A soft smile spreads on both our faces. This time when she stands, I follow her lead and wrap my arms around her middle to kiss her one more time.
I mutter against her lips. “It will be fine.”
She nuzzles her nose against my cheek, and I can tell that she inhales my scent. “I hope so.”
Me too.
* * *
Connorand I walk down Main Street with ice cream cones in hand. We go slow to avoid our cones turning into a mess of melting ice cream. I motion to the bench up ahead that overlooks the park and gazebo by the lake.
“Mom is going to be upset that she missed ice cream from Jolly Joe’s,” he comments before taking another lick from his chocolate ice cream.
I swallow and take this as my moment. “It’s okay, we’ll get her a Turtle sundae to-go after we hit up the general store to grab a few things, as I want to BBQ tonight.”
“You remember her favorite ice cream?”
I give my son a strange look. “I’ve known her longer than you have. Of course I know.”
“She’ll be happy if we bring her back ice cream.”
We both sit down.
“Exactly. Your mom really needs us to make her life a little easier the coming weeks,” I begin. “Her test is something she has been working for her whole life.”
“She would be a lawyer already if it wasn’t for me.”
I toss the small remnants of my cone into the garbage not far from us and lean against the back of the bench, examining him, trying to figure out if his comment was an observation with thought behind it or not. “It’s a bit more complicated than that. She wanted to spend more time with you when you were younger.”
My son doesn’t look up from his ice cream cone. “Yeah, because you were always away for games and training.”
His words hit me hard, and a twinge of pain flutters across my chest. “Is that what you think?” Connor rolls his shoulder back. “We were young, and hockey was a way I could give you a life with anything you could ask for.”
“I know, you guys tell me all the time.”
My jaw clenches as I debate where to take our conversation. “Connor, I’m not going to talk to you like a little boy because you’ve made it clear the last few days that you are no longer one. So here we are, father and son, man to man, and I want to be honest with you.”
“About what?” he asks, oblivious and focusing on his ice cream.
Bringing my hand to his shoulder, I decide to dive into the deep end. “Your mom. Me. Your mom and I.” His eyes instantly blaze with curiosity. “I know we’ve raised you where your mom and I are friends, nothing more, but the truth is, we don’t want that. We’re together again.”
“What do you mean?” His eyes turn strange.
“That your mom and I are in a relationship together. I’m telling you because we don’t want to hide it from you.”
“Why isn’t she here?”
“Because I felt you and I needed to talk. I’ve noticed you have more observations and opinions lately, lucky us.” I attempt to offer him a soothing smile. “Us together is new, but the feelings we have for each other have always been there. We just focused on other things.”
“Like me.”
“Yeah, and other goals. Truthfully, I’ve wanted to be with your mom for a long time, but it took the moment where we seem to have achieved all of those goals for me to go after the one thing that should have been my priority all along.”
My son looks up at me with something that I can only pinpoint as a sensitive understanding or attempting to grasp my words. Gone is the child I carried on my shoulders and helped when he fell the first time on the ice. Here is a man in the making.
“Is it why Mom sometimes seemed sad after you would visit?”
I’m cracking inside from the reminders of the facts I already knew. Hearing it from him feels like a heavier punch, one that even reality couldn’t throw at me. “Probably. But I have every intention of ensuring she is never sad another moment in her life.”
