I had judged him so harshly, and he was the only family I had left.
Mom took the wreath from me. “Where’s that guy you’ve been seeing. Bob, was it? The one with the big hair?”
I remembered Bob. He did have big hair. It was kind of fabulous.
“Actually, I’m seeing someone new now.”
She gave me a sassy smile. “Do tell.”
For a moment, I just stared at her. She was wonderful, even if she didn’t remember who I was, and seeing her still made me feel good.
I finally needed to accept that I visited her because I liked to. It was a different experience for Matt because he was a stranger to her every time he came. He didn’t get to look like someone she loved. We were different men who needed different things and had different lives.
“Well, I’m going to bring him to visit you for Christmas.”
If I was meeting Briggs’s parents, I wanted him to meet my mom too. I also wanted Briggs to meet Matt.
“Oh, that’s nice. I want to hear all about him.”
I sat down with my mother and told her yet again about Briggs, only this time he wasn’t just a handsome stranger. He was the man I’d fallen hopelessly for. I even told her that he was my Daddy. If she wasn’t sick, she would have been the kind of person I could tell that sort of thing. And she hadn’t blinked an eye at her brother saying something like that to her.
The truth was, even if Mom magically got her memory back, I’d never need to worry about her accepting my relationship with Briggs. It wasn’t in her nature to stand in the way of someone being with the person they loved. Her heart was simply too big for that.
But there was something I needed to tell her, even if she wouldn’t remember—even if she didn’t know it was me.
“What do you want for Matt when he grows up?” I asked her. Hopefully she still remembered the younger version of Matt. Just last week, she was talking about my father, which meant that in her memory, Matt was still a little kid. “Or any kid you have, really. What would make you proud?”
At that point we were both sitting on her bed, looking at the wreath that we’d hung on her door.
“Oh, I don’t know. I just want him to be happy. If he manages that, I’ll be proud.”
I held back the tears gathering in my eyes. “That’s it? But wouldn’t you want him to get a degree since you never could?”
“Matt will have his own life someday. Get into his own kind of trouble. Have his own dreams. It wouldn’t be very fair of me to expect him to fulfill mine, would it?”
I shook my head. “I guess not.”
“Honestly, I don’t want to end up like Mom. Always wishing she had a husband, then turning around and hounding me to get one. Or telling you to marry a woman. The day I gave myself permission to be single for the rest of my life was so freeing. I don’t want to rob Matt of a moment like that.”
I’d never met my grandmother. She died when I was two. I’d had no idea that she’d wanted Mom to get married. But I’d wished Mom was married plenty of times myself. Or simply wished I could know who my dad was.
“I’m glad you did what made you happy,” I said.
“You too, Reg. You too. Life is short, you know? You never know what might happen.”
If only she knew how true that was. Reggie was dead. She didn’t remember her own children, not really. All she had left were memories, and those were few and far between these days. Someday I’d walk into this room and not look like the version of Reggie that was alive in her head. I needed to cherish these days with her while I could.
Because I didn’t have homework, I stayed a long time. Polly even offered to feed me dinner. In the past, I would have declined, but I decided to take her up on it.
The food wasn’t bad.
21
Briggs
Over the past week, Christmas had gone into full swing in Red Canyon. Decorations began to pop up everywhere in town. Sanders was beside himself with excitement. It was his favorite time of year, and seeing his newfound, stress-free happiness was breathing life back into me as well.
I hadn’t quite realized how much the monotony of my life had been getting to me until Sanders walked into it and shook everything up like a snow globe. I knew the moment I’d agreed to take on the contract with my previous employer I’d made a mistake. The work had been weighing me down, and it wasn’t until the burden of the job had been lifted and Sanders had become part of my life that I started to see more clearly.
Thank whatever deity that existed for sweet, beautiful boys that looked at their Daddies like they hung the moon. It seemed everyday my funny boy showed me another side of himself, and each and every new facet only endeared him to me more. We were still very new, but he’d been spending most of his downtime with me when we weren’t working.
I’d asked him to stay with me at my house for several days over Christmas, and he’d lit up like a proverbial Christmas tree, talking a mile a minute about decorations and how much we had to get done to make sure my house was festive. He was a whirlwind. A gorgeous, sexy as fuck, kinky, little whirlwind but a whirlwind nonetheless.
He’d brought a few of his Christmas decorations over to my house, and we’d had to take a gigantic shopping trip, as apparently my single box of decorations was woefully inadequate. When I’d gotten the box out of storage—which to my credit was a rather large box—he’d muttered while going through everything saying things like, “Oh my god, where is your stocking? One strand of white Christmas lights? You have a single small box of ornaments. What kind of tree do you get yourself? A Charlie Brown one? Honestly, Daddy, this is all just so sad.”
When I’d tried to defend myself, telling him I usually spent Christmas with my parents, and my mom was the one who had all the decorations, he’d given me a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me-Daddy-what-kind-of-excuse-is-that kind of look, and I’d given up on trying to plead my case. I had a feeling my boy was going to be winning most arguments between us if the current argument was anything to go by.
I honestly didn’t mind a bit because he felt comfortable enough with me to give me shit, and I couldn’t help but think he was absolutely adorable when he was worked up about something. I found myself smiling at him and going along with whatever he wanted most of the time because I had a hard time saying no to him. Besides, the things he was asking for were things I was happy to give him if it brought a smile to his face.
Which was how we ended up in the Rover, driving north in the falling snow, to get “the most perfect Christmas tree ever” at an enormous tree farm. We’d driven far enough north we were surrounded by snow. We had our snow boots on and our winter jackets and other gear behind us, ready to be used when we arrived.
“We’re only about fifteen minutes away, but the rest of the drive is up the mountain once you take the next left.”
I turned toward him and grinned when I saw the excited smile on his face. He was lit up and nearly vibrating with excitement. “So, you, your mom, and your brother used to come up here every Christmas to get your tree?”
“Mmhmm, it was tradition. We had a lot of holiday traditions.”