“We eat in the dining room,” I explain, keeping my tone neutral. “No TV while eating dinner, Junior.”
“Mom said so, huh?” He rolls his eyes. “She always has to ruin everything.”
“Don’t speak about your mother that way. Blame me for forgetting the rules. C’mon, the quicker we scarf down this pizza, the quicker we get back toSpidermanand his web-slinging.”
He grins. “Okay!”
Dinner’s not as laidback and fun as I hoped it would be. Tabby’s glum mood remains as she picks at her veggie lovers pizza and avoids eye contact with the rest of us. Junior tries telling me about his game and how his team had fumbled during the last inning, but Rachel interrupts and scolds him for speaking with food in his mouth.
More than once she slips in a dig or two against me.
Your father this. Your father that.
Her tone holds hostility. Her stiff shoulders and sharp expression match it.
The patience I’d been clinging to starts to thin out. I’m swallowing down every rebuttal, every retort I’ve got for anything she says.
I don’t like arguing in front of the kids. We’ve agreed we wouldn’t do it.
It makes Tabby tear up, and Jack usually tries to get in, hoping it’d make us stop.
But I’m human. I’m a man with a short fuse at times, and Rachel needles away ’til it almost feels like this was a trap from the beginning. She invited me over to frustrate me then reprimand me for it.
Once I’ve got this in mind, I don’t let it happen. Jack chews his food first, then speaks, his attention mostly set on me. I keep calm and interact with him, looping Tabby into our conversation where I can. Soon we’re laughing and enjoying ourselves just the same.
Rachel can’t find any other complaints to lodge as we finish up at the dinner table then move into the living room for the movie.
First we watchSpiderman, Jack’s favorite superhero. I prefer the original movies with Tobey Maguire, but I’m showing myage. Jack chooses the trilogy with Tom Holland, which are still entertaining movies.
Tabby’s brightened up some again. She curls up on the couch under her favorite throw blanket, and I ask her about her classes.
When the first movie ends, Jack asks if we can watch the second one.
“You’ll have to ask your mother, Champ,” I say. “She might have something else planned.”
Rachel reluctantly agrees, citing the fact that it’s Saturday night and neither kid has any homework or chores left to do. She disappears upstairs and doesn’t come back down again, which tells me what she’s up to.
She’s resigned herself to the fact that she invited me over and I’ve got the kids. It means she has time to chat on the phone with the man she can’t get enough of.
As we start the third movie and I head into the guest bathroom, I can hear her soft, playful laughter traveling down the staircase.
She laughs at the things he says like she used to laugh at the things I said. She finds every damn thing he does funny and charming. You’d never know how particular she can be when she’s around Fred.
When she’s around him, she’s as bright and easygoing as possible.
All things she used to be around me.
It doesn’t matter anymore. Rachel could giggle at everything I say, and I still wouldn’t take her back. I could never fall in love with her again like I once did.
I’m here for my kids and my kids only.
Because I love them more than life itself.
We spend so long watching movies that eventually we doze off.
Rachel comes down around two in the morning to nudge us awake and tell Tabby and Junior to head up to bed. Both kids are yawning and rubbing their eyes as they sleepwalk out of the room, trudging upstairs.
Rachel stands over where I’ve been knocked out, splayed out in the armchair, feet kicked up on the ottoman. She sighs, arms folded over her robe. “You can sleep down here if you want. It’s late, and you don’t have to drive home, Jack. Go back to sleep.”
