Page 97 of Townshipped
“Yeah.”
Mom doesn’t share that recipe with anyone. I don’t think Karina, my own sister, or Lexi, the girl who grew up next door and married Mom’s baby son, even have Mom’s meatloaf recipe. There goes my mom, gunning for a match between me and Em and pulling out all the stops by arranging for her to fix my favorite childhood meal.
After dinner, bedtime follows the usual routine—the one we have established with Em in the house. Ironically, no one asks for water, a second reading of the story, or temperature adjustments. All bedding stays in place and no one announces they are scared.
Em’s quickly becoming the key ingredient to our stability and joy and I don’t quite know what to do about that.
34
“EM”
On the sixth night the kids have been here, Aiden follows me up the stairs leading to the kids’ bedrooms. Ty bounds ahead of us, Granger at his heels. Paisley walks at a measured pace behind her brother. At the top of the stairs, I glance down the hall toward Aiden’s room as I do every night. I can’t help but think of the one time I dared to linger and poke around in there when Aiden went to Columbus for work.
It seems like years have passed since that day. I can hardly believe Ty and Paisley have been here less than a week. So far we seem to be establishing a routine. If you can call six days of consistency a routine.
Aiden lets the dog out while I rally the kids and corral them up the stairs. Aiden and Granger join us. Teeth are brushed, bedding pulled back, and stories read in Ty’s room. We wish him goodnight, then we make our way into Paisley’s room. Most nights I sing a song to each of them. Covers are pulled up, children tucked in, and kisses are placed on foreheads.
Then we sneak downstairs like two cat burglars, tiptoeing away with stealthy moves and barely releasing a breath until we’re safely at the doorway to the living room. We collapse onto the couch, filled with a combination of relief and exhaustion.
Tonight, though, Aiden turns to me at the bottom of the stairs before we make it into the living room.
Grabbing my shoulders as if he touches me every day, and leaning in close to my ear, in a barely audible whisper, he says, “I got ice cream.” He looks positively mischievous and thrilled with himself.
It feels so decadent and prohibited, the way he says the words all muffled and top-secrety. We give one another a stealthy look and quietly tiptoe toward the kitchen as if any false move will trip a wire, set off alarms, and the authorities will barge in to read us our Miranda rights and convict us of late-night cavorting. The authorities all being under age six, in this case, but the threat of being accosted as real as if we were on the lam from the FBI.
Is this what real parenthood is like? Stolen moments of self-indulgence worked in around the daily grind of caring for the needs of others? The idea isn’t as awful to me as it probably should be. I could get used to pouring my life out for those two, even though I am currently praying to the gods of frozen treats they remain tucked in while Aiden and I enjoy just a sliver of adult time together.
He scoops us each a bowl of peanut butter chocolate chip ice cream and then I silently follow him into the living room where we chat in subdued murmurs between bites of dessert about important topics like Paisley’s all-corn craft project she needs to complete for the school-wide celebration of Bordeaux days.
After we finish eating, Aiden stands, extending his hand to take my bowl from me.
I follow him into the kitchen watching him from the doorway while he’s at the sink rinsing our bowls. His forearm muscles shift and his back ripples under his T-shirt as he scrubs the remnants of our secret treat down the drain.
Yes. I feel like a complete weirdo watching him like this, but I couldn’t stop myself if I wanted to. It’s been almost five nights since our kiss in the barnyard. I’m starting to think I imagined it.
Aiden bends and places the bowls and spoons in the dishwasher and then he turns and dries his hands on the small towel he keeps hanging over the stove handle.
I haven’t stopped watching him. Maybe I should find something else to do with my eyes or my hands or my whole body, but I can’t seem to drag myself away from him. It’s so rare we’re alone these days. And he seems to have erected an insurmountable barrier between us since Ty and Paisley arrived—or, more specifically, since I told him I’m single. He’s not being unkind, of course. Just distant and unreachable.
Maybe it’s the stress of Ty and Paisley being here and the added responsibility of guardianship. Maybe he’s second-guessing what happened between us. Maybe I’m overthinking everything.
I picture the clowns the girls mentioned and chuckle lightly to myself. A woman alone with her own thoughts can be a treacherous place. I remember all five of us laughing around the campfire as they mimicked disturbing clown laughs, and I giggle again.
“Something funny?” Aiden asks as he moves closer to me.
Was he walking toward me that whole time while I ruminated over his motives and thoughts?
I hum when his bare toes graze mine. He’s less than a foot from my face. We haven’t kissed since that barnyard night. Is he going to kiss me now? I swallow and try to tame the rapid beating of my heart. His eyes rove across my face, gold, amber, and flecks of green rimming his dilated pupils.
I long to reach up, run my fingers through his hair, lean in and let him hold me, but even with him right here in front of me, I can’t bring myself to make the first move.
Aiden’s tongue darts out and moistens his lips.
“The kids are probably sleeping,” he says, with the slightest lift of his eyebrows and crinkle at the edges of his eyes.
“Probably,” I say on a soft exhale.
I suck in a gulp of air. I’m not sure I remember how to even breathe around him. Heat fills the space between us.
