Chapter 7
Charlie
When I woke up the next morning, it took me a minute to remember where I was. I looked around the hotel room as the memories from the night before came flooding back into my mind. The wedding. The lake. The way Reagan looked at me after we made love as if it was the first time all over again. And it really had felt like it was.
I rolled over in bed, expecting her to be beside me, but was surprised when I found nothing but empty space. As if she somehow knew I was looking for her, she walked out of the bathroom at the very moment, already showered and dressed.
“Shit. What time is it?” I moved my hand around the bed as I tried to find my phone. “Do we need to check out soon?”
Reagan laughed as she walked over to the bed and sat down beside me. “No. Not even close. It’s barely past eight. I couldn’t sleep anymore because I miss the kids.” Before I could say anything, Reagan bumped her shoulder against mine and smirked at me. “I know I couldn’t stop talking about how excited I was to have this night away, but now I can’t stop thinking about how much I miss those cute little faces.”
“Let’s see if you still feel that way when it’s time to put them down for a nap.”
“You mean when we attempt to put them down for an hour then give up and read to Carter while Olivia watches TV and Ronan tries to do flips off of the couch?” Even though I was complaining I still felt a pull of longing as I thought about them. They really were adorable, and I loved their different personalities.
Reagan sighed. “Precisely. Maybe we should give up on the whole napping thing now that they are four. Most things I’ve read say kids stop napping between three and four. We might need to let go of the hope that we can still get them to.”
I pushed my bottom lip out into an exaggerated frown. “But that hope is the only thing that gets me through the morning sometimes.”
Reagan ran her thumb along my lip and smiled. “It also leads to disappointment every time it doesn’t happen.”
“Very true.” All of this talk of the kids had me itching to see them, so I hopped out of bed. “Do you mind packing while I get ready really quickly? I want to see our little monsters as soon as possible.”
Reagan’s face lit up as she jumped from the bed as well. “There’s nothing I want more.”
Less than an hour later, we pulled into my parents’ driveway, both of us jumping out of the car as soon as it was parked.
“Race you to the front door!” Reagan shouted as she broke into a sprint.
I ran after her, but it was no use since she had gotten a head start. By the time I reached the door, she had already opened it and walked inside. Patch circled around our feet as we shouted for the kids. Just when I had scooped Patch into my arms, all three kids came running around the corner.
“Mommy! Mama!” all three of them shouted in unison.
Ronan almost knocked me over when he ran straight into my legs and wrapped his arms tightly around them. “Mama! Come watch me throw football. Grandpa says I’m good like Uncle Jamie.”
I turned to hand Patch off to Reagan, but Olivia was already in her arms talking at a mile a minute. I looked in front of me at my literal angel, Carter, who was waiting patiently while her siblings fought for our attention. I set Patch back down on the ground, then picked up Carter while Ronan continued to cling onto my leg.
I gave her a tight hug, then kissed her nose, which she wrinkled before letting out the sweetest little giggle. My favorite noise in the world. “Should we go watch your brother throw this football?” I asked her.
Carter simply shrugged. “Sure.”
“Is he as good as he says he is?” I whispered as I struggled to walk with the extra appendage stuck to my leg.
Carter shrugged again. “Sure.”
This sweet little girl was way too nice. I pressed my nose against hers. “Are you sure about that?”
“No, he’s actually not,” she whispered before breaking into another fit of giggles.
As we made our way through the hallway, I knew Reagan was following behind us because Olivia didn’t even stop to take a breath as she gave us the play-by-play on everything they had done the day before. When we reached the kitchen, Nana was sitting at the table with her hand on her forehead as if she was sick.
“Nana, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She pointed between the kids. “Those three rascals of yours are just going to be the death of me.”
“Please don’t joke about dying,” I said as I wiggled my leg to detach Ronan from it and sat Carter down on the chair next to my Nana’s so I could give Nana a kiss on the cheek.
“Why? Because I’m knocking on death’s door? Don’t worry, dear. You have at least two years left with me. I’m going to make it to one hundred so I can say I lived longer than Betty White. After that, all bets are off though.”
“You’re going to be one hundred in two years?” I asked in disbelief. My family never talked about ages. Even my parents refused to tell us how old they were. With Nana being my dad’s grandma, I knew she had to be old, but instead of doing the math to figure out how old she might be, I kind of preferred to think of her as being immortal. My grandma and grandpa, her son and daughter-in-law, had already passed, but I didn’t have the type of relationship with them that I had with Nana. Nowhere close.
Nana nodded. “Yep, and if those bitches don’t put me on the cover of People magazine or some other shit, I’m going to be pissed.”
Olivia, who was still in Reagan’s arms, put her hand over her mouth and giggled. “Nana said bitches.”
Both Ronan and Carter giggled along with her, but it was Ronan who jumped up and down and raised his hand as if he was answering a question in school. “She also said shit.”
“This is what I mean,” Nana said with a shake of her head. “They’re always snitching on me. I got lectured by your mom multiple times yesterday because she doesn’t think I should speak this way in front of them.”
“You know we don’t care,” Reagan said as she finally dropped Olivia from her arms. “They can say whatever they want as long as they don’t say those words at school.” Reagan took on a lecturing tone, most likely to get the kids’ attention and remind them of our number one rule when it comes to swearing.
“We can’t say mean words like stupid, dumb, and hate, though,” Carter reminded her, her voice sounding so similar to Reagan’s lecture voice that it made me laugh.
Reagan put her hand up to give Carter a high five. “That’s exactly right. Good job, babe.”
Carter scrunched up her nose at Reagan. “I’m not your babe. Mama is.”
“That’s right.” Reagan smacked her hand against her forehead as if she had actually made a mistake. “Thanks for the reminder.”
Ronan clawed at my legs as if he was an animal. “Now we throw football?”
“Yeah, sure.” I looked around the room for any signs of my parents. “Where are grandma and grandpa?”
“Grandma is cleaning our dirty clothes and grandpa is pooping,” Olivia said matter-of-factly.
Nana threw her hands in the air. “No secrets in this house anymore.”
When my dad walked into the kitchen a few seconds later, we all started to laugh. “Get everything out okay?” I asked when he gave us all a questioning look.
“All right. Who told?” My dad pointed at Ronan. “Was it you? I bet it was you!”
Ronan quickly pointed his own finger at Olivia. “No, it was Livvy.”
My dad nodded. “That would have been my next guess.”
Ronan clawed at my dad’s legs the same way he had done to mine. “Let’s show Mommy and Mama how I throw football.”
“You got it.” My dad scooped Ronan into his arms and carried him through the kitchen and out the back door.
Reagan and I followed, holding Olivia and Carter respectively. We watched as my dad stood close to Ronan and threw him the football, which he awkwardly caught with both hands. When he “threw” it back to my dad it only went about a foot, so my dad had to lean forward to grab it, almost losing his balance in the process.
“So much better than Uncle Jamie,” Reagan said as she held her phone out in front of her, clearly taking a video to send to him.
We watched them throw the ball back and forth a few more times before Olivia huffed. “I’m bored.”
“Hi, bored. I’m Mom.” I cringed as soon as the words were out of my mouth. Holy shit. When did I get so old that I started to say things my mother said to me?
I couldn’t even blame Olivia for the way she wrinkled her eyebrows at me in obvious judgment. “Not funny.” She pointed out toward the lake. “I want to swim.”
“In the lake?” I asked with a cough, remembering the activities that had taken place there last night.
Olivia nodded. “Grandma said we could if you said it’s okay. She said you swam in it.”
“I did. Not that long ago, actually.” I shared a secret smile with Reagan who winked back at me.
“Can we please?” Carter brought her hands together in a praying motion and hit me with the widest, most adorable, puppy dog eyes. There was no way I could say no.
“Fine. But you have to wear your bathing suits and your swimmies.”
All three of the kids high-fived then ran inside. I pointed in the direction they had just run in. “I guess we should go help them, huh?”
“I suppose they need us.”
After spending the next fifteen minutes wrestling with our kids to get their bathing suits on and putting our own on as well, we headed back out to the lake, this time to do some much different activities than the night prior.
Reagan took turns throwing the kids into the water while I entertained whichever two weren’t being thrown at the moment. When they got bored of that, we tried to teach them Marco Polo, but that only lasted about five minutes since Olivia and Ronan got in a fight after she accused him of cheating. Once we were able to break up the fight, they finally seemed content to just swim around, so Reagan and I got out and sat by the edge watching them.
“Would you rather spend every night like last night or every day like today?” Reagan asked as we watched them splash each other. “You can only have one or the other. Not both.”
“Is that supposed to be hard? Obviously today. You know I love our alone time, but nothing compares to this.”
“I know.” Reagan leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I already knew what you were going to say. I just wanted to hear you say it.”
“You wanted to hear me say that I would choose watching our children try to kill each other over ever having sex with you again?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I wanted.” She put her arm around my shoulder and pulled me close to her. “Lucky for us, we get both.”
“Yes. Lucky us.”
I knew my luck had run out as soon as I heard my mother’s voice behind us. “Charlotte, why are you letting your children play in that dirty lake?”
I turned in her direction and shielded my eyes with my hand so I could actually see her. “They said you told them they could as long as we gave the okay.”
My mother scoffed. “Well, I didn’t think you actually would.”
“Why not? Jamie and I played in there all the time. You and dad would beg us to go in sometimes.”
“Yes. Well, that was you, and these are my grandkids.”
“Wow. Thanks, Mom. Glad to hear where I rank.”
My mom laid a blanket out on the ground beside me and sat down on it. “Did you happen to ask Mary Beth why she didn’t invite us to her wedding? We’ve been like family to that girl since you were kids. It’s very hurtful that we wouldn’t be included.”
Really? The woman who skipped my wedding wanted to know why she wasn’t invited to a different gay wedding? “I didn’t ask her, but that’s because I didn’t need to. She told me when they first got engaged that she wasn’t planning on inviting you.”
My mother scoffed and shook her head, looking absolutely disgusted that Mary Beth wouldn’t want someone at her wedding who was still fairly homophobic, in spite of “trying” not to be. “Did she tell you why she decided not to include your father and I after everything we’ve done for her?”
After everything you did for her, I thought to myself. Ever since the great Miller Reunion Blow Up, my mom hadn’t gone out of her way to include Mary Beth like she did in the past (even when we had asked her not to). “Yes, she did. She didn’t want me to be upset if you decided to come after skipping my wedding. I told her I thought that made perfect sense, because it definitely would have upset me, even if I tried to not let it get to me.”
“Really, Charlotte? You’ve been married for years. I thought we moved past this. We’ve come so far.”
“You’re right. We have.” The last thing I wanted was to fight with my mom when things had been decent between us, but I had made a promise with myself a long time ago that I would always be honest with her about how I was feeling. I held my feelings in for way too long, and I wasn’t going to do that any more. “But that doesn’t make it hurt any less that you chose to miss one of the biggest days of my life.”
“I thought I was making the right choice. It turns out I made a mistake. I didn’t know you were going to hold it over my head for the rest of my life.”
Hold it over her head? Seriously? “I haven’t held it over your head. I’ve never even brought it up before. You asked why Mary Beth didn’t invite you, so I told you the truth. Now, let’s just drop it.”
“I didn’t realize Nana was going to be one hundred in two years,” Reagan said as if it somehow fit into our conversation, even though I knew she was just trying to help me out by changing the subject. “I know that seems far away right now, but if we’re going to throw her the huge party that she deserves, I think we need to start planning as soon as possible.”
“You want to throw my nana a birthday party?” I asked, all of my anger from a moment before being melted away by just a few words from my perfect wife.
“Of course I do! Nana’s the best, and she deserves the best.”
“You do know she’s never going to agree to that, right?”
“Of course I do. That’s why it’s going to be a surprise.” Reagan smiled over at me, and at that moment, I was pretty sure I had never loved her more.