“When it finally gets too old to drive.”
He rolled his eyes. “That may never happen with this old Toyota.”
“You say that, but cars eventually get too bad to drive,” she frowned. “I don’t care about what my car says about me. It's not a status thing for me.”
“I just want to know you’re safe on the road,” Nick said.
“This car is still safe.”
“They don’t have inspections in New Mexico. You can’t blame me for that.”
Nick’s mom laughed. “I’m fine. You’re worrying too much.”
“I have a good reason to worry.”
She paused and looked at him carefully. “Because I’m your mother?”
“Mhm.” He didn’t want to get into it yet. There would be a much better time for that later. Not that he had any idea how he would say what he needed to say. “I can’t help that I worry.”
“I feel like that’s not the only reason.” She waited for him to climb in, then pulled out of the driveway of the apartment complex. They drove through the streets of town.
Nick looked out the window, letting the ride fall into silence. Las Cruces was a beautiful town, understated and very common, with squat buildings surrounded by gravel and dirt. The entire place had the air of a ghost town because of the dust that swirled in the air, even if it was swirling around a Walmart or other modern chain store or restaurant.
They were heading to a deli that had been used for family dinners for Nick’s entire childhood. It was the kind of memory that he hadn’t been able to develop with his son. He wished that he knew what to do about it all, and that he knew what to say. It felt so impossible.
His mother pulled the car into the parking lot in front of the squat brick building. It was a little place that might be called a hole in the wall from the dust that had settled in between the bricks. The silence lingered as they went in, placing their orders before they sat down. Then more silence followed, before his mother broke it.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
“About what?” He knew immediately that he answered entirely too quickly. She gave him a look.
“It’s impossible to explain,” he hedged.
“Try,” she prodded. “Something is bothering you, and it has to be something bad.”
“I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about it yet,” Nick said. “I don’t even know if I fully understand it yet.”
“Then you want to wait,” his mother sighed. “What else can we talk about? I didn’t come to dinner to watch you stare out the window all night.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“Let’s talk about the apartment. Are you liking it so far?”
“I actually am,” Nick said. “It’s a nice little complex. We don’t even have a lot of students.”
“None of them have figured out where you live yet, then?”
“Nope,” he shook his head.
“That’s good.”
“It’s better than good. It’s really starting to feel like home.”
That earned a smile from his mother. “I love the fact that you’re back in town.”
“It’s going really well. I even managed to get in touch with Rosalinda.”
“Oh?”
“She’s actually working up at the college. In the physics department.”
“Is she a professor too?”
Nick nodded. “Did you ever expect any different?” He hadn’t met to bring her up, and felt the stress start to rise up like a bad case of heartburn.
“I guess I didn’t,” she replied. “She was a good kid. It’s nice to know that she’s doing well for herself. Did she ever start a family?”
“She has a son.”
“That sounds really nice.”
He paused. He was going to have to tell her at some point. “He’s seven, almost eight.”
“I bet he’s adorable.”
“He is. A little blond boy,” Nick smiled brightly. “He doesn’t look like his mother at all.”
“Like his father then?”
“Very much like his father.”
“Did she get married?”
He shook his head. “She didn’t, no.”
“Didn’t you have a crush on her?”
“I did, yeah,” he admitted. “There was a time that I thought that I had a chance.”
“I feel like there’s something you’re dancing around. Are you going to tell me or not?”
Nick sighed heavily. “I’m sorry. But her son, he’s…” He paused, trying to find the right words. “I’m his father.”
“What?” his mother said in surprise. “You just caught back up with her. How could he be?”
“It happened before I got married.”
“You never told me any of this?” She shook her head. “It’s crazy. How could you have hidden this from me?”
“I didn’t know. She saw me getting married, and just never told me. She didn’t want to hurt me.”
“I have a grandson? I can’t believe it.”
The food arrived, but it was quickly ignored. The news that Nick had just shared was too much. Nick decided to let his mother continue to panic about it for a while. The woman didn’t stop talking at all.
“This is a cruel joke,” she said.
“It’s not a joke. I promise. I wouldn’t do this to you.”
“You’d better not be.”
“I’m not. It’s true. If you saw him, you would know it too. There’s no way to hide who his father is.”
His mother frowned. “Is that why she never visited me?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask her about that. I can’t explain any of that. All I know is that she didn’t want to destroy my marriage, so she never said a word. I hate the fact that she had to hide it away.”
“She didn’t have to hide it away,” his mother said. “You would have done the right thing.”
“I know that, but she didn’t want me to feel like I had to.”
Nick’s mother sighed. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. It’s just so much, so hard to figure out.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know… I really don’t,” Nick said. Her panic was starting to rile up his own. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know if it would be cruel to get to know him, or to interfere with his life. She’s taken care of him. She’s been an amazing mother.”
“But you want to get to know him.”
“Why wouldn’t I? He’s my son.”
“Then you should get to know him.” His mother was starting to think rationally. Something about seeing her son on the verge of a breakdown seemed to snap her back to reality. “But carefully.”
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
“Of course you don’t.” She took his hands. “You never want to hurt anyone. But you want to get to know him.”
“Am I that obvious?”
“Yeah, you kind of are.”
“What do I do?”
“You talk to his mother. She’s going to know him better than anyone else in the world. She’s going to be able to help you. You need to work with her.”
“Are you sure that’s going to work?”
“No. There’s no way to know that for sure. That’s just not something that’s possible for you to know.”
He nodded slowly. “I should have paid more attention. She was pregnant at the wedding. I should have seen it.”
“I thought she was a little heavy. But I never guessed. And I have a lot more experience with pregnant women than you do.”
He smiled softly. “That makes me feel a little better, at least.”
“What about her?”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you used to have a crush on her. It’s not going to stay a secret for long, how the kid was made. Do you still have feelings for her?”
He paused. Was he ready to admit this?
“That’s all I needed to know,” his
mother said, giving him a knowing smile. “I think that you can figure out how you want this to end.”
“You’re about to say something cliché, aren’t you?”
“All you have to do now is figure out how to get from the point where you are right now, to the point where you want to be in the future.”
He groaned. “Why did you have to do that?”
“Because I’m your mother. And it needed to be said.”
“You have this way to bring out the eye rolling teenager in me that no one else in the world has, did you know that?”
His mother laughed. “That’s exactly what a mother is supposed to do. And you wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“You’re very right about that.” He nodded slowly. “I’m sorry.”
“I wish I could have held the boy in my arms, but I know that this is all going to work out in the end.”
“I hope it does,” Nick said.
“Have some faith.”
11
First Night
Rosalinda paced. She didn’t mean to; it wasn’t how she was expecting to react to all of this. It was all so impossible to handle, so impossible to admit even to herself. This was just so insane, so crazy. And she had to fix everything that she had screwed up.
There was no way to know if Nick would ever forgive her. There was no chance that he could love her after what had happened. It had been a giant lie; an impossible secret that she couldn’t handle at all. And she felt the pain of it in ways that she never thought she would understand.
She had to stop herself, and she forced it to happen. Nick would be arriving at any time, and he was supposed to meet his son for the first time. The first face to face meeting. Rosalinda was fraught with peril. Everything could go wrong with this meeting. Everything could just explode at any second, and she felt the stress of it.
The knock seemed to take forever to come; but finally, Nick was there.
“Nick,” she greeted him.
“Rosa,” he said, smiling at her as soon as she let him in.
“You seem happy.”
“Why wouldn’t I be? I need to be happy.” He kept smiling. “I know that it’s kind of crazy, but I want him to think of me as happy.”
“I get that,” she nodded along.
“Is he here?”
“He’s playing in his room.”
Nick nodded, pulling his messenger bag off of his shoulder and placing it on the coffee table. “I brought popcorn and a few movies. I figured we would order some pizza or something else, and just have a night in where Dominick is comfortable.”
Rosalinda nodded. “That sounds great.” It all sounded so amazing; the perfect moment to get to know each other. She didn’t know what her son was going to say to the man, but she had to give the shot. “Dom!” she called out.
The little boy came scrambling out of his room. “Is he here?”
“Yeah, he’s here.”
Nick stuck out his hand. “I’m Nick.”
“I’m Dominick!” The little boy shook the older man’s hand. Rosalinda’s breath caught as she looked at the resemblance between the two of them.
“It’s nice to meet you, Dominick.”
“Mom says we’re going to watch movies tonight.”
“We are. I hope you don’t mind me joining you guys.”
“Are you going to date my Mom?” The kid was just out with it.
Rosalinda’s jaw dropped. “Dominick!” she shouted. “That’s rude.”
“It’s true, though. You can totally date him.”
“You know that I don’t date,” she protested.
“It had to happen eventually,” Dominick shrugged.
Nick laughed. “I think he wants you to start dating.”
“That’s not happening, though.”
“Then why is he here?” the seven-year-old popped off with. “You don’t have men over a lot.”
“I know I don’t.”
“You never do it.”
“I know.”
“Like ever.”
Rosalinda smiled. “Tonight is a little different.”
“What kind of different?”
“The kind where we all get to know each other,” the dark-haired woman explained. She noticed that Nick was letting her answer that. He was letting her try to explain, and she felt so strange about it.
“Is he going to stay the night?”
Nick finally spoke. “I’m not going to stay the night, but I am going to order pizza.”
“I love pizza.”
“Just about every kid in the world does. Why don’t you take a look in that bag, and tell me if you want to watch any of those movies?”
The kid started to dig into Nick’s bag, and Rosalinda sidled up next to him. “Did you buy all of those movies for tonight?”
“I may have borrowed them from my mother’s house.”
“Why does your mom have a bunch of kid’s movies?”
“Great nephews. She baby sits them a lot.”
“That’s really nice of her.”
“She would do the same for him.”
Rosalinda felt a twinge of guilt swing into her gut like a baseball bat. Maybe it was a little more than a twinge. She visibly winced.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You never thought I would see him, did you?”
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t. How would I ever guess that?”
“I don’t know. I can’t really know.” He sighed heavily. “I’m sorry.”
“You had a right to know.”
“It’s not that easy,”
“What are you talking about?” Dominick asked. They hadn’t noticed him walking over to them with a movie in hand.
“Just adult stuff. What’s going on?”
“I wanna watch this one.”
Nick looked it over, but Rosalinda took it and set it on the DVD player. It was one of those family movies. Nothing really special, just a classic tale of lost pets finding their way home. “You’re lucky I still have a DVD player.”
“I didn’t even pay attention to that,” Nick confessed with a smile. “I probably should have.”
“You definitely should have.” She grinned right back at him. “But it’s okay.”
“Thanks for understanding, at least.”
“Hey, that’s what my mom does. She understands everything,” the kid piped up.
“She is a real smart lady,” Nick agreed.
“The smartest.”
Nick smiled. “You must really love her a lot.”
“I really do.”
“And I love you too,” Rosalinda answered. “You’re my favorite son.”
“I’m your only son,” the boy rolled his eyes.
“Doesn’t make it any less true.”
“I know, Mom.”
“Good. Keep knowing that.”
Nick laughed. “You two are adorable together.”
“Mom, tell him that I’m seven. I’m not adorable.”
Rosalinda tsked. “He’s seven, he’s not adorable.” She was smiling, though. And very happy to see them joking like this.
Nick shook his head with a smile and sat down. “Good to know. I won’t make that mistake again. What do you want on your pizza?”
“Pepperoni!”
“What about you?” He turned to the dark-haired woman. “What do you want?”
“Hmmm. What about Hawaiian?”
“She likes that. It’s pretty gross,” Dominick said, making a face about the pizza toppings.
Nick laughed loudly. “She liked it when she was a teenager, too.”
“She did?”
“She did. All her life, she’s liked pizza with pineapple.”
Dominick shook his head. “Did you know her before I was born?”
“I did. We actually grew up living pretty close to each other.”
Rosalinda smiled. “He’s an old friend.”
“Oh!” Dominick started to
jump up and down. “When is the pizza getting here?”
“After I order it, I guess,” Nick chuckled, pulling out his phone. “Give me a second. We’ll have one pepperoni and one ham and pineapple.”
“I can eat pepperoni. Don’t worry too much about me.”
“Don’t worry about it. This is my treat,” Nick waved it off.
Rosalinda bit her lip. She wanted to argue more, but it wasn’t going to do any good between them. “Okay.”
He tapped some information into an app, including Rosalinda’s address for the delivery.
“Can we have popcorn?” Dominick picked up the microwave package.
“Not until after dinner.”
“Aw, shoot.”
Rosalinda shot a look at him nervously. “Language.”
“You say it all the time.” The boy stuck his tongue out at her. She let out an awkward laugh, and Nick responded with a laugh of his own.
“There are worse words that he could be saying.”
“Thanks,” Rosalinda said, but still felt the blood drain from her face. It was still embarrassing to hear her son say that to Nick. She had been hoping for a better impression, and this was just turning out poorly.
“Movie time, I think. Pizza should be here soon.” Nick clapped his hands together. How do you work your system?”
“It isn’t hard. Just put the disk in, and I can get the remote.” Rosalinda was happy to change the subject as she rushed for the remote.
Nick laughed as he put in the movie for them to watch, but Rosalinda was more interested in watching Nick. There was so much about him that she felt drawn to. She adored Nick in ways that she couldn’t explain. Even after all this time, being so close to him drove her crazy. She wanted to sit close to him, but she kept space between them on the couch while Dominick played on the floor.
She caught Nick looking at her a time or two, observing her. She wondered if it meant anything, but wasn’t going to ask as the movie droned on in the background. It was a movie that she had watched when she was younger, so she didn’t need to watch it closely to discuss it later with her son. Not that the young Dominick was paying much attention to it, anyway. He had found one of his toy cars and was playing with it, rolling it all over the carpet.
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