This Could Be Us (Skyland, #2)(55)
And we just stopped giving a shit.
We have as much right to go out and explore the world with our family as anyone else. We’ll be respectful, but we don’t stand for people disrespecting our boys or making them feel that just because they may be different they are less or deserve less.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been locked in my office all day, but the landscape seems almost Technicolor, with a sky so blue and bright I have to squint when I look up. This crowd is thick and the air is cool. Kids dart from booth to booth, squealing and laughing. The muscles of my shoulders, tensed while I hunched over my laptop for hours, slowly relax.
“Too bad you don’t have a girl, Judah,” Tremaine muses. “I could find you somebody. There’s a nice woman at my firm who—”
“How many times do I have to tell you it’s weird for my ex-wife to set me up on dates?”
“That is a little weird, honey,” Kent agrees. “Besides, they have dating apps now. Remember? That’s how we met.”
“Can you imagine him,” she says, nodding pointedly to me, “on Tinder? Oh, my God. I’d love to collect data on that social experiment.”
“That won’t be happening.” I smother a laugh and shake my head. “It’s bad enough you dragged me to this fall feast shit.”
“Harvest Festival,” she corrects.
“Whatever. It’s bad enough you dragged me to this on my day off.”
“Is it really a day off when all you do is work from home?” she asks.
“I’m behind and catching up.” I survey the field of food tents, face-painting stations, trucks piled with hay, and a few pavilions. “I’m only staying twenty minutes, and that’s for the boys.”
Kent fit right in with our unit. Things are not always easy, but Kent knew what he was signing on for. Anyone who gets involved with Tremaine or me has to understand that ours is not the typical parenting journey. Aaron may always require intense support. He may live outside of our home someday, but it probably won’t be entirely on his own. I’m very conscious of the fact that we may be fiscally responsible for him, not only until we die, but until he does. That sounds morbid, but when I work, when I save, when I invest, it has to last two lifetimes. Mine and his. He can still make progress, of course. Hell, he could become a world-renowned cuber and outearn all of us. Who knows? We hope for the best and prepare for… well, anything.
Adam’s journey is different, but no less complex. He’s academically gifted but still has a lot of sensory, behavioral, and socialization issues. Nothing we haven’t learned to handle. I worry constantly about his seizures, though. He used to have fifty of them a day. Sometimes he would fall during one, bump his head, and end up in the emergency room.
Yeah, anyone who joins our crew needs to understand what they’re signing on for, and Kent definitely did. I smile as he tries to convince the boys to go on a hayride. He’s not having much success.
“If you go,” Tremaine whispers to me, “you know they’ll do it.”
“You didn’t say anything about riding a pickup truck through the woods.”
“Woods? Judah, I see the parking lot of Walmart from here. They play tag football on this field. This is the closest Skyland can get to rustic, though, so throw yourself into it for the boys.”
“Okay. I’ll ride the hay thing, and then I have to get back to the house and finish these reports.”
“I hope those reports keep you warm at night.”
I don’t answer because my nights recently have been filled with the memory of one woman whom I would deeply enjoy keeping warm. Soledad appearing on my front porch was torture and a blessing. I was thrilled to finally see her after so long, but I can’t stop fantasizing about her. Even the word “fantasize” feels weird because I generally don’t have fantasies, but the smell of her on my porch that day. I don’t even know what scent she wears, but it haunts me, the way it’s light and sweet and hangs in the air after she’s gone.
Her hair was longer, swinging past her shoulders. From a distance, you assume it’s just black, but what a privilege, being close enough to pick out the amber that streaks subtly through the dark strands.
And her mouth.
That damn mouth.
Her lips are the color of crushed plums, like the juice that oozes out. I know because I bought plums and squeezed one to see if it matched my memories of those pretty, pouty lips. It absolutely did, and the thought of Soledad’s lips wrapped around my dick. I just want—
“Earth to Judah.” Tremaine snaps her fingers in my face. “If you could stop dreaming of tax write-offs for a second, we could get you on this truck and back to your home office in no time.”
I disguise my mortification with a droll look and a roll of my eyes before agreeing to the hayride.
As Tremaine predicted, the boys acquiesce as soon as they find out I’m willing. At first the three of us are stiff, which seems to be our default setting, but we loosen into laughter as the trip goes on. It’s the crisp autumn air on our faces, the smell of fresh hay and trees all around, leaves spiced with the colors of saffron, turmeric, and sumac. Adam is smiling, and he may not be talking to the other kids on the ride, but he enjoys being with them. Aaron just watches and takes the occasional photo with his phone. With so much of his communication reliant on pictures, he’s constantly adding to his encyclopedia of images.