“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Stewart.” Jasper smiles warmly at my mom. Smiles. Warmly. My brain malfunctions at the sight.
“Oh, please, call me Lydia.” She loops her arm through his and guides him further into the house. I stay rooted to the spot until Mom glances over her shoulder and calls, “Coming, sweetheart?”
I traipse along behind them, a reel of Jasper’s smile playing in a loop behind my eyes. I’ve barely seen him smile in the time I’ve known him, and he’s certainly never smiled like that in front of me. Mom introduces Jasper to Emilio, who greets him with a hearty handshake before stepping around him to grip my shoulders and kiss both my cheeks.
“I’m so glad we’re finally able to spend some time together,” he says, his light Spanish accent making the words sound lyrical. “Your mother is very important to me and I would like for the three of us to have a good relationship. Four of us,” he amends, tilting his head in Jasper’s direction.
“Oh, Jasper and I are just friends,” I say quickly. “But thank you, I appreciate that. I’m looking forward to getting to know you better.”
Mom pops up beside Emilio, her hand resting in the center of his back. “Why don’t you kids have a seat and we’ll go get the dessert and wine?”
As Mom and Emilio disappear into the kitchen, Jasper says quietly, “Can’t remember the last time someone referred to me as a kid.”
“Thereallyfunny part is she’s only, like, fifteen years older than you,” I tell him as he sits in my favorite armchair while I take the couch seat closest to his chair.
His eyebrows inch up. “I assumed she was young, but not quitethatyoung.”
“You know how people—often flirty older men—will say ‘I bet you get mistaken for sisters all the time’, which is usually a compliment to the mother but leaves the daughter rolling her eyes? Well, we get that a lot, and I take it as a compliment. My mom is gorgeous and looks at least a decade younger than she is. I just have to hope I’ve inherited her genes.”
I glance over my shoulder toward the kitchen when I hear the low rumble of Emilio’s voice followed by a girlish giggle from my mom. The sound makes me smile. When I turn back, I catch Jasper watching me, his lips curved slightly.
“I don’t think you have to worry about that.” Before I can process his meaning, Mom bustles into the room carrying a tray with four bowls. Emilio enters a moment later with another tray, his holding four small glasses and a crystal decanter of amber liquid.
Mom hands out dessert, explaining it’s homemade vanilla ice cream that she made in the new ice cream maker Emilio surprised her with, topped with dulce de leche courtesy of Emilio. After the wine has been poured and passed, Mom sits beside me on the couch and Emilio takes the armchair on the other end of the coffee table.
I’m pleased—and relieved—when conversation starts flowing naturally. Emilio surprises me by asking both Jasper and me insightful questions about our lives and jobs. I let Jasper do most of the talking since I’m sure Emilio already knows all about me from Mom, plus I’m always curious to learn more about Jasper. I’m also quite content to sit back and enjoy my sinfully delicious dessert while listening to the easy conversation around me.
The conversation isn’t the only ‘easy’ thing, either. The level of familiarity and comfort between Mom and Emilio gives me a strangely bittersweet feeling. I’m genuinely happy for her; she deserves to have love and romance in her life, someone who adores her and will take care of her the way Emilio obviously does. But that ‘end of an era’ feeling keeps niggling away at the back of my brain. I’m nearly thirty-five and Mom is in her mid-fifties, yet I can’t deny the part of me that’s sad at the idea of having to share her after all these years.
“Your mom and I were talking about the possibility of you joining us for Thanksgiving,” Emilio says after the third time he’s topped up my wine glass. Jasper stopped after one glass and offered to drive since he has to get his car from my apartment anyway.
From the corner of my eye, I see Jasper sit up straighter.Shit. I hadn’t told anyone about Mom going away with Emilio for Thanksgiving. “While I appreciate the offer, the two of you should go ahead as planned. I’m sure you had a romantic getaway in mind, and I don’t want to be a third wheel.”
“We can do a romantic getaway anytime,” Emilio says. He glances at Mom with so much affection, it makes my breath catch. “It would be a good chance for us to spend time together.”
“You’re so sweet to want to include me, but I actually made my own plans for that weekend when Mom told me you asked her to go away.” Blame the wine for lubricating the lie and making it an easy one to tell. After seeing how in love these two are, how they can barely keep their eyes—or their hands—off each other, there’s no way I’m going to put a damper on their first weekend away as a couple, even if that weekend is a national holiday. “We’ll find other things to do as a trio after Thanksgiving. I want the two of you to go and enjoy your time together, guilt free.”
The way Mom smiles at me with love and pride shining in her eyes, tells me I did the right thing.
When we leave an hour later, Mom wraps me in a tight hug while Jasper and Emilio talk about a small town in Northern Ontario they both love. “I really like Jasper,” Mom whispers. I must tense in her arms because she adds, “I know you’re just friends, but don’t you think there’s potential for something more? I think you’d be good for each other.”
I don’t have a chance to respond before she releases me and turns to hug Jasper. I vaguely hear her making him promise to come back again as Emilio embraces me. “It was so nice to spend time with you tonight,” he says, placing a kiss on each of my cheeks. “I’ll look forward to doing this again.”
We linger for another couple of minutes over goodbyes, with Mom giving me another hug while Emilio claps Jasper on the shoulder. When we step outside, the air has cooled considerably. This is the first time it’s reallyfeltlike autumn. I pause and take a deep breath, inhaling the damp, earthy scent that’s part of what I love about this season.
Since I only thought to grab a cardigan before leaving my apartment, the chilly air makes a full-body shiver roll through me. The force of it—likely paired with the four glasses of wine I just drank, plus the two I had earlier with my pizza—makes me tip to the side. Jasper steps in to steady me. Without thinking, I loop my arm through his as we walk to my car.
He guides me around to the passenger side, where he frees his arm from mine and holds out his hand. I place my hand in his, noticing how long and thin his fingers are. My mind conjures up images of Jasper’s hands on my body, but those lovely fantasies are dashed when his fingers close around mine and squeeze. “I need your keys,” he says quietly.
“Oh.Oh!Right.” I laugh and start digging around in my purse, glad I have an excuse to duck my head and hide my embarrassment. “Thanks for offering to drive. I’m not usually a big drinker, but it was nice to indulge a bit. Or I guessa lotwould be more accurate.”
Jasper smiles slightly as he takes the keys from me. Something about Mom and Emilio must have put him at ease because his smiles seemed to come with less effort tonight. I might have to figure out ways for us to hang out with my mom and her boyfriend more often.
He opens the passenger door and waits for me to get in before closing it and striding around to the driver’s side. With the key in the ignition and the car still off, he meticulously adjusts the seat, steering wheel, and mirrors. Despite knowing it’s necessary, seeing as he’s taller than I am, it makes me cringe; I’m very particular about these things and I’ll likely spend way longer than required adjusting them back the next time I drive.
When we finally set off, I’m not surprised Jasper goes the long way so we pass his childhood home once more. For a long time after Mom and I moved to Cambridge Street, I’d ask her to drive past our old house whenever we were close by. To my tween self, that house represented the last place we were a family of three. It wasn’t until a year or so after we moved and my dad had less and less to do with me that I realized how painful the reminders were to Mom. I had romanticized my memories and thought of us as a happy family when that wasn’t actually the case. At least not in the years leading up to their divorce. I stopped asking her to drive by the old house after that.
Jasper has legitimate happy memories of his childhood home, though. While I thought of my family as a unit, it was often Mom and me alone at home while Dad worked late and eventually started having an affair that led to him leaving. From everything I’ve heard about the Perrys from Jasper and Evan, it sounds like they truly were a family unit. Solid. Endless, unconditional love.
