AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Still going from girl to girl to girl.” His dad didn’t approve of Jason’s dating style, either.
“I’ve got a dating buddy from work. I think she’ll help me work through my options. She’s smart. An economist.” He chuckled. “I swear, she’s got a math idea to apply to any situation, including dating. She told me that the right person would be the one I liked best after dating 37 percent of the women I thought I would ever be able to date in my life.”
“What? Why can’t you meet someone nice, take her out to dinner a couple times and settle down? Why does it have to be the right person? Why can’t it be a good woman?”
Jason washed his hands quickly before turning both to his dad’s question and the rest of his dinner. “We all want what you and Mom have.”
From miscarriages to layoffs, no matter how tough times had gotten when he was a kid, his parents had found comfort in each other. His childhood had been full of hugs, pats on the back and supportive “we’ll be okay” language. His parents still held hands. He didn’t know if they still had sex, but the fact that they had been sexually compatible wasn’t something they had been able to hide in a small house with thin walls, even though he realized as an adult that they had tried.
There was rustling on the other end of the line. Then a big sigh out of his dad before he said, “Your mom and I love each other very much. My life would be—” he paused “—less, if she had not agreed to marry me. But I didn’t love her when we got married, and I doubt she loved me.”
Jason stopped dumping carrots onto his chicken and rice and stared at the dish for several long seconds before responding. “But Mom says that she met you and knew instantly that you were the man she was going to marry.”
How was that not spark? Love at first sight? They had gotten married two months after they met. Had his mom married a stranger and hoped for the best?
His dad snorted. “That’s because I was better than her other options, not because I was anything special. She was twenty-five and still living at home. All her friends were married. Her parents were a pain in the ass.”
It was Jason’s turn to snort. His grandparents loved to give him presents, but they seemed to feel like their biggest gift was their “wisdom.” His dad’s phrasing was more succinct.
“Your mom wanted out of her house,” his dad continued. “I wasn’t horrible. It’s how everyone else I knew got married in those days. It’s how my parents got married. And it’s how your mother’s parents got married.”
“Come on, there are some people in your generation who married out of love.” He watched his share of classic movies with his mom and grandmother. It’s not like they never talked about love or pretended like it didn’t exist. He got that those were movies and movies weren’t reality—but they wouldn’t make up the idea of marrying for love out of thin air.
“Maybe that’s how they did it in big cities, but courting in rural North Carolina wasn’t any different for me than it was for my mom and dad. Except I didn’t have to borrow a car from my parents. Your mom and I love each other because we want to and because we work hard to make it happen.”
“Work?” Their love looked effortless. More effortless than his dinner, which was rice with chicken and baby carrots baked in the oven. Nothing was easier than this dinner, except—he’d always thought—his parents’ relationship.
“We both try not to annoy the other person, and we try to ignore it when the other person annoys us. Harder than any job I’ve ever had. But pays more than any job I’ve ever had, too.” His dad paused and Jason could imagine him, cocking his head and nodding a little, maybe with a shrug. The same look and body movements that had been present in every lecture and helpful chat of Jason’s childhood. “So there’s that.”
“Why haven’t you told me any of this before?” The conversation meant he was looking at his childhood from an entirely different angle. Like, before, every time he looked back at being a kid, he was actually looking through an old window, so he thought he was seeing everything, but hidden imperfections in the glass meant he was missing important details.
