Chapter Eleven Amanda
Chapter Eleven
Amanda
M axwell was absolutely a bust. Her third date had been more of a babysitting experience than anything else. They’d met at the local dog park with his Labrador to chat and get to know him and his dog in a low-stakes environment, and it became anything but. Amanda loved dogs—truly, she did—but this man’s dog would not stop trying to hump her leg. And instead of stopping his dog or acting like a normal person, Maxwell thought it was hilarious and would just stand, laugh, and point instead.
Literally the worst way to get humped on a date.
The moment she’d untangled the dog from her leg, she’d made an excuse about checking to see if she’d accidentally left the lights on in her car… and then just left. And did not come back.
She didn’t feel even remotely sorry about it, because she did not owe someone like that her courteousness.
Pulling her car up her driveway, she turned down the path toward her cottage and came to a stop in front of her garden of sunflowers, which were getting really tall at this time of year. They were perfectly in bloom, and she couldn’t help but smile every time she saw them.
She found her eyes swinging over to Dominic’s house like they usually did. There was also an older woman Amanda didn’t recognize sitting on his front porch in one of the two wooden rocking chairs that she’d refurbished and given him last week. The woman had what looked like a giant textbook sitting open in her lap and was clearly reading studiously.
Amanda sat in her car for a minute and tried to decide—did she ignore it and go home? Or go say hi? That seemed like the neighborly thing to do. She didn’t always have to be neighborly. She and Dominic had also been spending a good amount of time together and clearly were friends. So if she didn’t go say hi, would that be rude? Social norms were really annoying.
She pushed open the car door and her feet took her in the direction of Dominic’s front porch before she’d come to a firm decision.
“Good afternoon!” she announced herself as she rounded to the steps at the bottom of the porch.
The older woman lifted her head, seeming to notice her for the first time. “Oh, hello!”
“I’m Amanda. I live next door. Just thought I’d say hi, as your neighbor.” She gave a small, awkward wave, even though she knew full well this woman didn’t live here.
“I love that. This place is such a small-town stereotype, and I just want to eat it up.” She put her textbook down on the table next to her and Amanda read Abnormal Psychology on the spine. The woman stood and offered her hand to Amanda. “I’m Ellen Gage. I don’t live here, but my son does.”
“You’re Dominic’s mom?” Amanda asked, shaking her hand. She could see the resemblance now, and it was actually pretty endearing how much they did look alike.
Ellen gestured for her to come join her in the other rocking chair next to her. “For nearly four decades now, yup.”
Amanda sat and gave herself a little push to begin swaying back and forth. “What are you reading?”
“Believe it or not, I decided my early sixties would be the perfect time to go back and get a graduate degree in counseling.” Ellen lifted the textbook and showed her the cover. “I’m calling it my final-chapter career.”
Amanda smiled at the morbid humor. “Wow. That’s really impressive.”
“I’d like to think so,” she replied, putting the book back down. “You do a lot of things when you’re a parent—and having Dominic meant that a whole phase of my life was about someone else instead of myself. Ironic that I’m choosing counseling now for myself, when that’s all about helping other people.”
“Well, do you enjoy it?” Amanda replied. “Because that’s really what matters.”
Ellen leaned back in her chair and pushed herself to rock back and forth. “So far. I get nervous about how much I can really help, especially on days like today.”
“Today?” Amanda frowned, unsure what Ellen was referencing.
“Dominic just had a really hard day today at the doctor, and I worry he’ll give up on a second chance or another future that isn’t just baseball. Tell me to stop if this is too much information. I don’t know if you know that much about him, or if I’m just trauma dumping on a stranger.”
Amanda laughed lightly and shook her head. “Actually, I can see where Dominic gets it. You’re both very emotionally open right off the bat. It’s… it’s refreshing, honestly. I don’t experience that in people too often.”
“That’s good to hear,” Ellen admitted. “Maybe I did something right with him.”
“You definitely did,” Amanda agreed. “He and I are a new friendship, but he’s been great to live next to so far. He’s rebuilding my dock after a tree fell on it.”
“He’s what?” Ellen’s head leaned forward and turned to her, then she let out a loud barking laugh. “Please have a safety inspector or someone approve it when he’s done before you use it.”
“I will,” Amanda said with a chuckle. “But he is doing things up here, I promise. He’s not just been holed up in this house.”
Ellen sighed. “I really needed to hear this tonight. Thanks, Amanda. You’ve given me a real gift today. On the drive home from Detroit today, he didn’t speak at all. He gets like that after the doctor now.”
She swallowed hard at hearing this piece of Dominic’s life. It felt like a glimpse behind the curtain she’d been wondering about but hadn’t gotten to see yet. Amanda had a hundred questions she wanted to ask as a follow-up, but she’d already intruded on this woman’s study hour, and it felt like too much to then snoop about her son. Even if she wanted to know all of it. Instead, she decided to leave it simple and validate the feeling. “I’m sorry. That must be really hard for you as a mother.”
“It is.” Ellen breathed in slowly, then released it. The air between them seemed to lift, and Amanda found herself envious of this older woman’s ability to regulate herself so seamlessly. She was clearly in tune with her body to be able to allow just a deep breath to calm her so easily. Amanda had tried mindfulness and meditation but had never been able to actually figure it out.
Ellen turned to look at her again. “But enough about us. Tell me about you, Amanda. I asked Dominic when I pulled up about the yellow house. It’s just so cheery! I love the sunflowers. It must have taken some time to grow them all that tall.”
“Thanks,” Amanda replied. “I love my house. It’s the cheery vibes I always imagined for myself but never had. My mother tries hard, but she is always working. Beautifying our space or our home growing up was the last thing on her mind. Not that I blame her, but I definitely told myself when I had my own place, it would feel every bit of beauty and warmth I could muster.”
“Well, you certainly completed that task,” Ellen commented. “It’s incredible.”
Amanda nodded, letting a moment of quiet pass between them. “I actually just got back from a date.”
“Ooh.” Ellen’s interest was definitely piqued, and she sat forward. “God, I can’t even remember what dating is like. Tell me all about it. What do the kids call it these days? The tea? Spill the tea.”
“Oh, it was terrible. You’re missing out on no tea—I promise.” Amanda laughed as she glanced down at her jeans that still had a small crusty stain on the shin where her date’s dog had been humping her. Ew. “We met at a dog park with his Labrador.”
“Man with a dog… always a good sign,” Ellen commented. “Love Labradors.”
“You wouldn’t love this one. This one was too loving, if you know what I mean,” Amanda countered, gesturing to her jeans. “I couldn’t peel it off of my leg, which my date found to be the most hilarious thing ever.”
Ellen grunted. “Sounds like a middle school boy.”
“Right?” Amanda agreed. “I booked it out of there so fast. Didn’t even say goodbye.”
Ellen laughed and then gave a long, reflective sigh. “That’s what I love about this new generation of women like you. Back in my dating days, I’d probably have stuck it out until the end out of some sense of duty to his feelings. The fear of hurting his ego far outweighing my discomfort. Women aren’t putting up with that shit anymore, and I could not be happier about that.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Amanda admitted. “I was trying not to think about it like some kind of asshole move.”
“It was an asshole move in some ways, self-preservation in others,” Ellen replied. “But men have been doing that shit for all of history, and no one blames them. It’s always about whatever the woman did to push him away. Your husband cheats on you? Why weren’t you satisfying him enough? What did you not give him as a wife? It’s all patriarchal bullshit and generations of lack of male accountability.”
Amanda wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but she respected the hell out of Ellen for saying it.
“Oh, sorry,” Ellen followed up. “I can get on my soapbox sometimes after doing this studying. The things we learn in graduate school… man, I wish someone had taught me about all of this when I was younger. Body autonomy, self-advocacy… it shouldn’t be a foreign concept to me, but it really was.”
“Those are big concepts to everyone, I think,” Amanda countered, trying to soften the stance. “I think every generation struggles with figuring those things out in their own ways.”
“That’s true,” Ellen agreed. “I definitely have a tendency of sometimes seeing things in all black or all white—especially when it comes to looking back on my own time line and wishing things were different.”
Ellen was so easy to talk to that Amanda couldn’t help but continue. Clearly whatever that trait was would lend very well to her being a therapist in the future. “I mean, don’t we all look back with regrets on our life? That seems like the human condition. Always wanting what we didn’t or couldn’t have.”
Ellen shrugged, but her gaze was off in the distance as she contemplated. “I think I’m beginning to see it doesn’t have to be that way, though. That there is a way to sit with both the emotions and reality of loving who you are and where you are, while also holding space for the parts of you that were hurt or neglected or never fulfilled in the way you’d hoped.”
That certainly hit home with Amanda. “Shit, maybe Dominic is right, and I should go to therapy.”
His mother laughed. “He told you that?”
She nodded. “He might not be wrong.”
“I was twenty-two years old when I met Dominic’s father. I was twenty-three when I got pregnant, and yet, he still left me for a nineteen-year-old. I never heard from him after I told him I was pregnant, and over the years, it just became pointless to try and track him down,” Ellen explained. “My parents stepped in a lot to help me raise him, and I am forever grateful for that. I do think their influence on him—especially my father—was a saving grace.”
“I’m so sorry Dominic’s father acted like that,” Amanda replied. “I am sort of familiar with dads doing that. Mine got remarried and started a new family that I just wasn’t invited to be part of.”
Ellen raised her brows and gestured out in front of her. “See? Everyone has a story like that. You should hear some of the stories of my friends back then, too. We let men get away with the world. I mean, we didn’t let them. But we accommodated them. We made arrangements with one another, we had back-up plans, and we left when we had to. But that was the extent of the consequences to them. The men lost us. That was their only consequence.”
“I mean, losing you would be a huge loss,” Amanda tried to counter. Not even knowing this woman well, she could already tell that Ellen was not someone to mess with. She was very clearly not a woman anyone would want to lose.
“Thanks, hon,” Ellen replied but then shook her head. “But I’d be a lot happier if I also had his castrated balls on a necklace.”
Amanda burst out laughing. “Oh my God!”
Ellen grinned. “I’m not saying it needs to be graphic. They were already very small. Like two dainty little stones.”
She gestured to her neck, pretending she was wearing a necklace.
Amanda only laughed harder.
“What the hell is going on out here?” Dominic stepped through the front door and bellowed at the two of them. When his gaze landed on Amanda, he looked just as surprised to see her as she was to see him.
“Oh!” Amanda jumped up from her chair and suddenly couldn’t figure out where to put her hands. “I was just talking to your mother.”
“Dominic, sweetie,” Ellen interjected, not missing a beat. “Why don’t you go grab a bottle of red for me and your neighbor here? Pour us both a glass.”
“Mom, I think—”
“You think the white in the fridge is better? You know, I agree. Switch that order to the sauvignon blanc instead.” Ellen cut off her son like it was the easiest thing she’d ever done.
Amanda grinned at Dominic sheepishly and slowly sat back down. “I do like white wine…”
Dominic all but growled at her, but the flicker of amusement in his eyes was enough to give her permission to stay. “Fine. But I’m having a glass, too.”
Ellen put a hand to her chest. “Only if you come out here and chat with us.”
He paused in the doorway, seeming to survey them both for a moment. “Fine.”
After he went inside, Ellen giggled in the way a young girl might and Amanda couldn’t help but join in the laughter.
“Oh, he’s not happy with me,” Ellen joked. “He thinks that every time I drink, I whip out the childhood pictures of him. But I’m actually going to pull some up right now before I even start to drink, so he can’t complain.”
Ellen pulled her cell phone out of her pants pocket and began swiping across the screen.
“Wait, really? You have baby photos of Dominic?” Amanda asked, her curiosity on full display. “Is he frowning in all those photos, too?”
Ellen laughed. “He is quite the grump, isn’t he? He always has been. Long before the ball-to-the-face thing. Grumpy is just his baseline. It’s actually gotten a lot better in the last year, if you can believe it.”
“I believe that. He’s not very grumpy with me,” Amanda admitted. “And honestly, it seems more showy or defensive than real.”
“It is. Complete defensive mechanism.” Ellen lifted her phone screen to Amanda to show a photograph of a younger version of Ellen sitting on a floral couch with a young toddler in her lap. Sure enough, the grim look on the toddler’s face matched Dominic’s usual resting dick face. “But look how cute he was. Such a little lovebug as a kiddo. Always wanted to be in my lap. Always wanted a cuddle. We bedshared ’til he was almost seven years old. Some of the best years of my life.”
Amanda smiled at the thought but felt a familiar churning of nervousness in her own gut. Physical affection was so important to Dominic—it was to all men. Would she ever be able to measure up in that way?
“Two glasses of sauvignon blanc,” Dominic announced as he walked back out onto the porch holding two full wineglasses. He handed one to each woman and then pulled a bottle of beer out of his pants pocket. “And a lager for me.”
“A beer man?” Amanda asked, lifting her glass to him as if to toast.
He was too far away to clink his beer to her wineglass, but he held it up in solidarity anyway. “It was that or risk dropping one of the three wineglasses on the way out here.”
Ellen laughed, then took a big swig of her wine. “Typical man. Could have made two trips but never will.”
“This lager is better than a second trip,” Dominic countered. “What are you two even talking about out here? All I heard was cackling from inside.”
Ellen rolled her eyes and gave Amanda a meaningful grin. “Girl talk, kid. You wouldn’t know about that.”
“Am I the subject of girl talk?” he countered. “Because I happen to be an expert on the topic of me.”
“Everything isn’t always about you, Dominic,” Amanda said, suddenly feeling a renewed sense of bravery she had probably gleaned from Ellen. “Your mother is a very interesting woman. I could talk to her for ages.”
Dominic eyed his mother with one raised brow like he didn’t believe a word she was saying. “She’s a real wealth of information,” he agreed. “But feel free to check any facts about me with the actual source.”
Ellen grinned at her and wiggled her brows. “Ooh, someone is feeling a little territorial it sounds, Dom. You haven’t shown so much interest in my renditions of your life before.”
“You weren’t talking to my neighbor before,” he countered, but his defense felt off somehow. “She has to live next to me. More importantly, I have to live next to her.”
Ellen waved her hand. “Nonsense. You two clearly already have a friendship going here. I completely approve. Amanda seems like a real gem.”
“Thanks, Ellen.” She tipped her wineglass toward them both. “I happen to agree. I really am a gem.”
Dominic laughed and shook his head. “Jesus Christ, I’m never inviting you back up here, Mom.”
“Oh, hush,” Ellen countered. “I have my own bedroom. Also, I want Amanda to decorate it. You put stock photos on the wall. I want sunflowers.”
Dominic paused the beer bottle as it was about to reach his mouth. “Absolutely no sunflowers in my house. Not happening.”
Amanda laughed, and the warmth filling up inside of her in that moment felt like it could sustain her for years. Maybe this was what it could be like… family, closeness, depth of conversation. If this was what could come out of putting herself out there emotionally, then maybe she wanted to do it more often.