“Saturday pancakes is the biggest one,” Theo said easily. When Nina thought about it, she realized this wasn’t even a lie — they really had eaten pancakes every Saturday since she and Jack had moved in. How had she not noticed that before? “But we have a few other things, too, like family movie nights and going for walks together after work and school.”
“That sounds lovely,” Jenny said. “Family traditions are so important. When I was a child, my parents always had a Friday game night for us, and we do that with our kids now, too.”
“Did you have traditions like that, Charles?” Theo asked.
“Not really.” Charles took a bite of his burger. It was strange, but nice, to see such a serious businessman looking so relaxed with his family. “My family wasn’t very close, and I actually spent part of my childhood in foster care. But that just makes me so much more thankful for the family I have now.”
“That must have been difficult,” Nina said, “I’m sorry.”
“Really, it’s all right. Difficulties can be part of our past without taking up all of our future,” Charles said. Nina nodded, though she wasn’t so sure about that. Sometimes, it felt like her whole life was defined by Jack’s father walking out on them. Like her son, she lived in fear of the people she loved leaving, too.
Which was why it was so surprising that she felt so safe around Theo.
“Did you have good family traditions growing up, Nina?” Jenny asked.
“A few,” Nina said. She cast her mind back to rainy Seattle Saturdays and smiled. “We had one great tradition of sharing one good and one bad thing about each day at the dinner table. It was calledBests and Worsts.”
“We should do that with Jack,” Theo said. Nina glanced at him and nodded.
“We should. He’d love that.”
“How about you, Theo?” Charles asked. “Any good family traditions?”
Nina was just as curious about the answer as Charles was. Theo rarely spoke about his family, and she didn’t even know if he had siblings. They’d shared plenty of information about their later lives, but Theo was always vague about his childhood.
“We did a few things,” Theo said, vaguely as always. “Like homemade pizza on Wednesday nights, and an annual beach trip.”
The conversation moved on, but Nina kept thinking about Theo as a little boy with his parents and possible siblings, going to the beach and eating homemade pizza. Somehow, the image didn’t mesh well with the Theo she’d gotten to know over the last few weeks.
After lunch, they all cleared the table, and Lizzy brought out a game she’d gotten for her birthday a few weeks ago called Family Challenges. She unpacked the board and explained that each square corresponded to a different kind of challenge. Again, Nina was surprised to see how much the Ackley family seemed to genuinely enjoy spending time together, doing silly things. In the first round, Jack had to try to say the alphabet backwards (which he did, with a little help), Lizzy had to sing the “Happy Birthday” song while standing on one foot, and Charles had to act out three different zoo animals for everyone to guess. Nina would never get the image of the distinguished billionaire businessman acting like an elephant out of her mind.
On Theo’s turn, he drew a card and looked down at it with the wide eyes of someone staring into the face of doom. Then he took a deep breath.
“Okay. I have to show off my best chicken dance,” he said. He got up and flapped his arms like wings, sending everyone into fits of laughter. Pretty soon, Theo was laughing, too. This was yet another side to him, and Nina enjoyed every second of it. Somehow, his silliness made her like him even more.
Jenny was next. Her challenge was to compliment everyone at the table, which she did easily, giving personalized comments to each member of her family. When she got to Theo and Nina, she complimented them on how sweet and in love they looked together, which made Nina blush.
Then it was her turn. She drew a card, and her cheeks turned pink.
“I have to kiss two people on their cheeks.”
“Easy!” Jack said, leaning closer to her. Nina kissed her son on his cheek and ruffled his hair. He glared at her and smoothed his hair, apparently not wanting to be embarrassed in front of his young friends.
Then Nina turned to the only other person it made sense for her to kiss. Theo. If she didn’t kiss his cheek, everyone would wonder why not. She had to. Theo looked nervous, too. Nina forced herself to take a deep breath, then leaned closer and pressed a kiss to his cheek. There was a hint of five o’clock shadow that tickled her lips, and she was very aware of how close they suddenly were. It was as if they were suddenly alone under the open sky, just the two of them. If Theo turned his head just a few inches, she’d be kissing him on the lips.
But he didn’t turn his head, and after a second, Nina pulled away.
The game continued with a mix of funny challenges and questions. None of them required any more of Nina and Theo’s touch boundaries to be broken, which was a good thing — even though Nina couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss.
Jack won, which he celebrated with an adorable victory dance that had everyone clapping. They hung around a little while longer, the adults chatting while the kids played, before it was time to go.
“It was so lovely to meet you,” Jenny said, as the Ackleys walked them out to the car.
“You too,” Nina said. She meant it. Jenny was very different from the other private-school moms she’d talked to, who seemed more interested in proving they were better than her, than in actual friendship.
“We should get together for coffee sometime, just the two of us,” Jenny continued.
“Absolutely. I’d love that.” Nina smiled at her, and the two women hugged by way of goodbye. Nina helped Jack into the back seat, then came around to say goodbye to Charles. He and Theo were engaged in what looked like a serious conversation, and Nina held back, not wanting to interrupt them.
