Chapter 17
Jeff
Iwoke up to the sound of waves crashing against the shore and thought for a moment that I was dreaming — this was not the sound I normally heard waking up in the Hollywood Hills. Then I looked around me and saw a bundle of red hair on the pillow next to me. The faint scent of Pat’s perfume rose to my nostrils. Vanilla.
I smiled. I wasn’t dreaming. This was just another day in my now normal life. OK, so being back in Maui wasn’t maybe all that normal yet, but I’d just bought a house here. Right on the beach. As we were to shootSpeed Bumpsfor three to four months each year if things went well, I figured I might as well buy something — I’d AirBnB it when we weren’t there. I knew I could afford not to, but there was a reason I was rich.
Maui was the place where I fell in love with Pat and I wanted something here. A place to return to; our own personal haven.
The past four months had been busy — I’d shot one film (thankfully in L.A.), Pat had shot her indie, I’d worked to finalize the pilot which, in the end Amazon did decide to buy, and there’d been the trial for Bill. Thankfully he’d seemed to catch up with reality and stood up to apologize and was happy to accept his time in prison; seeing it as a way of repenting his sins and thereby having a chance of starting over when released. He was a changed man; a broken man, but maybe for the first time he was also facing up to his own flaws. It was just a shame he’d had to lose his mind to prescription drugs and alcohol before he did so. It was horrible to think how drugs can change a man. I knew it all too well from Jen’s years.
I felt a hand stroking my torso.
“Good morning,” I whispered.
“Good morning,” Pat replied.
“I’d love to stay in bed, but we need to get Shaun to his new tutor,” I said as Pat’s hand continued to explore.
“Oh, yes,” she said and sat up with an alarming speed, red hair flying everywhere.
I laughed. If there was one thing that got Pat out of bed, it was Shaun — she’d taken to the kid enormously and he to her. The idea that she’d still have a chance to be a mother had given her a whole lot of energy — and strength. Whenever she lost faith in her own abilities, she reminded herself that she would never want to raise a child not to have faith in theirs.
When we first got back together, we’d had a long chat where Pat had explained that her requirement for a relationship was that we one day adopted — she’d have to wait till the divorce was final which took time in California, but she wanted a child; a family. I’ agreed that if we stayed together, I’d be happy to do that. And I didn’t doubt we’d stay together, we were both at an age and place where we knew what we wanted. For all the upsets around the time when we met, it’d given us both plenty of wake-up calls as to who we wanted to be and what we wanted out of life. And we both wanted family and movies.
The thought of adopting a child had been Pat’s main motivation at first, but as she saw that Shaun took to her — she’d made it clear from the start that it would be great if he did but he had Monica and she didn’t want to impose — he’d become part of her inspiration.
As Pat got out of bed, I drank in her curves. The woman was a red-headed Aphrodite.
Pat laughed as she saw me looking at her.
“You said it, we gotta go!”
“OK, OK, I’m getting up.”
“So why don’t I see any movement?”
I rose.
“Now you do.”
“I do indeed…” Pat said and this time it was she checking me out; her eyes moving over my body.
“I think we need some alone time tonight,” I said with a wink.
“I think so, too,” Pat agreed and smiled at me, before getting back to getting dressed.
A few minutes later, Shaun knocked on the door, just as we finished dressing.
“Morning, Dad. Morning, Pat,” he said when I asked him to enter. “You’ve got to come see! I just finished a new racing track for my cars!”
I smiled and rustled his hair.
“OK son, we will do that. Is it a good track?”
“It’s the best. I made it so there are two bridges.”
“Looks like you’re becoming quite the engineer,” Pat said with a smile.
