Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 148473 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 742(@200wpm)___ 594(@250wpm)___ 495(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148473 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 742(@200wpm)___ 594(@250wpm)___ 495(@300wpm)
I’d like to fill her up. But that can’t happen.
Asher: Yes. So I can have you all to myself.
Which is too true. As I reach home, I leave my texts and pop over to Google to order that Vitamix for Beckett. Then, I add one for Soraya too.
Well, who doesn’t love a blender?
But once I’m back at my house, Beckett’s words climb back up the stairs in my head. I worry about Maeve. Is there something to worry about? Is she, I dunno, depressed? Are her career worries turning into something more?
I flip open my laptop in the kitchen, not even bothering to sit down. On the Mayo Clinic site, I look up depression and study the symptoms. Maeve’s not listless, she’s not angry or irritable, and she doesn’t seem to have lost interest in things she loves. If anything, she’s painting and working her ass off, doing pole classes, and seeing her friends as much as she ever has. I breathe a sigh of relief, feeling somewhat settled.
Okay, so it’s normal to worry. Beckett was right. And since I don’t have a sibling, it’s natural that I’d turn to Google.
I close the laptop and check the time. Need to get to the arena soon, but there’s one more thing I have to do. Can’t put this call off any longer. Time to call my dads. Thirty minutes until morning skate, and telling the two people who probably wanted to help me pick out a tux feels way harder than I’d expected.
Deep breath. I pace along my terrace, overlooking my backyard with a garden shed I had converted into a sunroom of sorts—a little space for coffee outdoors, not that I do that very often. The how-to-relax gene skipped me. I turn away and hit call, waiting for John to pick up. Normally, I’d start with Carlos for practical stuff, but this feels like a “John thing.” He’s the emotional one.
“Hey, Dad,” I say when he answers.
“Hey, Ash,” he replies, a little sterner than usual. “Something you want to tell us?”
He knows. Of course he knows. “I don’t know. Is there?” I try to joke.
“Gee, I wonder. I’ll get Carlos on the phone,” he says, then calls out, “Hey, babe, it’s our son—the one who got married without telling us.”
Seconds later, I’m on speakerphone with both of them.
“Was our invitation lost in the mail?” Carlos asks, all innocence.
“It was kind of last-minute,” I explain, feeling defensive. I don’t want them to feel left out, but they were.
“No, really? You don’t say?” John shoots back, his sarcasm sharp.
I feel like a kid again, explaining myself to one or the other, like when I drove John and me to hockey practice before I even had my license. Back then, when I was thirteen and fourteen, John was often too sick to drive, and the first time Carlos found out what I’d done, he wasn’t happy with either one of us, but me more so. “You should have called me at the office,” he’d said. “I would have figured out what to do.” But there wasn’t always time for a phone call to strategize, as I learned. Another time after practice, John was driving me home, and his heart was beating too fast and too unevenly, so he had to pull over. He told me he’d be fine and just needed to wait it out. But I didn’t buy that. I switched places with him and drove straight to the nearest hospital. They checked him in immediately, telling me it was a good thing that I brought him there so they could treat him in time. They used those words—in time. Soon after, he was diagnosed with an unusual thyroid virus that left him weak, dizzy, and occasionally, unable to focus. They put him on meds to manage his thyroid, and he’s still on them. They work wonders, but it’s hard to forget what it was like knowing nothing, just worrying about worst-case scenarios.
Thankfully, Maeve and I dodged our own worst-case scenario by agreeing to stay married instead of looking like idiots in front of the world.
“We did it for fun,” I admit, but the words sound hollow. “Listen, we need to stay married, and...well, I need you to play along with it.”
“Okay,” Carlos says, shifting from teasing to supportive. “Tell us what’s going on.”
And just like that, they’re in my corner. Sometimes it is that easy. I leave the terrace, explaining everything as I head inside. I pace past the Lego plants on my living room table. Real plants don’t survive in my care, but I can build the hell out of Lego ones. They don’t get sick or die when I’m on the road.
“Well, consider us the happy father-in-laws then,” Carlos says when I’m done.
“Um, babe. I think it’s fathers-in-law,” John corrects.