Ezra finished chewing and took a long drink of his juice before answering. “It’s about Jess. Sort of.” He refused to look him in the eye. Instead, he dabbed at the bagel crumbs on hisplate with his finger, then licked it clean. “You didn’t date in all the years I was growing up until you met her. That’s a long time, and well… you told me that the two of you agreed you were better off as friends, but the two of you spend a lot of time together. Way more than any other two people who used to date each other. A lot of people think maybe you’re dating in secret. Trying it out again. Or that you never really stopped.”
“I would never lie to you about anything, Ezra. Jess and I are not dating. We are friends, nothing more.”
His son nodded, an expression on his face that looked like he was trying something on, and it was a touch too tight, causing his features to pinch at their edges. “Do you think you’ll ever date again? Like… maybe even get married?”
He came around to the side of the island his son was sitting on and pulled out the end barstool. After he sat down, he gazed intently at the seventeen-year-old, confused as hell. “Where is this question coming from?”
“Well, I’m leaving for college next fall…” He trailed off, obviously at a loss for how to continue.
Ah. So that was it. “You’re worried I’m going to be lonely.”
Ezra shrugged. “I guess.”
“And your solution to that problem is I should start dating?”
“Maybe?”
“I have friends, like Jess. I’ll be fine.”
“Friends aren’t the same as women, Dad.”
Lucas raised an eyebrow, and now he did smile. “Oh, really? Tell me, oh wise and experienced one, just how are they different?”
Ezra rolled his eyes. “Well… there’s no touching, to start with.”
Oh, this just got better and better. “You want me to start touching people?”
His son ignored the sarcasm. “Friends are fine to hang out with, but it’s not the same as a relationship. Hanging out with Jess would be like…” He struggled for a comparison. “It would be like when Kennedy or Gemma comes over to study. Or like when Oscar or Judah comes to watch a game. We sit, we joke, we talk, we eat, but it’s not… personal. There’s no one-on-one connection.”
When did his son grow up so much? Logically, he knew the boy was almost an adult himself, but often he said things so thoughtful, so sincere, and so mature that he seemed like a much older man than his years.
“It’s just a different kind of connection, son.” He’d never really talked about his relationship with his ex-wife, Tonja, to anyone, least of all Ezra. Maybe that had been a mistake. “You can be dating someone, or even be married and living with someone—like your mom and I did—and still be lonely.”
“Is that why you got divorced?”
Wow. This was so not where he thought this morning’s conversation was going to go.
“Your mother…” This was tricky. He’d always tried to watch what he said about Tonja to Ezra. He didn’t want to color his relationship with her based on his inadequacies. Not that mother and son had a relationship, really, but in case they ever did realign, he didn’t want his son to have preconceived ideas. “Yes, I guess you could say she was lonely. I have a tendency to focus hard on things, sometimes to the exclusion of all else, and to her it seemed I was always more focused on work than on her.”
“But I never felt lonely. You always had time for me.”
Yeah, no way was he going to tell his son that his mother was jealous because Ezra and work always came before her.
“Yes, I always made sure I had time for you. You were the most important thing in our lives. Still are. So when you wereyoung, yes, I could have dated. Babysitters certainly existed and all that, but to be honest, I was happy with it being just the two of us. I never felt the urge to date.”
“Never?”
“Nope. No one really caught my eye.” A flash of long, damp hair and green eyes crossed his mind, then he mentally swatted it away. “When I met Jess, she seemed nice. We had a lot of things in common, so I thought maybe I’d take her out. See what happened. But there just wasn’t any chemistry there, so we decided not to continue dating.”
“But you still hang out together. You obviously like each other a lot.”
“Yes, we do, but there are no romantic feelings there. Not that I guess there has to be for a marriage to work, but it’s usually preferable. It’s not like we need arranged marriages for property, or political connections, or to fill the family’s bank accounts much in this day and age. And since you seem to feel like I should be touching people”—Ezra threw a napkin at him, both of them laughing at the joke—“chemistry seems to be what you think I’m needing when you leave the house.”
“I’m not stupid. Everything we do is always about me. I just think it’s time you lived for you, Dad. I want to see you happy.”
“Do you think I’m unhappy?”
“Let’s just say I think you’re content. Settled. You’re always telling me that isn’t enough. That I need to find what makes me happy. Why wouldn’t the same be true for you?”
