Page 49 of Acting Merry
Everyone else is inside watching a movie. I thought Reese would want to join them, but once she got a peek at the starry skies, she put on her newly clean pair of woolsocks and asked if I wanted to have hot chocolate on the back deck.
I’ve never said yes to anything so quickly.
She must sense my eyes on her because she looks over and smiles.
It’s the sort of half-shy smile that’s a callback to earlier, and I feel it in my chest.
She kissed me out there. With no one to fool and nothing to prove. She kissed me like she wanted me, and I’m still riding the high from that feeling.
I open the door and step into the biting air.
She makes room next to her, and I sit down, slinging my arm over the back of the couch.
She resituates, snuggling into the place below my arm in a way that makes me almost ache with the feeling of well-being.
The stars are bright against the blanket of inky sky. It’s free of clouds in the way only a clear, frigid night can be. Too frigid to melt the ice so we can go home.
“Why’d you sell the house?” Reese asks.
I blink at the sudden, unexpected question. “Do you wish I hadn’t?”
“Of course not. I’m obsessed with it. I just wondered….It seems like such a perfect house.”
Pleasure flushes through me. “Thanks.”
There’s silence after. She’s still waiting for a response to her question.
“I just…felt like it was time for something new.”
She turns her mug in her hand absently. “Because you get bored of things quickly?”
My gaze flicks to her, trying to discern why she would say something like that. “It’s not that. I didn’t build that house for me. I built it for a family.” I take a sip of my cocoa, trying not to picture Reese there with a husband and kids.
She looks up at me. “Youdon’t want a family?”
My chest clenches, but I force a smile. “Life hasn’t really sold me on the concept.” And yet somehow, as I look down at her, I still want it.
Her eyes scan mine like she’s waiting for me to expound, and my muscles tense.
“How so?” she finally asks.
I want to tell her, to explain why I want nothing more than a family of my own to shake the walls I built with their laughter, to play catch with on the lawn I helped install, but that I’m too scared to let myself hope for that.
It would mean talking about my mom, though, and I never talk about her. It just hurts too much.
Reese’s gaze turns forward. “Families are complicated.” She lets out a soft sigh, then takes a sip of cocoa and looks up at the sky.
I think of what she said about her parents and how they never come to see her. I think of how Brady broke up with her and she wasn’t expecting it. Maybe she understands not being wanted more than I think.
“For what it’s worth,” she says, shifting her body so her back rests against my chest, “you’d make a great dad.”
My throat thickens, and I try to swallow the feeling down, but it persists.
I always felt like I grew up with the best dad on earth. He worked hard, but he always made time to play with me, come to my games, and take me out for Slurpees. He was fun and kind and just…good.
Then my mom left, and it rocked my world. All of our worlds. If she could leave her own kidsandthe perfect husband, no family was safe.
I want to get it out—toletit out. I want to tell Reese everything. About my mom, about my dad, about how I feel for her.
