Chapter 31 Michelle The Simple Life #3
“Right on,” he said. “By my estimates, that group hug earned us fifteen minutes before the next fight.”
“Stop,” I laughed, removing the wayward hand that landed on my breast. “I have to put Grace down for a nap. That Barbie wedding did her in.”
“Later, then.”
“If you’re lucky,” I teased, giving him another kiss before I asked, “How were the waves?”
“Un-frickin’-real. Huge swells. You should’ve let me take the boys. They would’ve lost their minds out there.”
I leveled a stare. “I don’t let you take my boys into the ocean when the surf report says ‘life-threatening.’”
He shrugged, grinning. “And yet you let me go. Interesting. Makes a man wonder about his pension.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re a full-grown adult. If you want to paddle into deathly swells with your friends and call it fun, that’s your business. But hands off my children.”
“You do realize they’ll be adults someday, free to make their own terrible decisions.”
“Yes, but by then, their frontal lobes should be fully formed.”
“How do you explain Keith, then? He’ll be eighteen in six days.”
Scott wasn’t wrong to question. Keith’s frontal lobe was more of a suggestion at this point.
“He’s within the margin of error,” I said.
Scott laughed, snagging me by the waist and pulling me onto his lap. “Give me another kiss.”
I took his face in my hands, and the grin dropped right off when I kissed him. His fingers tightened on my hips, pulling me closer.
“Hey, Mom, can we—”
Kyle and Jake halted mid-step, their eyes going straight to me sitting on their father’s thigh, and instant trauma bloomed.
“Oh, my god,” Jake said, throwing an arm over his face. “What is wrong with you people?”
“Great,” Kyle sighed. “Now I’m gonna need new parents.”
I tried to pull away, but Scott held tight. These were the moments he lived for.
“Boys,” he said, his smile returning. “Perfect timing. I’ve been meaning to have this talk with you. As you get older, you’re going to notice some changes in your—”
“Please stop,” Jake groaned. “Why are you like this?”
Scott just kept going, deadpan. “—new urges, new feelings, and it’s important you understand how a man and a woman—”
“I’m leaving,” Kyle said, closing his eyes and walking straight into the cabinet.
“Your bodies are going to start feeling—”
Jake placed his hands over his ears. “Seriously, stop, or I’m calling CPS on both of you.”
The boys had suffered enough. I stepped back and high-fived Scott. “Nailed it.”
“Yep,” he said, proud of himself. “That’ll resurface in college.”
“So, can we go?” Kyle asked.
“Go where?” I said.
“To the skate park.”
I looked at Jake. “Did you forget something?”
“I can do it when I get home.”
“You skipped yesterday,” I said. “You’re the one who told me to hold you to an hour a day on the piano.”
Kyle frowned. “Why would you say that?”
“Because I want to get better.”
“You’re already better.”
Jake shook his head. “Better’s not good enough. I want to be the best.”
“Then four minutes a day won’t cut it,” I said.
He sighed, fingers dragging through his hair. “How about thirty now?”
“And thirty when you get home,” I said, meeting him halfway. I’d learned the hard way not to push a kid so far that they started to hate the thing they loved.
Jake exchanged a look with Kyle, then nodded. “And then we go to the skate park.”
“Not so fast,” I said. “With who?”
“Just us and Dalton.”
I checked with Scott who, of course, couldn’t care less. He was the permissive parent who believed kids needed to be kids. I’d been raised to believe otherwise, which meant when I put my foot down with ours, I was always the bad guy.
“Okay,” I relented. “But only the skate park, and no hanging out with that Lynch kid. I don’t trust him. And you have to be home at six for dinner.”
“We know,” Jake said. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Don’t thank me now. To the piano.”
Jake disappeared around the corner. A second later, he was hammering the keys, but what came out was not the complicated concerto we all knew he was capable of. No, the song Jake chose to start his countdown was I’m Too Sexy. Scott and I glanced at each other, smiling.
“I mean, he is playing,” Scott said.
“Yes, well, I don’t think that’ll get him into Juilliard.”
Scott blinked. “Juilliard? He wants to go there?”
“Jake and I have talked about it. Why?”
“Because I’m going to have to start stealing from my boss right now if we’re going to be able to afford it.”
“I think your son is good enough for a full scholarship.”
“I thought full scholarships required good grades.”
Jake drowned out our conversation when he hit the chorus and belted it out: “I’m too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt, so sexy it hurts.”
“… and humility.” He grinned.
“He’s in middle school,” I said. “He’s got time to improve in both areas.”
Scott nodded at Jake’s dramatic chorus. “Yeah… if that’s the audition, I’m not losing sleep over tuition.”
Finally bored with tormenting us, Jake slid effortlessly into the opening movement of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.
1, a piece so demanding that, if you closed your eyes, you’d never guess the hands creating that sound belonged to a thirteen-year-old skater boy.
They called him a prodigy—but even that fell short.
Jake didn’t just play music, he heard it somewhere deep inside himself, like it lived there.
He could reproduce anything after a single listen.
He’d inherited my perfect pitch and discipline…
and Scott’s charisma and stage presence.
But it was more than that. Anyone listening could hear it.
After showing off, Jake changed course, filling our modest five-bedroom house with the soft, aching notes of one of his own compositions.
His chord progressions were sophisticated, and the way he resolved tension showed a natural grasp of theory he hadn’t even learned yet.
He called the piece “First Light,” in honor of the hour he loved most—just him, his dad, his brothers, and the ocean.
Jake had notebooks full of songs, but this was the melody he always came back to.
It spoke to him in a way neither of us had ever been able to explain.
Like it was waiting.
“Goddammit,” Scott said, shaking his head. “Kid’s definitely going to Juilliard. Mail fraud, here I come.”
“Mommy?”
“What, honey?” I said, covering Grace in her favorite naptime blankie.
“Don’t let the reindeer man in.”
Grace’s Christmas obsession had come out of nowhere this week—Santa this, reindeer that—and always with that tiny crease of worry between her eyes.
“He won’t come for months, sweetheart.”
“But I don’t want him to come at all.”
“You don’t want Santa to bring you presents?”
“No,” she said firmly. “The reindeer man. I don’t want him to come.”
“Why not?”
Grace reached up, grabbed my face with both hands, and pulled me down until her lips were at my ear. “His smile makes my tummy freeze.”
I arched a brow, wondering what on earth the boys had shown Grace to spook her like this.
“Mommy’s got you,” I whispered, stroking her cheek. “No more tummy-hurting smiles, okay?”
“Okay, Mommy.” She kissed me, rolled over, and clutched her blankie.
I was halfway out the door when she added, soft but insistent, “Don’t let him in.”