Page 26 of Just Forever

Eventually, after a good few minutes have passed, I wave my hand in front of her face. Another moment later, she rubs her forehead, then looks up at me again.

“Son of mine,” she says with a tight smile. “Explain.”

So, I do.

Once I’m done with the somewhat condensed explanation about how Lake and I decided to get married and the reasons behind it—I leave out some of the more personal bits and all the non-essential details—Mom pinches the bridge of her nose between her fingers and just sits there with her eyes closed for a bit.

“Well,” she eventually says. “This was a lot of information all at once. You two are absolute, undisputable morons. At anypoint during all of this, did you never think to contact me and ask for help?”

“It wasn’t for me to ask. Plus, the trust fund has always been Lake’s. I just righted a wrong.”

“By making a serious commitment.”

I shrug. “It worked out pretty well for me.”

She sends me a half-exasperated, half-sardonic look. “Oh, to be young again.”

I shake my head. “None of it has anything to do with youth. I didn’t just spontaneously jump into marriage.” Truthfully, I did kind of spontaneously jump into marriage, but that’s not the important part right now. “Lake is… He’s everything I never knew I wanted.”

Mom’s eyes soften the tiniest bit. She’s a shark in the office, but she also loves me and has always had an almost uncontrollable urge to give me anything I want.

I think in a lot of circumstances I’d have become a seriously spoiled trust fund brat. My parents divorced when I was seven, then both proceeded to try and compensate for the loss of that somewhat happy family unit with stuff. Or to be more precise, by buying me a lot of stuff.

All I can say is it’s a good thing I was more interested in playing hockey back then than finding different ways to exploit my parents’ credit cards.

“You do understand this makes this whole situation even more complicated?” Mom says.

“Believe me, I’m aware.”

“Oh, good. For a moment I was beginning to think you weren’t.”

“Funny,” I say.

“Oh, no. I don’t really think it’s funny at all. You also casually deprived me of your wedding.”

“I’d believe it was an issue if I didn’t know you better.” My mother is not a romantic. She’s a woman with her head firmly on her shoulders, and she’s never been one to push what she wants on me. Otherwise, I’d probably be a business major or something. I inherited my love for numbers from her, but she’s never questioned my choices when it comes to school or my career.

“We got married in some tiny-ass town in California, and the judge kept talking about his brush with death after his testicular cancer diagnosis.”

Mom stares at me for a moment before her lips start to twitch. “Now, see, that sounds like exactly the kind of wedding I’d want to go to.”

I snort and shake my head, and when I look at her again, she has a small smile on her face.

She shakes her head and sighs.

“It figures you wouldn’t choose to make the normal kind of trouble for me. Couldn’t you just have gotten caught drinking while you were underage?”

LAKE

“Home, sweet home,”I say, then face-plant onto the couch. It’s been an impossibly long week, and I just want to spend the next two days doing absolutely nothing. It took us approximately fifteen years to drive back to New York. I can’t remember which one of us said a road trip would be more fun than flying, but whoever it was is an idiot.

Ryk pushes the duffel out of the way and comes and lies down next to me, squeezing his large body between the back of the couch and me. He wraps his arm around my waist, buries his face in my neck, and yawns.

“Jesus, that took way longer than usual.”

I mumble my agreement into the crook of my elbow while I let my gaze wander over our tiny East Village apartment. Truthfully, Ryker could do better than this place, but then I abso-fucking-lutely wouldn’t be able to afford my share of the rent. We compromised on this place. It’s small. Just one bedroom, a tiny living room, and no storage space at all, so Ryk’s hockey gear is always in the way, but we make do.

We only moved in a month and a half ago, but weirdly, I feel more at home here than I ever did when I was living in Brighton. Well, to be more precise, I didn’t feel thoroughly at home therewhen I was living by myself in my own apartment. When Ryker came to stay with me or when I spent most of my time at his place before he graduated, I felt like I fit right in. It was before him and this past year when he was mostly away that I felt like I’d been somehow misplaced.

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