Page 156 of Seasons of Love
“She sounds like she was an amazing woman.”
Milo looks at Sara. “She was. I miss her a lot. She never batted an eyelid when I told her I was gay. She never once told me I couldn’t be what I wanted to be.”
“What did you want to be?”
“At the time? A cowboy. I was obsessed with old western movies.”
I tilt my head and narrow my eyes. “I can see that. You’d make a great cowboy. Riding your horse, wearing your cowboy hat.”
I reach for his hand under the water, and he laces his fingers with mine.
“Don’t forget the boots. It’s all about the boots,” he says.
Sara reaches for me, so I take her from Milo’s arms. “Hello, gorgeous.” She’s so beautiful. Her nose is just like Milo’s, her eyes too. Probably because of the similarity between the brothers.
She looks at me and babbles like she’s trying to make conversation.
“Well, I don’t know about that. It’s a little early for boys or girls, but you’ll need to ask your daddy,” I say, booping her nose. She giggles.
“Hell no. No boys, no girls, no nothing until you’re at least…forty,” Milo says.
“How did that turn out for you?”
He blushes and bites his lip.
I laugh. “You can’t have a rule for her that you didn’t follow yourself.”
“Fine. Thirty then.”
“Twenty.”
“Twenty-five.”
“Deal!” I hold out my hand to Sara for a high five, and she pulls it to her, holding two of my fingers in her little hands. “See? That’s called negotiating.”
“We should probably get in the shade for a while,” he says.
“I have a better idea. Stay here.”
I take Sara to the cabana and strap her into the inflatable chair I borrowed from my sister so Sara can see us.
“You two seemed deep in conversation out there,” Florrie says, putting her book to one side.
“Milo is easy to talk to. It’s easy to forget there’s such an age gap between us.”
“Does it bother you?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think we should be into different things. We should find it harder to talk because we grew up in different times.”
Florrie nods. “Should is such a powerful word, isn’t it? My late husband should have married the girl he was engaged to. He should have followed in his father’s footsteps. Instead, he ran away. One night, in the middle of a storm, he knocked on the door of an old farmhouse. He told me that as soon as I opened the door that night, he knew I was the girl he was going to marry.” She looks out into the distance. “Sometimes we can be so stuck on what life should be that we forget what it could be.”
A tear falls down her cheek and she swiftly wipes it clean. “Don’t listen to the rambles of an old woman. What do I know, hey?”
“You care about Milo a lot, don’t you?”
She looks at me. “We couldn’t have children. In those days, it was different, especially where we lived. Medicine may have advanced in the city, but our doctor was still the one that helped my mom give birth to me. In any case, we were happy. Very happy. Milo is a gentle soul, a good man with a big heart. If I could ever ask for a son, I wouldn’t mind if it was him. And he lets me indulge in pretending to be a granny to this precious little girl.”
“Florrie…”
