refrigerator. “I have decorations to set up.”
He glanced at the can in my hand once I rustled through the contents. “Time for the hard stuff.”
“God, yes.”
Before I reached the kitchen door, he called out, “Remember that swear jar we had when I was thirteen?”
“And you were cursing like a trooper? Yup.”
So that’s where Kat had gotten her idea.
“What did the money go toward again?”
“Unlike Kat, I didn’t charge you ten dollars a swear word,” I reminded him. “But I think we bought a laptop with the proceeds.”
He stared at me from over his shoulder. “You really are the best, Mom.”
I blew him a kiss. “You make it easy, kiddo.”
Leaving him to stress out and knowing that I couldn’t help his procrastination/writer’s block, I strode into the living room where Declan had dumped the bins of Christmas decorations earlier.
Our deal was that he had to source the tree and put it in the corner beside the TV, help me pack up the ornaments once the holidays were over, and figure out storage for the many, many containers.
Ihad to decorate because, in his words, “my creative eye turned me into the Grinch.”
Overwhelmed by the city of boxes, I hissed under my breath, “That still makes no sense.”
To me, at least.
Shay had backed up his dad but, like the brave soul he was, always offered to help. Until homework got in the way, which left me alone with the gargantuan task ahead.
Popping my tab on the cocktail in a can, I took a sip of the vodka mule and tugged off the first lid.
Maybe it was luck that saw me uncovering ornaments Shay and I had bought on our travels. Each one a memory that let me reminisce about his childhood without bawling now that my baby was fully grown.
My lips quirked into a broad smile as I uncovered the little leprechaun with a Santa’s hat he’d insisted we buy in a Tesco’s in County Kerry one year, then the miniature cuckoo clock we’d found in the Schwarzwald.
I didn’t even realize Dec was watching me sort out the ornaments until he asked, “What’s the story with that one? Haven’t seen it before.”
I found him slouched on the sofa, a pensive expression etched into the lines of his face that I wanted to erase. “It’s a kookaburra. We were in Melbourne one year. There’s a market just outside the city. They sold all kinds of foods—it was the first time I convinced him to try a chicken and leek pie. Shay refused to eat anything white.”
Dec’s brows lifted but he laughed. “He wouldn’t eatanythingwhite?!”
“Nope.” My smile deepened as I trekked through the boxes to reach the sofa so I could perch on his lap. “We’ve been lucky with Cameron so far. He’s like a vacuum cleaner. Eats anything. Shay went through phases. The ‘nothing white’ one sucked. I’ve never known a kid to prefer brown bread to white, but Shay wouldn’t touch it. For almost a year!”
“Awholeyear?!”
