Hold On

“He did the right thing,” Ethan declared. “You don’t get enough sleep, Mom.”

And maybe it wasn’t good my kid was so sweet. It made capping the gooey at one hit a week nearly impossible.

“And it sucks that Merry lookin’ out for us and holdin’ your hand and stuff doesn’t mean he’s your boyfriend,” Ethan stated. “He’s super cool. He’s almost as cool as Colt.”

And there it was again.

Ethan liked Merry, but more, Ethan liked Merry for me.

Honestly, there would never be a way to decipher the many varieties of how my life sucked. The suckage of my life was like pi—it went on endlessly.

“Yeah,” was all I could say, because my son was right.

Ethan stared at me.

Then, without warning, he leveled me.

“You need a boyfriend.”

I did a slow blink with the addition of a head jerk.

“It’s, like…totally crazy you don’t already have one,” Ethan continued. “All my friends think so and I do too.”

“Uh…” I pushed out, but Ethan was far from done.

“You’re, like, the coolest mom on the planet. I have to dole out sleepovers ’cause all the guys wa

“Perhaps she doesn’t have your momma’s awesome eye–hand coordination,” I teased, lifting the controller in my hands.

“No. She’s just got a stick up her butt,” Ethan returned.

“Kid,” I said quietly, liking he was sweet and sharp but not ever wanting him to be nasty. “Be cool.”

“It’s true,” he replied. “Thirty minutes, Mom? That’s just mean. And Everest’s mom lets him eat sweets, get this, only on a birthday. His or his sister’s or his mom’s or dad’s, and it’s only ever cake. They have broccoli every night. Broccoli looks gross, smells gross, and tastes gross. But he has it, like, every night. He says he reckons if that keeps up, he’s go

At this news, I could see why Ethan’s sleepovers were popular; I always laid out a spread for his friends. And I wasn’t certain we’d ever had broccoli in our house since the day he was born.

I smiled at him, but the truth of it was, I should make my kid eat more broccoli and green beans and shit like that, and less Pringles, Oreos, and M&M’s.

I wondered what Peggy would do if she ever learned how bad I let my kid eat.

Shit, maybe I should take a turn down the veggie aisle, and not just to pick up wonton wrappers for those sausage things I liked to make during football games.

“See why they wa

God, he was going to make me cry and I wasn’t sure my tear ducts even worked anymore. They’d dried up after Lowe fucked me over. If the waterworks turned on again because my kid was being all kinds of sweet, it could be catastrophic.

In other words, I had to put a stop to this immediately.

In an effort to do that, I warned, “You’re earning me exceeding my quota of gooey this week.”

He turned fully to me, and I realized he was being very serious, or more serious than I’d realized he was being (and I’d already figured he was being serious).

He had something to say that meant something to him.

This meant I needed to shut up and listen.

“Well, whatever. Be gooey, I don’t care,” he declared. “But I’m not go

“Ethan,” I muttered, dreading that time, upset that he recognized that time would come and he worried about me.

“No, I wa

Other kids might do it, but they only had a couple of hours to look after themselves before their parents got home. I didn’t get home on early shifts until after eight thirty.

I was cool for a mom, I could see that, but that was too long for a kid Ethan’s age to be by himself.

“That’s not go

“Right, but you know I’m good, even if you’re not good with it yet, right?”

I could give him that for sure, so I did.

I nodded. “I know you’re good.”

“And, like, that’s go

God, my eyes felt like they were growing in my head, pushing the boundaries of their sockets, and it hurt like crazy.

“That isn’t something you need to worry about, baby,” I said, and his head jolted.

“If I don’t think about stuff like this, who will?” he asked. “Not you,” he answered himself and kept going. “It’s like you’re all about me, and that’s cool. That’s part of you bein’ a cool mom, you know, bein’ into video games and things like that, but also how you are lookin’ after me. But that’s all you are, Mom. You, like…work, then you, like…look out for me. And that’s it. I mean, Merry’s a super-cool dude and I know he’d be totally into you, but he wouldn’t think to ask because you’re all about lookin’ out for me. He knows he’d get shot down, so why bother?”

Yep, I was right. Even though he wasn’t entirely correct, still, my kid was too sharp for his own good.

“And Merry’s the only cool one left,” Ethan informed me gravely. “He’s really tall, and he’s totally fu

This was going on too long, and if it went on much longer, no joke, it might just kill me.

“You’re about to get around six weeks of gooey,” I returned, hoping to shut him up.

He knew what I was hoping and shook his head, exasperated. “You’re just sayin’ that to shut me up when you shouldn’t because this is important.” He leaned toward me. “I liked it when Merry woke me up this morning. He was fu

God, Ethan really dug having Merry around.

Damn.

“Ethan, honey—”

He threw his controller down on the couch between us and crossed his arms on his little man chest, interrupting me. “I just want you to be happy. I know Gramma does too. She worries. She’s a mom, just like you, but I got you to look after me. She’s a mom with a kid who doesn’t have anyone who’ll look after her.”

And my kid was good at laying the guilt on too.

Shit.

“I’m an adult and I can look after myself, baby. I can look after both of us,” I told him.