After filing his company for bankruptcy, Kyle's wife leaves him and his three-year-old son. Now a forty-two-year-old divorcee with no parenting skills or money, Kyle decides to move back to the small home town he grew up in.
He should have lost all...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Things were going well until Otis decided that he wanted to go swimming. The adults had been conversing amongst themselves when Kyle mentioned going for a walk by the riverside with Chaska.
"I want to go too," the toddler had injected, flaring his hands as he approached the dining table his grandmother and father were sitting by. "Swim? With Chaska?" he seemed to ask as he made to climb his father like a stool.
The blond man raised his brow at his son, chuckling before picking him up and placing him on his lap. As all toddlers were, Otis quickly became distracted. He found the plastic fruit deco interesting, and quickly forgot about his demand to go swimming with his favorite person.
His memory was jogged, however, when he met Chaska in the daycare the next morning. The toddler squealed, stamping his feet before demanding why Chaska had gone swimming without him.
"Swimming?" Chaska whispered to Kyle after he had gotten the toddler to calm down. He was carrying the child in his hands, cradling his head as he stared at the boy's father for an explanation.
Kyle sighed. "I was talking to my mother about us taking a walk by the river and he decided we went swimming," he said. The younger man chuckled at that.
The daycare was filled to the brim. Older kids who were around for summer school played tag and ran about the room.
"Can he swim, though?" Chaska asked, bringing Kyle out of his thoughts. The older man's mouth parted as she stared out into the room, trying to jog his memory. He hadn't paid much attention to Otis' extracurricular activities when he was with the boy's mother, but he guessed the boy at least started swimming lessons at some point?
"I don't know. I might have to text Anastasia to ask," Kyle muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. Every day he had to confront himself with something else he didn't know about his son. He was glad to learn, he just felt small whenever he had to come to terms with how little he knew about his son.
"Alright," Chaska said, holding the small of the boy's back. "I could also ask him when he wakes up." The screaming and crying had knocked him out.
Kyle rolled his eyes. "Children exaggerate."
Chaska nodded. "I know, but if we get an inflatable pool, we could blow it up in your yard and go 'swimming' don't you think?"
Kyle thought about it for a bit. Yes, Chaska was right. There was no harm setting up a fake pool and letting Otis have some fun. As a kid, he had hung out by the river or just hosed his friends and played with buckets of water. Otis, as much as they had moved miles away from the suburbs, was still a posh kid. Young children didn't care too much when it came to changes in how they lived, but how they noticed a change in how they played.
"I'll see what I can buy after work," Kyle muttered, tucking his hands into the pockets of his overalls. There was a two-wheeled tractor he had to fix, and he was already running late.
