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“I’ll call you later if you want,” she said. “When I get home from bringing Eli back.”
“I’ll be home by then,” he said. “And I’ll want to tell you how it all went. Don’t worry there.”
“Thank you again for the necklace. I love it.”
Her fingers went to the white gold chain that had a little E on it. Her son wouldn’t notice it and anyone else that did would think it was a gift from her son for Christmas. Her parents always gave her gifts from Eli.
Once the news of her relationship got out, it’d be easy to say it was from Trent.
“I’m glad,” he said. “That’s a reminder to us both who is the most important person right now.”
She frowned. She wasn’t sure she wanted him to feel that way, but he was out the door before she could say more.
Was she wrong in handling everything the way she was?
She’d always put Eli first and felt that every parent should do that. But it was true that Eli would be happy if his mother was happy. She was probably the happiest she’d been in years and she knew a good part of that had to do with Trent being in her life.
She put the rest of Eli’s gifts out. There was no reason to have them out last night when Eli wasn’t here. It’d just make her sad and Trent did so much to cheer her up that she was happy when they’d gone to bed last night.
Then this morning he’d made breakfast for her before she’d gotten up. She must have been tired to have not realized he wasn’t in bed with her and moving around in the kitchen of her small apartment without even hearing a noise.
No man had ever made her breakfast before and she was unsure how to even react.
Guess it just showed the sheltered dismal life she’d led so far and was glad Trent was there to get her to experience more.
Roni was watching the clock for noon once she was done with everything. She was positive Eli would be dropped off exactly on time. Nothing she could say or do about it.
When there was a knock at her door at ten of twelve she was slightly stunned.
She went to the door to unlock and open it, and saw Eli standing there bouncing around. “Merry Christmas, Mom,” he shouted. “Did Santa come here for me? He was at Dad’s.”
“Santa was here for you,” she said. “You’ll have to check it out under the tree.”
“Santa brought me my own iPhone at Dad’s,” Eli said and ran past her.
Her jaw dropped and she looked at Jeff. “A phone,” she said under her breath. “He’s seven.”
“So?” Jeff said, smiling at her. “I’m paying for it, not you. Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to pay for half. He can keep it at my house if it bothers you so much. Or turn it off when he is here. I’d like him to use it to call or text me when he wants. He can call you on it too.”
“Because you don’t want Eli to use your phone to call me?” she asked. “Afraid he might see something on it you don’t want?”
“Don’t be jealous that I’ve got a life outside of our child and you don’t. I’ll see you at six. Bye, Eli.”
“Bye, Dad,” Eli said. He was sitting on the floor by the tree and looking at everything under it.
Santa didn’t bring her son an expensive phone for Christmas. She’d always felt that the big gifts should come from her rather than Santa and hated Jeff didn’t do that same thing. All it did was make Eli wonder why Santa didn’t leave him as much at her house.
“Are you ready to open your gifts before we go to Grandma and Grandpa’s?”
“Yes, please,” Eli said. “Can I open Santa’s first?”
“Actually,” she said. “You need to open up my gift first to understand why Santa got you what he did.”
She pulled over the box. Eli’s one big gift. The other gifts were smaller in price and though this didn’t cost as much as an iPhone, she knew Eli had wanted one for here because he had one at his father’s house.
He started to rip into the paper fast. “It’s a Nintendo Switch. And it’s newer than the one I’ve got.” He launched himself at her. “Thank you, Mom! I wanted this.”
“I know you did,” she said.
