“Thank you.” He bent down and kissed her, his lips tickling her soul into wanting nothing more than to stay in his arms forever. “Thank you very much.”
The bickering voices on the porch told her that Kevin’s children were returning. She slowly eased out of his arms, missing him before he was even an arm’s length away.
“That’s enough of that,” she scolded. “I don’t have time for this right now.”
“Boy,” he said. “You’re pretty darn bossy for a youngest child.”
“I’ve spent a lifetime suppressing my need to control,” she replied. “It had to come out sometime.”
Slipping around behind her, Kevin had his arms around her again. He bent down and nuzzled her ear. “I can’t wait to see what else I can uncover.”
Desires flared in her heart, trying to drown out all sense of reason. She wanted to turn in his embrace, to find those lips that so haunted her dreams and lurked just below the surface of her thoughts. She wanted to play that dangerous game with the fire of their passion, flicking in ever closer and trying not to get burned. But his kids were on the porch and about to burst into the kitchen.
“Kevin.” Sam put an elbow in his ribs, getting a satisfying grunt in response. “Later. Your kids are here.”
“So what do you want to do now?” Stacy asked as they cleaned up the dishes after brunch.
“I don’t know.” Kevin shrugged and went back to loading the dishwasher. The meal had been just fine—casual and easy. Everyone was sitting around, getting to know each other. It had been a great birthday. “We could relax and chat.”
“You mean sit around and talk?” Stacy wailed.
“You’re letting this 4-0 thing take the air out of your tires, dear old Dad.”
Kevin looked hard at his son, not needing any reminders of his age today. “Maybe you’d like to do a little run down by the river,” he said. “How about six or seven miles?”
“No,” Sam and Stacy shouted in unison. “No way.”
“We just ate,” Jon protested and grabbed the frying pan from his sister’s hand and began to dry it. “Besides, I have a meet tomorrow.”
“We can play a game of Monopoly,” Sam suggested.
His kids hooted at her.
“All right,” she said with a laugh. “It was just an idea. Someone else can make a suggestion.” She accepted their teasing so good-naturedly that it took Kevin’s breath away and sent fingers of warm hunger along his spine.
“It’s a nice day.” Stacy let the dishwater out of the sink. “We should do something outside.”
“I agree,” Kevin said. It was too beautiful a day to stay inside, and he was feeling too good to be cooped up.
“We can play Monopoly outside,” Sam said.
This time the groans were more subdued.
“Let’s go in-line skating.” Stacy suggested.
“Yeah,” her brother agreed. “At the university. There’s a lot of neat places there.”
“How about it, Sam?” Stacy asked. “You game?”
“Sure, I enjoy in-line skating.” Sam looked for a long moment into Kevin’s eyes as if trying to read his thoughts. “Although I think the birthday boy should choose. After all, it is his day.”
“Dad?” Jon prompted.
Kevin shrugged. It wasn’t what he would have chosen—or even thought of—but if it was what they all wanted to do, it was fine with him. He felt young with Sam’s smile on him. Young and able to keep up with anybody. This was his chance to prove to himself that all his worrying was nonsense.
“Sure. Why not?” he said.
“Have you ever been in-line skating?” Sam asked him.
Traces of annoyance danced in his stomach. “Yes,” he replied. “I’ve been roller-skating.”
“In-line skating is—”
“I know.” She was going to tell him it was different; the wheels were in line rather than at the corners of a rectangle. “I’ve also ice-skated.”
It was a long, long time ago, but nobody knew that. And nobody had to know that. A reasonable athlete could do any of these things. Besides, it wasn’t like they were going to play hockey or anything like that. They were just going to skate around on some sidewalks. Big deal.
They finished cleaning up the kitchen and then Sam drove them to a small sporting goods store on the eastern edge of town, not too far from the university. They rented the skates and the necessary protective gear. The clerk seemed to know her well, calling her by name and asking about all her siblings. It was obvious that she’d been there before. Probably with her young friends.
The skies were clear and sunny as they drove on to the university, but Kevin could feel the dark clouds crowding in. What the hell was he doing? Who was he trying to kid?
This was going to be fun. He could feel it in his bones—the ones he was going to break.
Sam parked and they all strapped on their skates, knee and elbow pads. While the kids and Sam tried a few practice runs over the paved parking lot, Kevin tried to stay standing. His ankles wanted to wobble and collapse. It felt a lot different than roller-skating.
Or maybe his memory was going, and he couldn’t remember what roller-skating was like. This was a really bad idea.
“Sure I couldn’t have rented a body cast right off the bat?” he asked. They all laughed. What a card old Dad was. A joke a minute.
“Come on, Dad,” Jon said, obviously anxious to do some real skating. “Race you to the end of the quadrangle.”
Right—only if they could find a quadrangle with a fence to cling to the whole length.
“He doesn’t want to race.” Sam took Kevin’s hand. “He wants to stay with me.”
“Aww,” his kids sang out in a chorus, with stupid grins on their faces.
They thought it was cute. He thought it was pitiful. Sam obviously saw him as a miserable old man, unable to do the simplest athletic thing. And the awful truth was that he couldn’t. He just knew he was going to fall. He could feel his ankles ready to sprain, his wrists ready to break.
He should get back in the car. He should say an old football injury was acting up, except that he’d never played football and the kids knew it. He should say he’d changed his mind and wanted to play Monopoly, after all.
“Come on,” his son said. “Are we going to stand around or skate?”
“What are you waiting for?” Kevin said lightly. “You want me to hold your hand?”
“Ha, ha,” Jon sneered as he and Stacy took off, moving with the smooth natural grace of the young and athletic.
“Come on,” Sam murmured to him. “Let’s go.”
Something in her voice hit him hard, like he’d been slugged in the solar plexus. His breath was gone for the moment and his head spun. She had read every doubt and worry that had flitted through his mind. She was dividing the group mentally into the young and the old; chronologically she knew she belonged with the young, but emotionally she was going to stay with the old.
He hated the idea of it and pulled his hand out of hers. “I think it would be best if I didn’t hold your hand, either.”
She gave him a questioning look and he tried to make light of it, tried to joke away his depression. “You have to learn to stand on your own sometime.”
She still didn’t say anything.
“Come on, come on,” he said, forcing his voice to sound enthusiastic. “Let’s get going. We came to skate, didn’t we?”
Sam turned and followed after his kids, slowly and uncertainly. And they proceeded in this manner—his kids way up ahead, Kevin bringing up the rear, and Sam floating back and forth in between—down the length of the quadrangle. But it was all right. He wobbled a few times, but he didn’t fall. He felt brave enough to even pick up his speed a hair when they turned onto the main quadrangle.
Other college-age kids were around, some biking and some in-line skating, too. A few were on the grass studying or playing Frisbee. He might be the oldest one around, but he wasn’t old. Not yet.
/> He took a deep breath and let the beauty of the day relax him as he skated in and out of patches of shade. From the other side of the campus, steeple bells were chiming and from up ahead, he could hear Stacy’s laughter. It was going well.
Jon and Stacy went around the side of a building and onto a parking lot. They were heading for the wide sidewalk that ran around the lake—except that they had to go down a steep slope first to get there.
The kids went down it as if they were flying. Sam went down just as smoothly. Kevin just stared at like it was a ski jump looming ahead, refusing to let his feet slow. He could do it. He could do it. He could—
Some bicyclers came around the corner of the building and sped by him. They didn’t touch him; they didn’t even brush close to him. But they startled him and he felt his sense of balance evaporate. His feet were skidding one way and his body another. His arms were waving like he was a windmill.
The slope loomed ahead and he knew he would never make it down alive. He turned and with awkward, crablike steps wobbled onto the grass and into a nearby tree.
“You okay?” Sam was asking.
“What happened?” Stacy wanted to know.
“Nice move, Dad,” Jon said.
“Nothing happened,” he said, trying hard not to show his impatience. “I just wanted to take a closer look at this tree.”
“Right,” Jon said with a snicker.
“You sure you’re okay?” Sam pressed.
“I’m fine. I’m fine.” He pushed away from the tree. “Let’s get going, shall we?”
The kids hurried back over to the lake, but Sam lagged behind as if he needed a keeper. He got back on the sidewalk—down below the slope—and made his way over to the lake.
“We could stop up there and wait for the kids,” Sam suggested, nodding ahead toward a kiosk at a bus stop.
Sure, Kevin thought bitterly. There was even a roof over it to keep his old gray head out of the sun.
“I’m fine. This is fun,” he insisted.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Hey, this is just my first time,” he protested. “You can’t expect me to be up to their speed.”
They looked up ahead at the kids who were doing fancier stuff—skating backward, along with some dips and spins. Stacy did a jump that would put Kevin in traction for months if he even thought about doing it.
“Cool, Stacy!” Sam called out. “How’d you do that?”
Stacy waited for them to catch up, then she went through the jump again for Sam as Jon tried to convince Sam to try some of his moves. Kevin purposely let himself fall behind again.
The three of them were really getting along. But then, why shouldn’t they? They were all young, athletic, full of life. In other words, they were contemporaries.
He was the oddball. There was no denying reality.
“You can’t light all the candles in here,” Kevin protested. “You’ll burn the house down.”
“Have no fear.” Sam was laughing as she reached into the pocket of the sweater vest she wore. “I have everything under control.”
They were back at the house after a few hours of the torture of in-line skating. Of the agony of staring reality in the face. He had to be a man and end this thing with Sam. But first he had to get through this next hour of having the birthday cake with the kids. Once they went back to school, he would find the words to say goodbye to Sam. He tried to maintain a happy face, but it was getting harder and harder.
Sam pulled out four large candles. “See? Only four. No need for the fire department to be on standby.” She stuck them into the top of the cake.
“I take it those are decadent candles,” he said.
Three pairs of eyes stared at him. Boy, sometimes it seemed that the younger the person, the more dense their brain.
“You know,” he said. “I’m forty. Four decades.”
“We knew what you meant,” Stacy said.
“Yeah,” Jon added. “We just can’t believe you’d say something like that.”
“Aw, come on, guys,” Sam interjected on his behalf. “It was kind of cute.”
Stacy groaned. “Don’t say that,” she told Sam.
“Yeah,” his son said. “If you keep on praising and encouraging him, he’ll never change.”
“I hope he never does.” Then, smiling, Sam lit the four candles and pushed the cake toward Kevin. “There you go, hon.”
“Happy birthday to you,” the three of them sang.
Hon? That was the first time she’d called him that. At least in public. And, as he looked deep into those doe eyes, a galaxy of emotions danced in him: passion, desire, love.
Love.
“Happy birthday to you.”
He loved her. He wanted to spend the rest of his life at her side. He wanted to see her the first thing when he awoke and the last thing before he slept. He wanted to give her the world. He wanted her to be happy.
“Happy birthday, dear—”
“Kevin.”
“Dad.”
There was a jumble of giggles as they said different words.
He looked at the laughing faces around the table and felt a pain stab at his heart. It matched the twinge in his wrist from when he’d skated into the tree and the ache in his knee from trying to avoid the bicyclers. He was so wrong for her. She deserved someone who could keep up with her. A true partner. One who would be a match for her forever.
“Happy birthday to you.”
The words died away and Kevin found it hard to keep his smile in place.
“Now you have to blow out the candles,” Sam said.
“I’m too old for these birthday-boy games.”
“You’re as old as you feel,” Jon muttered.
“I told you,” Stacy said, looking at Sam. “I told you he wouldn’t do it.”
“He has to,” Sam insisted. “Otherwise he’ll have a year of bad luck.”
Kevin wanted to put his foot down, but he was afraid that would just generate a derisive laugh from Sam. And an announcement that he was acting like an old poop.
“Come on, Dad. They’re going to start dripping wax all over the cake.”
“You want me to blow them out for you?” Jon asked.
Kevin took a deep breath and blew out the candles—all four of them in one fell swoop.
“Very good, Dad.”
Kevin picked up the knife and sliced the cake, passing out pieces to everyone. It seemed they all ate it on the run. One second everyone was laughing about the candles and the melted wax, and the next, the kids were taking their empty plates to the dishwasher and talking about the drive back to school.
“Do you really have to go back so early?” he asked.
“Sorry, Daddy,” Stacy replied. “I have to finish a sociology paper and study for a contemporary lit test.”
“I have a cross-country meet tomorrow afternoon,” Jon said.
Nodding, Kevin struggled to hold the smile on his face. His kids had lives of their own, which was the way it should be. Which was the way he wanted. Still, there were times…
His eyes met Sam’s across the table and her gaze said, I’ll be here. But while his heart wanted to sing, he knew it couldn’t. Once the kids had left, it would be time to set his treasure free.
* * *
“Well, that was fun,” Sam said.
Kevin didn’t reply. Instead he gave one last wave and stared after the car as his kids rounded the corner, turning to go south across the river.
She tried again to get a response from him. “Maybe we can get together with them again sometime,” she murmured.
“Yeah.” He continued staring at the bridge, even though his kids were long gone. “Maybe.”
His words were positive but his tone certainly wasn’t. The black cloud he’d been carrying ever since they’d gotten back from skating seemed to have grown darker.
She put an arm through his, wanting to pull him back from whatever shadow he was living in. “How about another piece of
cake?” she asked. “I can make some iced tea to go with it.”
“No, thank you.”
Her arm slipped out from his. Kevin hadn’t been rude, but he definitely didn’t want any cake. Actually, it felt like there were a lot of things he didn’t want, starting with her. Maybe he just needed some time alone.
“I’d better get going,” she said. “Dad might need some help. We’ve got a fiftieth wedding-anniversary party scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.”
“Could you stay a few minutes?” Kevin asked. “I think we need to talk.”
Something in his voice made her heart flutter with fear, but she kept her voice steady. “Sure.”
Silently, she followed him into his house. She hated silence more than anything, especially this heavy kind that hung around, waiting for misunderstandings to happen.
“I’d been hoping to bake your cake myself,” she said, trying to break the mood somehow. “But I didn’t know what kind you liked.”
“It was fine.”
“Stacy said you liked chocolate, but then who doesn’t?”
He didn’t answer and Sam bit her lip to keep from chattering on. She could do that; she could fill up any silence with words as if they were a weapon to fight the darkest demons. But they were only weapons to fight back her own fears, and they were weak weapons at that.
Kevin turned into the living room and sat down in a straight-backed wing chair—the most uncomfortable chair in the room. Sam’s heart skipped a few beats. Bad news was coming.
“Maybe I can bake you a cake some other time,” she said quickly. “After all, there’s no rule that says a person can only eat cake on their birthday.”
“Sam, would you sit down? Please.”
She swallowed hard and stood there clenching and unclenching her fists. She was talking too much. She knew it.
She sat down on the edge of the recliner across from Kevin. It was a chair that was made for relaxing, but sitting on the edge made her as uncomfortable as Kevin. Made them even.
“I don’t think that in-line skating was such a good idea,” she said. “I’m going to feel it for a week.”
“Actually, I think it was a good idea.” A sad smile flickered on his lips. “A very good idea.”
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