Old Flames

Old Flames: Chapter 30

Old Flames: Chapter 30

What was I thinking?

Lainie dropped backward on the bed and covered her tired eyes with her arm. Her mother...his dad...together...in one tiny house...for the first time in twelve years...

This is going to be one of those Thanksgivings that make the ten o’clock news.

She laid there for a moment, listening to the sounds of the house. The kids running through the backdoor, laughing at each other. Aaron grabbing the dinnerware from the cabinet. Her mother smacking on her gum. His dad sitting down in Aaron’s recliner, the leather creaking. Bowser chasing a squirrel in the backyard. The hum of the ceiling fan above her. The dripping of the faucet in the bathroom because the kids could never seem to turn it off completely.

All these things sounded like a normal household on a normal family holiday. But there was nothing normal about this situation. This family...a widowed woman with two young kids shacking up with an ex-boyfriend bachelor who had yet to ask her to marry him, and their parents, who hated each other yet had a sordid affair over a decade ago. There was something very surreal about the whole thing, very soap-opera drama-ish.

Laine sat up and snorted. When was the last time I knew normal?

This was a piece of cheesecake compared to her life a month ago. She just had to get through tonight and show their parents that their support means a lot to her and Aaron. With that thought in mind, Lainie hopped off the bed and dug a dress out of the closet she shared with Aaron. The sight of his shirts hanging there made her smile. The closet was too small for both their clothes, but Aaron cleaned out most of his and stuck them somewhere else for her to hang up what she could.

Aaron...gracious she loved that man. When he showed up in the kitchen earlier, still dressed in his work uniform, just his presence gave her strength. She could still smell his lingering cologne, in the bedroom, in the closet, on the bed...and she closed her eyes to breathe it in.

He’d done so much to help her adjust to this new life of theirs. He didn’t mind that her hygiene paraphernalia took up most of the storage space in the bathroom. He seemed to enjoy the fact that she twisted the sheets around her legs when she slept and tended to leave the toothpaste cap off the tube. She’d fill a glass with orange juice and leave it sitting on a table somewhere for hours, getting busy doing something else, and he never says a word.

And with the kids...he allowed them to help him paint their new room, even laughing when Chloe accidentally swiped her dripping paintbrush across the seat of his pants. He snuck little treats to them when he thought Lainie wasn’t looking, whispering, “Shh, don’t tell your mother,” and they’d grin at him with sticky gooeyness all over their faces. He didn’t mind picking them up from preschool or dropping them off in the mornings, and one day, he hung out with their teacher for almost an hour, just to learn about their day, genuinely interested and amazed at all the things they do in a matter of a few hours. He took them to the zoo and the children’s museum, out walking Bowser in the evenings, riding bikes around the block, never showing how exhausting it can be to corral two four-year-olds and a dog until he crashed on his side of the bed at night with a groan and a plea for a backrub. But, Lainie thought as she dressed, he was firm with them when they misbehaved, never went against Lainie’s decisions concerning discipline, and even taught her a few tricks about redirection.

All in all, he was quite possibly the perfect husband and father...only he wasn’t either of those things, but anybody, seeing him with Lainie and the twins, would never guess that. Really, the only thing missing from Lainie’s life was the ring not on her finger.

Do I want to get married so soon after Gary?

Lainie paused as she brushed out her hair. Yes...yes, I do. To Aaron.