Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
D eclan—Now
“Alex!” I slather peanut butter on one slice of wheat bread and my mom’s homemade raspberry jam on another. “We have to go!”
“School doesn’t start for two more weeks, Dad!” he calls down the stairs.
He’s going to wake up my mom. That’s exactly what she needs while she tries to convert the guest cottage into a vacation rental property.
“I know that.” I wrap the sandwich with reusable beeswax-lined cloth and place the whole thing into a lunch box. “But we have to get to the fairgrounds to set up the tasting tent. I promised your grandparents. May I remind you that you love them more than me.” I raise my tone on the last sentence, hoping it carries to my nine-year-old son’s increasingly selective hearing.
“He also loves me more than you.” Ciaran waltzes into the kitchen wearing nothing but boxer shorts. “Did you make breakfast?” He reaches for the blueberry bran muffins I made, but I snatch the plate away.
“These are for my kid. Get your own breakfast.”
“You are way too uptight,” Ciaran says. He yanks open the freezer and pulls out a container of frozen fruits and veggies. He carries this to the blender and dumps the contents in. “You need to get laid, man. Josie left two years ago.”
I fill up two water bottles with ice, rolling my eyes. Getting laid is not a possibility. We live in a town where there are no unmarried women my age, at least none I haven’t known since we were in diapers together. “Who am I going to have sex with, Ciaran? Maddy Olmstead?”
“She may be in her sixties, but she looks like she’d be a beast.” Ciaran pours almond milk into the blender, covers it, and hits the smoothie button. “I’m pretty sure she and Opal are together, though.”
“I’m a single dad. What am I supposed to do?” I finish packing the lunches and water bottles into my backpack.
“Do what other single parents do. Let me and the ‘rents watch the squirt, who honestly is old enough to watch himself, and go to Chicago for the weekend to dust off your Tinder.”
“Do you learn to speak in code at search and rescue?” I stick a mug under the drip from the coffee machine. “And nine is not old enough to watch himself.”
Ciaran elbows me out of the way to grab the sugar. “You’re not that old, dude. You know what fucking Tinder is.”
“Language, boys.” Our mom, Zoe Foster, walks in carrying a laundry basket filled with clean sheets. “You’re both over thirty. Can you not act like you’re three? Ciaran, how’s the cottage? Is it ready for guests yet? ”
“Yes, Mom. It’s filled with all the bougie shit you wanted.” Ciaran pours his purple-colored smoothie into a glass.
Mom’s eyes narrow with exasperation. “It’s not bougie. It’s tasteful. That Remodel Your Home and Life seminar your dad and I went to, down at the VFW, recommended the blackout curtains and said everyone is doing heated bathroom floors and towel racks. Especially here in Wisconsin. I think I want them for this house, too, if the rental property starts paying out.” She drops the laundry basket by the sliding glass doors that open onto the backyard. “Declan, do you have everything packed for the festival tasting booth?”
“Got it all in the truck out back.”
She pats me on the cheek as she walks by me. “That’s my responsible boy. Where’s Alex?”
“Taking his time!” I call upstairs. Breakfast. The kid needs breakfast. I have the muffins for him, but I take the cereal from the cupboard and two bowls from the drawer beside the sink. Just in case he decides he doesn’t like blueberries today.
Footsteps pound down the stairs, far heavier than any sixty pound child should sound. “Dad!” Alex barrels into the room, grabbing the cereal box from me as he rushes past. “Tell me what I can do to earn more screen time during the week. I need to be able to Minecraft. I can’t just play on the weekends. What can I do?”
I hand him the almond milk. “Emancipation.”
Alex screws up his face, looking so much like Ciaran when he was nine and being a tool. He inherited his mother’s blond hair, and somehow his uncle’s stubborn streak. “I don’t know what that is, Dad.”
“And that is exactly why you can’t have more screen time. You need to read actual books.”
Ciaran snickers into the dregs of his smoothie. “You sound like such a teacher, Dec. ”
“I am a teacher. Even when I’m helping out with the family business during the summer.”
Mom walks back through the kitchen with another laundry basket, this one filled with succulents in colorful pots. “We really appreciate it, hon.”
“I’d help, too, but, you know, fire department. No rest for us wicked hot guys.” Ciaran swipes the bowl of cereal I had poured for myself and takes a seat beside Alex. “Hey, squirt nut, are you excited for the festival?” He spoons a large scoop of my cereal into his mouth.
I stare at the plate of healthy, freshly baked blueberry bran muffins, sitting forlorn on the kitchen island. Nobody wants my muffins. Story of my life.
I pull out another bowl and tilt the box into it, but only a few flakes drift into my bowl. Wonderful. Whoop dee fricking doo. I’m stuck with the blueberry bran muffins. That is an unexpected thing about being a dad. I think way too much about fiber.
“I’m pretty excited.” Alex pauses in eating his cereal and examines his nails, which he has painted in alternating colors of teal, black, and lavender. “I really want to see the Vendetta.”
“Their music is awesome.” Ciaran polishes off the cereal and leans backward in the chair. “And their lead singer? Ellery? Totally hot. But you know who the real story is at this Rock and Wine Fest?”
“No.” Alex brings his empty bowl to the sink without me prompting, which almost makes me want to reward him with screen time.
Ciaran smirks, which is not a reach for his face, as it is the expression he’s most likely to settle into. “Daughtry Sutcliffe.”
The jar of peanut butter I’m holding slides from my hands and bounces once on the floor. Thanks to the industrial grade plastic, nothing is broken.
“I like her songs. I’ve heard ‘Grape Crush’ before. It has a really good beat.” Alex bobs his head. Today he is wearing one of his favorite shirts, forest green with a large black video game controller printed on the front.
“I’m not going to brag.” Ciaran stretches his arms up and over his head. “But a lot of those songs she wrote? They’re about me. We dated during senior year of high school.”
The bread I’m trying to spread with raspberry jam keeps tearing. Damn knife. I switch it out for a spatula, but I dig a crater in the center of the bread slice. “She dated a lot of people, Ciaran. You can’t be that memorable.”
Ciaran rolls his eyes. “Please. ‘ He’s the one I never told, and the one who warms me when it’s cold ?’ That’s totally me. She never told me she loved me before she left, so she wrote it all in song.”
It’s difficult to see my breakfast through the haze encroaching on my vision. One would think that twelve years would be enough time to forget that night when I made Daughtry pancakes.
One would be terribly, horribly, irrevocably wrong.
“Do you know her, Dad?” Alex looks at me as though he finally finds me interesting, and it scars and buoys me simultaneously.
Unfortunately for my ego, I have vowed never to lie to my son. “A little. I tutored her once or twice.”
Ciaran walks over to the coffee pot and selects a mug from the wooden tree beside it. “I always thought your dad had a little thing for her. She was H-O-T hot back then. And she chose the superior brother. I love your dad, but he’s never had much game.”
My fists clench, overwhelmed with the urge to hit him. “Stop, Ciaran. ”
Ciaran fills his mug then picks up the creamer and adds a generous amount. “Stop what? The kid’s gotta learn who to go to when he wants to learn how to pull.”
I cross my arms over my chest. They twitch against my breastbone. “He’s nine.”
“He’ll be on Twitch with some hot young thang chatting him up in no time.”
“You are a white man from Wisconsin. There is no universe in which you should say ‘hot young thang.’ And stop talking about my kid.”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here, Dad,” Alex says. His brow furrows, giving me yet another hopeless glimpse into his teenage future. Great. I’m failing him. I’m failing at this. I’ve tried so hard for so long and it’s all going to crash and burn.
Mom walks back through the kitchen, this time holding her gardening shoes in one hand and a spray bottle of cleanser in the other. “None of you should speak like this to each other. We’re family. I have to go out to clean the guest cottage, so behave.” With that, she steps into the backyard and shuts the door.
The three of us resume our battle positions.
Ciaran sips his coffee, almost casually. “You know, Alex, your dad is a great guy. Super smart. Very nice. But how he ever managed to bag a hottie like your mom is anyone’s guess.”
I smack him upside his head. “Don’t talk about his mom like that, Ciaran.”
“Don’t hit me, dude.” Ciaran crosses his arms over his chest and pops his pecs. How exactly am I related to this douchebag? “I can totally take you.”
I stand stock still, leaning against the kitchen island. “I’m not fighting you in front of my kid.”
“Dad, if I take your side, can I have screen time?” Alex folds his hands together in prayer position and pinches his face into a pleading puppy expression. “Please please?”
Fuck it. I’m done. “Fine. Get in the car and you can play Minecraft while I set up the tasting tent. As long as you promise not to tell Grams anything that just happened.”