Oliver smirked, and his expression changed to something I hadn’t seen often—a cheeky, playful one. “Pussmeans kiss,” he said, and when the three laughed, he added, “It’s actually more of a friendly peck. You’ll hear people say ‘puss-puss’ for goodbye. And ‘I love you?’”He leaned back in his chair, and I felt my breath catching in my lungs. “Jag älskar dig.” He even had an accent saying that.
To say I was becoming a puddle would be an understatement. I wondered if he had ever said it to anyone or heard it said to him.
“Not that I heard it often from anyone,” he said, as if he had heard my internal questions. “Maybe once, from a girl in the fifth grade.”
Stephanie had the sweetestawwexpression on her face, and I smiled at her, hoping that the quivering I was feeling in my lips and in my heart wasn’t showing.
Suddenly, as if it were relevant to any of that, or as if something had reminded him of it, Will announced, “Mom, we invited Dad to join us for lunch tomorrow.”
I took a deep breath. That new information hit me at the velocity of the snowball rolling down the steep hill that was my life.
Lennox put a hand over Will’s forearm and took over explaining. “Will and Stephanie only have this window of time to see him. They’re going to her house, which means driving opposite to L.A., so we thought we could invite him just for lunch. He’ll drive up, and you know, we’ll be done with it.”
“Done with it?” I asked, feeling Oliver’s eyes on me. “I’m so sorry, Oliver. I … Kids, I’m renting this place, but it’s annexed to a house, as you can see. You should have consulted me. Besides, you know your dad and I … I haven’t even seen him since your high school graduation.”
“We don’t have to do it here. We can go to Life’s A Beach. We went there after our graduation, too, remember?”
Yes, a dinner I had paid for. The cheap son of a bitch hadn’t even paid the tip, although he knew money was tight for me, too. “I paid for the gas to drive up here,” he had told me, as if that made any difference. I couldn’t even afford that much now.
“Any guest of yours is welcome here,” Oliver said, his gaze catching and holding mine. He knew what my finances looked like and that dining outside would be at the bottom of my priorities.
“Thank you,” I managed to mouth.
“Mom, we can pay. The scholarships, remember?” Will said.
“There’s plenty of space here. I won’t be here tomorrow. Feel free to use the whole place,” Oliver said, breaking our gaze and looking at Will and Lennox.
“You’re leaving?” I asked, a void spreading in my chest.
Our gazes locked again.
“Not yet.”
“Mom?” Will asked, breaking my eyes from Oliver’s.
“I had a whole plan for lunch tomorrow, so we’ll keep it, and your father will join us. Okay? Now, go enjoy the pool; you only have today and tomorrow,” I said.
“Did Mom tell you we both got full scholarships?” Will asked Oliver as the three teens pushed their chairs back and got up.
“Yes. Congratulations.” Oliver smiled.
As soon as they threw down their towels and cannonballed into the pool, Oliver and I turned to look at each other.
“Thank y—”
“Stop,” Oliver cut in. “So, he plans on proposing to her?” Will had heavily hinted at that during lunch when Stephanie had gone to the bathroom in the pool house.
“Seems like it.”
Oliver nodded. “They look great together.”
“Yes. But they’re so young. I know that I …” I took a deep breath. “I asked him over the phone why so young. He said,‘Because she’s the one.’”
Beyond melting when my son had said that, I had thought later about how knowing that someone was the one wasn’t always enough.
Oliver held my gaze for a moment, and the depth in his green eyes was almost too much to bear. But just like Blanche had described it, and unlike the night we had spent together, in a blink, it was gone. He got up, picked up plates and a bowl, and walked toward the house. I gathered the rest and followed him.
“I’ll do it. Go join your kids,” he said when I stopped next to him and prepared to wash the dishes.
