Rekindled (30 page)

I lead him upstairs to my bedroom which is at the end of the hallway. Not much has changed since the last time I was here, seven years ago. The walls are still painted a pale shade of lilac and my bed still has the same floral duvet that my mom picked out for me when I was sixteen. I’ve removed the posters of Harry Connick Jr., and taken down the glass Disney figurines that sat on top of my dresser, but have yet to add anything that would make this room feel like it belonged to an adult.

I gesture for him to take a seat on the bed and I let my eyes drink in the sight of him reclined against one of my pillows before I head over to the closet and rummage through a stack of boxes until I find the one I’m looking for. There it is, tucked away in the corner of the closet, beneath the boxes filled with artwork, essays and book reports from when I was a child, and next to the boxes stuffed with unsent letters addressed to my parents.

Picking out the box filled with my memories of Tate, I hand it over to him and climb onto my bed, letting him pull my legs onto his lap.

“What is all this?” He lifts the lid off and begins to rifle through some of the items.

“Things from our past. Things that reminded me of you.”

“Oh my god.” He pulls out a stack of photographs with a giant grin on his face. “Do you remember how sick I was after this?” He flips the photograph around so that I’m staring at a thirteen-year old version of Tate, with blueberry pie smudged all over his face as he sits sandwiched between two older men during the pie eating contest during the Memorial Day town picnic. “I don’t think I ate blueberries for a whole year after that.”

I laugh remembering the bet we made that day. If Tate could eat five whole pies, I agreed to watch all the
Lethal Weapon
movies with him, but if he failed, he had to watch
Clueless.
“You gave it a good effort. I was surprised you were able to make it through three of those.”

“Thanks for not making me watch
Clueless
after that.”

“Yeah, well, you looked like you were on the verge of death after all that sugar. Making you watch a chick flick on top of that would have been cruel and unusual punishment.”

He chuckles, but quickly clears his throat when a little voice comes from the doorway.

“Mommy, I don’t feel good,” Jonah says, clutching his stomach as he wobbles towards us.

Retracting my legs from Tate’s grasp, I scoot to the edge of the bed and hold my arms open, folding them around his little body as he climbs into my lap. Pressing my lips to his forehead, his skin feels feverish, and I let my hand stroke his hair and his face as he closes his eyes. The bed shifts as Tate stands, and he heads toward the door.

“I’ll go get him some water,” he says.

“Thanks.”

I’m afraid of what Jonah saw, unsure of what he will think, or what I should tell him, but luckily, he doesn’t seem to have even registered that something was going on. Eventually I will need to sit down with him and have a discussion about Tate and my relationship, but I’m dreading for that moment. How do you tell your six-year-old son that you’re seeing someone new? Divorce can be a very confusing time for children, and I’m worried my relationship with Tate will only puzzle him more, but luckily so far Jonah seems thrilled to have Tate around.

“Is it just your tummy that’s hurting?” I ask.

“M-hm.”

“Do you think you need to throw up again?”

“Maybe, but I don’t want to. I don’t like throwing up. It feels yucky.”

I let out a small laugh. “I know, sweetheart. No one likes to throw up, but sometimes you have to let your body do what it needs to, so that you can feel better.”

He nods in understanding, and as I stare at my baby boy, I find myself wishing I could take away his pain. I wrap an arm around his body and pull us to the top of the bed, letting him rest against my belly, enjoying the sound of his breathing. When he was just a baby, I used to lay with him on my chest, snuggled against me, listening to him breathe for hours, thinking about how lucky I am to have him.

When I first learned about my pregnancy, my teenage mind couldn’t wrap around the idea of being a mother. I didn’t know the first thing about raising a baby, and the idea of having a mini-me to care for, and to be responsible for, terrified me. But the moment the nurse handed him to me, swaddled in a blue blanket with his eyes squeezed shut and his tiny fingers wrapped around my thumb, that was when I knew I’d never love anyone or anything more than this little boy. As soon as he was in my arms, all my other worries and fears melted away, because nothing else mattered except for my son. Within the span of minutes, my world shifted on its axis and I went from not knowing how to being a mother, to not knowing how to not.

“Mom,” Jonah says as his eyes blink open and he begins to sit up. “I—”

I sigh as he throws up all over me mid-sentence. Tears streak his cheeks as he finishes and I use one hand to rub his back, while using the other to try to shimmy out of my robe.

“I-I’m s-sorry,” he says, in between choked sobs.

“It’s okay, Jonah, you don’t have to be sorry.”

Tate reappears in the doorway holding a glass of water and some saltine crackers. “Here, drink this. It’ll make your tummy feel better.” He hands Jonah the glass of water and then pulls my cell phone from his pocket. “You left this downstairs. I hope you don’t mind, but I answered it when a call came in.”

“That’s fine, who was it?”

“I think it was probably a wrong number. They hung up without saying anything.”

I shrug and take the phone, glancing at the screen. I don’t recognize the number, but that’s not abnormal considering a good chunk of the calls I receive are just telemarketers or automated message systems trying to convince me to buy a timeshare in Hawaii or join a trial study for a new weight loss drug. I set the phone down on the nightstand and finish removing my robe. “He threw up again. Do you think you could run and grab a towel for him?”

“Of course.” Tate rushes out of the room and reappears with a couple of towels, handing them to Jonah so he can wipe his mouth. He points to my shirt. “You got a little bit on you, why don’t I take Jonah to clean up while you change and then I can help you change the bedding?”

I nod, grateful for the help. Tate carries Jonah out of the room, and I quickly slip off my clothes and put on a pair of grey pajama pants with a matching tank top. Checking myself in the mirror, I throw my hair up into a bun and pin it with a couple of bobby pins before heading down the hallway to Jonah’s room.

Jonah’s all changed into his new pajamas that have monster trucks all over them, and he’s resting against Tate’s arm pointing to something in a photograph.

“Is that my mom?” He giggles.

“It is. Hard to believe, huh?” Tate says, glancing up at me before winking in my direction, causing my heart to stutter.

“Why’s she look so funny? She looks like an alien.”

Tate lets out a loud chuckle. “That,” he says tapping his finger against the photo, “is called a headgear. Your mom had to wear it at night.”

“Why?”

“Because, when she was a kid, her teeth weren’t aligned properly so she had to have braces to fix it. But because her teeth were really bad, she also had to wear the headgear while she was sleeping. But you know, you’re right, she does kind of look like an alien, doesn’t she?”

“Yep. Except her head isn’t very pointy at the top and her skin isn’t green.”

“I think all that hair hides the point on her head.”

“Okay, very funny,” I say, marching over and snatching the photograph out of their hands. Turning it around, I grimace at the photo. I was twelve when my parents made me get braces, and I hated every second of it. Of course, now I can appreciate what they did for me, but back then, being called brace-face wasn’t the happiest point of my life.

“Is this you?” Jonah asks as he points at another photo Tate’s holding.

“It is. This was taken when your mom and I were fifteen. And this,” he says, shifting the photo so Jonah can see it better, “is my kid sister, Rylee.”

I lower myself onto the bed and peer over at the photograph, remembering exactly when that was taken. It’s one of my favorite ones.

“We’ve got you surrounded, come out with your hands up!” Tate’s voice echoes against the trees, making it hard to tell where it’s really coming from.

I look over at Rylee who’s crouched next to me, behind a fallen log as we each reach for a snowball. She shoots me a toothy grin as I nod to her and slowly peer over the log to check for the enemy. I can see Johnny’s bright red cap peeking out from behind a tree, and I know Tate’s probably on the other side, getting ready to ambush us.

“Okay, Ry,” I whisper, as I let my hands pack the snow tighter so that it’ll fly better. “I see your dad by that tree over there.” My head nods in his direction and her eyes follow in understanding. “I’m not sure where Tate is, though. Are you ready?”

“Yep, let’s do this!”

We stand and start hurling snowballs at the tree where Johnny’s hiding, when I feel something cold and wet smack into the back of my head. Whirling around, I see Tate and Matt standing behind us laughing as a snowball whizzes by my head and lands in the snow a few inches from me.

“Rylee, now!” I yell as we each bend down and pluck more snowballs from our arsenal and being hurling them at the boys.

“You guys are dead meat!” Rylee screams as she winds up and pitches a snowball overhand, hitting Matt straight in the chest.

Snowballs are flying everywhere and Johnny has joined in the fight, making it two against three, but Rylee’s got a crazy strong arm for a nine-year old and is hitting her mark more than any of the guys. By the time we all run out of snowballs, we’re all laughing and clutching our sides as we try to catch our breaths, the frigid air making it feel like I’m sucking down dry ice.

Johnny walks towards us with his hands up in surrender. “Truce. I call a truce.”

“That’s because we won,” Rylee says.

“You’ve got me there, Rylee-bear. I can’t beat that arm of yours. I’m just an old man.” He wraps his arms around her and kisses the top of her head. Tate and Matt appear with huge grins on their faces. “Why don’t you guys make that snowman you’ve been wanting before it gets dark, and I’ll go heat up some hot chocolate and cookies for when you’re done?”

It takes us an hour, and our creation is a sorry excuse for a snowman, but I love it because it’s ours.

“Here, let me take a picture with you guys next to it,” Matt pulls out a disposable camera from his pocket. Tate and I stand next to the snowman, putting Rylee in front of us, each of us draping an arm over her shoulder as we smile wide. “Okay, one…two…three…say cheese!”

“Cheese!”

“I’ve never been in the snow,” Jonah says as his eyes drift closed and his voice grows quiet.

“Oh, yeah?” Tate says, placing the photos on the nightstand and pulling the covers up over Jonah’s body.

“Yeah, it doesn’t snow in Los Angeles. I think I’d like it, though. I think I’d like making a snowman someday.”

“Well, how about if you and your mom are here for the winter sometime, we’ll make a snowman together, okay?”

“Okay.” Jonah rolls onto his side and his breathing has slowed down as sleep begins to pull him under.

I stand and flip the lights off, but freeze when I hear the next words out of Jonah’s mouth.

“Goodnight, Tate. I love you,” he says.

I swallow, unsure of how Tate’s going to react. Tate tenses, and at first I think he’s going to ignore Jonah’s words, but instead he leans over and kisses Jonah’s forehead and says, “Goodnight, Jonah. I love you, too,” and with those six words, I realize just how much I want Tate to be a part of our family.