Role Playing(96)

Aiden felt his cheeks heat, but he nodded. “Yeah.”

“That’s cool,” Kit said. “I should let you know, though. If you do anything that hurts her, I will make your life incredibly, creatively, and unbelievably painful in the short time between my finding out and your body going mysteriously missing. Just so you know.”

Aiden paused in scrubbing the roasting pan, staring at him. Then he started chuckling.

“Kit!” Maggie chastised from the living room. “I heard that!”

“Not sorry,” Kit replied.

“You’re right, Maggie,” Aiden called out with a grin. “He couldn’t be more your kid if you designed him in a lab.”

The words seemed to make both of them happy.

By the time the dishes were done, it was evening, and the stars were out in the clear, pitch-black sky.

“C’mon, time for presents,” Maggie said. “Then dessert.”

Kit made a big show of mock solemnity. “I was told,” he intoned, “that there would be cake?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yellow cake with chocolate fudge frosting, of course. And Aiden brought chocolate chip cookies.”

Kit gave him an appraising look. “You bake, huh?”

“Kinda.” Aiden smiled. “I’m okay.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Kit said, but cracked a smile.

Before Aiden could answer, his phone started buzzing. He didn’t expect anybody to call him—the fights had been too fresh, and he’d reconciled himself to that. He had a little ache of melancholy that things hadn’t worked out better, but he was also in a good place about it.

But it wasn’t his mother, or Davy.

It was Sheryl.

Why the fuck is Sheryl calling me?

He felt a stab of panic. “I’m sorry, I have to take this,” he apologized to Maggie. “It’s Sheryl. It might be . . . my mom’s supposed to go there for Christmas, and . . .”

“No problem,” Maggie said quickly, nudging him to her office and shutting the door behind him as he answered.

“Sheryl? Is Mom okay?”

“What?” Sheryl said. “Yes. She’s okay. She’s here, watching Frozen with the kids.”

He frowned. “Is Davy okay?”

He heard her take a deep breath. “I have to assume he is.”

Now his jaw dropped. “You don’t know?”

“He’s with Maria and Bug for Christmas.”

Holy shit. “What happened?” he asked, then shook his head. “No, never mind. I don’t care. Why are you calling me?”

She paused. “We got in a horrible fight,” she said. “About you. About how I’ve treated you. And, um, him. I guess it’s been bothering him for a while, and he finally just snapped.”

Aiden thought of what Riley had once told him. Sounds like a “you” problem, not a “me” problem.

“Still not seeing what this has to do with me,” Aiden said. “And I’m about to open presents with Maggie and her son, so I have to go.”

Another pause. “I know I haven’t treated you well.”

His eyes widened. This was new.

“I told you,” Sheryl said slowly, “when I went off to college . . . I got a little wild.”

“The experimentation?”

“That. And, um, drugs. I didn’t tell you about that.” Her voice had lowered. “I went off the rails a bit. Almost flunked out, got in some bad situations.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But that—”

“My parents helped me out. I realized that all the freedom I wanted was more of a . . . trap. I needed to get my life back on track. I finally saw that even though they can be kind of overbearing, they genuinely care about me, and they had a point. So I cleaned up my act. Then I found you again, and it was like I was getting all my mistakes cleared off the board.” Her voice was breaking with emotion. “I thought we had a second chance. I thought, finally, life was going my way. We could do it right this time.”

He swallowed. “Then you found out I was bi, huh?”

“It just felt like I was being punished for my past,” she said. “And I was so angry. Although I guess I should’ve been angrier at myself.”

He shook his head. She’d been sweet, once. He’d loved her, and on some level, he really did still love her. “I’m going to go, Sheryl,” he said, but with kindness.

“Please,” she said. “Please tell Davy I apologized. I don’t want to screw things up with him. Let him know I—”

“You’re going to have to tell him yourself and see how that goes,” he interjected. “Merry Christmas, Sheryl.” He would’ve asked her to pass it along to his mom, but he knew there was no point. Then he hung up and shut off his phone.

He didn’t know how things were going to go from here. Parts of this still stung . . . but he had hope. Things were different. With Maggie, he was happy. He was himself.

He was going to keep it that way.

He rejoined Maggie and Kit, out in the living room. Maggie looked at him with concern. “Everything okay?”

He nodded. He wasn’t going to get into it tonight. Maggie was sitting on the couch, while Kit sat in the old recliner. She distributed the packages. He sat on the floor, leaning against the couch by Maggie’s feet.