“That’s your mom you’re talking about!”
“She’s always been really bad at boundaries. Probably where I get it from.” His hand runs over my stomach, raising goose bumps. “We had the birds and bees talk when I was six. And seven. And then when I came out to her, she had a whole other talk prepared.”
“She sounds great.” My parents are your average upper-class WASPs. I got shipped off to private school as soon as I was old enough to sleep over. I’ve never seen my mother look more uncomfortable than when she showed up at our big gay wedding and the chamber quartet Dominic hired played “White Wedding”while he walked up the aisle.
“She’s a lot of fun. But she and my dad were awful together. I was young, but those last few years before they split up, we were all miserable. They fought all the time. Mom wanted to quit her job—well, her jobs. She always seemed to be working part-time at three different places—and take us all to Nepal, and Dad was trying to do grown-up things like pay the mortgage and make sure I got to soccer practice on time.”
“My boys play soccer,” I say absently.
“Mom thinks organized sports are barbaric and an instrument of toxic masculinity. Which...” He stretches his arms overhead. The hair at his armpits is black and looks so soft. I want to stroke it. “They probably are.”
Is it? The boys always seem to have a good time, and the league they’re enrolled in doesn’t even keep score. We cheer for every goal like it’s the World Cup, and then at the end of the game, everyone does a group song while juice boxes are passed out.
“And after?” I know the research says children of divorce can thrive just as well as those where parents stay together, but the guilt that I’ve disadvantaged my kids when they had so much stacked against them from the start eats at me.
“Hmm?” He blinks at me sleepily even though the sun’s still out and will be for hours. “Oh. After, it was way better. I lived with my mom. She took me to yoga retreats and taught me about healing herbs.”
I snort. “You don’t honestly believe in that shit.”
“Turmeric’s awesome,” he says seriously. “But sometimes you need penicillin, you know?”
We stare at the ceiling. I have a question I desperately want to ask, but I’m so afraid to know the answer.
“And your dad?” I finally say.
Brady shakes his head, and my heart drops.
“Nah,” he says. “He’s a duct tape and Tylenol kind of guy.”
If it were my bed, I’d whack him with a pillow. “I don’t care if he believes in traditional medicine, jackass. I meant, are you still close to him?”
“Oh, totally,” Brady says immediately, but his brows wrinkle. “Well, I should probably see him more than I do. But we talk a lot. He bought into my business when I was trying to get it off the ground and no one was willing to give a twenty-five-year-old kid with a spotty employment history and no customers a loan.”
My post-coital buzz is almost completely gone. I didn’t realize we’d be having conversations like these. A plan where Brady fucked me senseless and we made small talk between orgasms seemed far more plausible. But the more he speaks, the more I want to know.
“But what about when you were a kid?”
“It felt okay to me. I mean, my dad’s a teacher and I sucked at school, but he never made me feel bad about it.”
“You had trouble at school?”
He gives me a wry smile. “Let’s just say I did best in non-traditional learning environments. Sitting still, raising my hand, and being patient when the other kids didn’t catch on as fast as I did were not my strong suits.”
I can see that. Brady’s confidence, even the way he handles me in bed, speaks of someone who likes to set his own pace.
He groans. “And don’t get me started on math. Math is my nemesis. I basically spent all my teen years in summer school, but it got me to graduation.”
I’m less worried about whether he can do long division and more worried about how his father managed to maintain a relationship. “If you lived with your mom, how often did you see your dad?”
He shrugs, like the question is no big deal. “I think officially I was supposed to spend every second weekend with him, maybe one or two nights a week. But it was sort of whenever it made sense, you know? Like if my mom was teaching at a retreat, then I’d go stay with him. And if he was buried in report cards, then maybe I didn’t see him for a month until the term wrapped up.” He laughs. “I don’t know. It wasn’t a big deal then. We saw each other when we did, and sometimes I think he felt guilty and would try to do these fancy things with me, like we’d go to the zoo or maybe a Blue Jays game in the summer. But most of the time, it was totally cool to just hang out at his house. He’d make his special hamburgers, and we’d play a board game or watch wrestling on TV.”
“Wrestling?” I can’t help myself. “Tell me you didn’t watch that crap. It’s all fake.”
“It’s performance art,” he says indignantly. He shoves at my shoulder, and I shove back. We grapple for a few minutes, the bedroom filling with the sound of laughter and playful cursing. We wind up with him on top, settled between my hips. He’s got my hands pinned over my head, and when he bends down to kiss me, I open my mouth for him. God, I want him.
“How old are your kids again?” he says as he lifts his head. He’s grinning, but my whole body goes cold at the question. Protectiveness swirls around me. My kids don’t belong here. This space smells of sweat and sex, and it’s not for them. They’ll never know about Brady.
“They’re seven,” I hear myself say.
