“What do you have to tell me?” I ask, keeping it light but feeling cautious, in case this is the moment when he confesses that he hates this move.
“It’s weird seeing you drive.”
Laughing, I answer him, “It’s weird to drive. I didn’t drive for years in New York.”
“I never once saw you drive in the city. Wait, did you drive that time we went to Saint Lucia?”
“No, that was your butler. Of course that was me. Who else do you think drove us?”
He shrugs helplessly. “I don’t remember.”
“Well, it was me,” I say as I turn into my parents’ driveway. “Your father.”
“You drive really slow.”
“It’s safer. Also, driving is like eating radishes.”
“You hate it?”
“So incredibly much. It’s the worst.”
“You should just get a bike, then. Well, another bike. You can’t use your racing bike,” he says.
True. My racing bike is for just that, though I don’t race to place in the centuries I train for. I race for exercise, to hit goals, and for the accomplishment—to crest five mountain passes, traversing one hundred miles in a mere eight hours.
Or something like that.
“So just a regular bike?” I ask. “A tooling-around-town bike?”
“Yeah, you should do that. Since you like to ride, and so do I.”
That’s not a bad idea. A bike sounds kind of perfect. I cut the engine and look at him. “Should we go bike shopping together later?”
He shrugs happily. “Works for me.”
It’s almost too easy, the way this move is working for him.
But I want to make sure he’s okay with all the changes. “Hey,” I say, setting a hand on his arm.
“Yeah?”
“You doing okay with everything? With being here? With missing New York?”
He nods, but there’s still a hint of sadness in the curve of his mouth. “Sometimes I miss Florida too.”
“Do you remember much about it?” I ask, bracing myself for whatever he might tell me. There was a long span of time when he missed his old life terribly.
“No. But I remember I liked it there.” He waves toward my parents’ house. “But I like it here too. Because of Nan and Pop, and everything else, and the baseball camp I’m going to, and the pool. And Spencer,” he says, naming one of his cousins.
“Good.” I punch him lightly on the arm.
“And because we can adopt a dog now, right?”
Ah, there it is. He’s wanted a dog for as long as he’s been in my life, but my place in New York was pet-free.
“Do you miss Katrina?” I ask. That’s the dog his mom had when he was younger. She told me as much when she showed up.
He likes books, baseball, and dogs. He’ll eat nearly anything, but he does love sweets. Don’t give him too many. He falls asleep instantly at night, so make time to read during the day. Use a night-light, since that’s what he’s accustomed to. Also, he still misses Katrina, an Australian cattle dog mix I had who went to the Rainbow Bridge last year. And he likes to talk, and to laugh. That’s about it.
Oh, one more thing. He might be a fish. You’ll never get him out of the water once you let him in.
That’s what she told me—the care and feeding of the son I never knew I had.
I’ve been ready for the dog request ever since I told him we’d be living in a house and not a flat.
“I don’t remember Katrina,” Ethan says. “But that picture of her and me makes me think I liked her a lot. So, I want another.”
“It will be after school starts, but the answer is yes.” Fact is, I’d like one too. Because . . . dogs.
Also because . . . it’s about fucking time.
I won’t have to wonder what the days were like when he hugged a dog, threw a ball to a dog, or played with a dog. I’ll see them all, experience them all.
Something I didn’t have before.
Something I want desperately.
“Yes!” He pumps a fist. “I love it here, then.”
Perhaps that’s the joy of being his age. You’re not too entrenched in your life. You’re still open to change. You’re malleable and flexible. And you’re still wildly confident, enough to walk up to peers, determined to be friends.
It’s harder when you’re a little older. As I stare at my parents’ red home with white shutters and window planters, a crest of nostalgia clobbers me like a rogue wave in the ocean, slamming into me out of the blue. It sweeps me back in time to when I was an angsty and emo sixteen-year-old forced to relocate from England to the States because my father had landed a chance to teach at a veterinary school here and practice in the States as well. Such an opportunity for him, but hell for me.
I’d lived in the same small town in Surrey my entire life, and the last thing I’d wanted was to move six thousand miles away to a small town in California. I’d hated being uprooted, so I’d handled it by tucking into my room, slamming the door, and blasting bands like The Cure and The Smiths. I’d worn black and cultivated an air of fuck off, world. I went on like that for months—head down, teeth gnashing, thoroughly pissed off.
