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He laughed. “Stop, Dad.”
“You ready?” I questioned, my hand hovering over the dial to switch the radio station.
“Ready!” he practically yelled, placing his game back in his backpack and zipping it up.
Maybe I wasn’t going to win any father of the year awards, but I was doing my best and that was really all I could do. My parents weren’t perfect, either, but I always knew I was loved, supported, and cared for, and that was all I could ask for when it came to Mason—that he felt the same way. That he knew all of those things to be true for him.
“Stop!” Mason shouted, placing his hand up and leaning forward in his seat.
We listened to the station for a moment and Mason groaned. “Not this one, Dad. This one’s horrible.”
They were playing oldies, so I could see how Mason was the least bit interested in it. I, on the other hand, knew it well. The song that was playing was Be My Baby by The Ronettes and, while it was still older than my time, I did remember listening to it with my dad when I was Mason’s age.
My dad would be washing the car outside and blast the radio. All the neighbors loved it and didn’t mind it at all that he was basically disturbing the peace. In fact, some of them even stopped walking and started singing and dancing to the beat.
The Ronettes were one of my dad’s favorites. Them and The Temptations. He used to sing My Girl to my mom every time their anniversary rolled around. They were disgustingly happy, but I also knew that was incredibly rare. I was twenty-eight and in no rush to find a soulmate or any of that other nonsense, but it would have been nice to spend my nights with someone. And I always did wish that Mason had a mother-figure in his life. A boy should have a mother. That was something I couldn’t give Mason and some days it bothered me more than others.
Mason’s voice broke my train of thought. “Switch!” he declared.
I chuckled as I made a right turn. “You sure you want to use your one switch?”
“Mmhmm.”
“All right.” I switched the station over a few times before he called, “Stop!”
But I could tell he regretted it. In the mirror I watched as his facial expression turned rotten. “What’s the matter?” I stifled a laugh. I didn’t even need to ask, I already knew. They were playing Jessie’s Girl, another oldie my son did not care for. As was obvious by the look he still had on his face.
“This is worse,” he cried.
“We’re almost there anyway, buddy. Should be there in the next few minutes if I don’t hit another red light.”
“Who’s Jessie?” he asked.
I chuckled. I didn’t exactly know and often wondered the same thing. “It sounds like he’s a very lucky guy to be loved by some woman and this guy wishes he was with her. That she would love him. Does that make sense?”
Who was I kidding? I was basically trying to explain the complicated nature of love and relationships to an eight-year-old when I barely understood it myself.
I looked in the mirror one last time as I pulled into the resort and parked in my usual spot. “Sort of,” he answered.
I chuckled. “All right,” I said, as I opened my door and got out to open his, “sorry the music wasn’t to your liking.”
He shrugged. “It’s okay, Dad. You didn’t write the songs.” He hopped out without preamble.
“Gee, thanks.”
“So where am I going today? If Uncle Tyler’s busy, can I hang out with Uncle Corey at the cabanas?”
I frowned and grabbed his backpack off the car floor before handing it to him. He put it on his back and asked, “So, can I?”
I shook my head. “Not today. But Stephanie said that you can stay with her at the activities center.”
I didn’t like how Mason had to hop around at the resort, each day being somewhere different, but I had back-to-back appointments most days and I couldn’t very well bring him with me on my surf lessons. Thankfully, my boss and GM, Felicity Anderson, was an old friend and she looked the other way when I needed to bring him with me. And the guys’ jobs had better flexibility, so he was often able to spend some of the day with them, but I always liked to ask first and had already asked Stephanie, thinking Mason might like to spend the day in a room literally dedicated to games and activities.
His eyes went wide and I felt optimistic that he’d be happy there today. Until, that was, he asked me, “Is Stephanie single?”
I furrowed my brows. Not this again. It came up every once in a while and I never knew how to handle it. “What makes you ask that?” He was so smart and intuitive most times, but others he stirred up trouble just as much as I used to. Sometimes I wondered what was going on in that little head of his. Scratch that, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. The innermost workings of an eight-year-old’s mind was not the place I wanted to be.
“Well, you’re always talking and texting,” he said, looking up at me as if that made all the sense in the world.
