Megan Hart - Flying

“...with me?”

“Sorry, what?” Stella looked up.

“I said, what are you doing tomorrow night? Jared and I are going to hear one of our friends sing at open mic night. Want to come along?”

Stella lifted a suspicious brow. “Are you trying to set me up again?”

“Oh, c’mon. One time. One!” Jen held up a finger. Then another, and after a hesitation, a third. “Okay. Three times. But you have to admit, all three times it was totally legit.”

“Jen. I can’t date guys who are just a few years older than my kid. Anyway, I told you, I’m not interested. Too much effort.” Stella shook her head, looking at the sky, which had gone gray with the promise of rain. Too early for snow, right?

Jen sighed. “How can you not be interested?”

“I’m just not. Boyfriends take up too much time. Too much work.” Stella shrugged. “I don’t want to deal with a guy on a regular basis. I’m happy being alone.”

“Nobody,” Jen said darkly, “really wants to be alone.”

Stella shrugged again. “Not forever. No. But right now I have enough to deal with at home. Tristan goes to college in two years. I’ll have plenty of time to put up with bullshit then.”

“It’s not all bullshit,” Jen said.

“That’s because you’re in looooooove.” Stella grinned and made kissing noises that had Jen ducking her head with laughter. “Things are different when you’re in love. You put up with all kinds of shit you’d never tolerate from someone else. Love makes people lose their minds.”

“So does great peen,” Jen said solemnly.

Stella carefully kept a straight face. “All the more reason to avoid it.”

“If you’re not careful, your vajayjay’s gonna dry up like a tumbleweed and blow away.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Stella said.

CHAPTER FOUR

At birth, Tristan had weighed six pounds, four ounces. He was sixteen inches long. He had no hair, bald as an egg, and had cried nonstop, round the clock, insatiable and inconsolable for the first month and a half of his life.

Sixteen years later he was taller than both his parents, outweighed Stella by about sixty pounds and had the same insatiable appetite, though fortunately he’d replaced the constant screaming with incessant commentary on the world. At least, he used to talk all the time. Now, instead of the hugs and the “love you, Mamas,” Tristan’s conversations had become stilted and intermittent. He’d replaced his formerly goofy sense of humor with a more sarcastic edge that sometimes bordered on cruel but was nevertheless bitingly funny. Stella hated to laugh at him but usually did, especially when he was making fun of his stepmother.

“That’s not nice,” she murmured at his demonstration of how Cynthia’s mouth was always slightly parted. “Eat your grilled cheese.”

She’d made his favorite with thick slices of rye bread and cheddar, along with a few strips of crispy bacon and thinly sliced tomato. Not the healthiest dinner, but Tristan had grown up and stretched out so much she figured he could stand the extra calories, especially with all the running he’d been doing. For herself, she had a grilled chicken and spinach salad.

Tristan looked at the plate, then at her. “Can’t I have what you’re having?”

She paused with her fork ready to stab the spinach. “You love grilled cheese.”

Tristan said nothing. He cut his gaze from hers, looking so much like Jeff it hurt her heart. Tristan pushed the plate with the tips of his fingers. “No, I don’t.”

“Since when?” Stella tried to keep the edge from her voice, too aware how easy it would be for them to slip into an argument. He not only looked like his dad; he had a lot of Jeff’s personality too. All the things that had driven her nuts about her ex-husband were blooming in her son. No matter how much she’d determined Tristan would never be the sort of man who expected the world to hand him a living on a platter, it seemed nature sometimes did win over nurture. She loved her son, always, with every breath inside her. But there’d been a lot of days lately where she found it very difficult to like him.

“Since always.” He muttered something else and moved the plate another half an inch away from him.

Stella stabbed her salad. “What was that?”

“Nothing. I didn’t say anything.”

“You did,” she said. “I heard it.”

“Nothing. Forget it,” Tristan repeated stubbornly. He got up from the table, leaving the plate. “I’m not hungry, anyway. I’m going out for a run.”

He was already through the kitchen doorway before she called out to him, “Hold up. Put the sandwich away for later and put your plate in the dishwasher.”

He did, dragging his feet and heaving a sigh as if she’d asked him to amputate all his limbs with a rusty carrot peeler.

“I shouldn’t even have to ask you that. C’mon, Tristan.” She managed to keep her voice steady and focus on her salad. “You should know better.”

“Yeah?” he challenged. “Well, so should you!”

Before she could ask him what the hell he meant by that, he’d stomped away. Footsteps pounded up the stairs and down the hall to his room. The door slammed.

Stella’d lost her appetite too but forced herself to eat anyway. When Tristan thundered down the stairs and toward the front door, she called out again, “Where are you going and how long do you think you’ll be gone?”

“For a run, I told you, and I don’t know.”

There was no way for her to force a different answer from him without a fight, and she was tired of arguing with him. “You have your phone?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t go too far,” she said. “Remember—”

“Yeah, I know, it feels twice as long on the way home as it does on the way there. I know, Mom.” Again, the muttered exclamation that probably included the sort of profanity she heard all his friends using when they thought no adults were listening.

She thought of something else as the front door slammed. He was already halfway down the driveway by the time she got to the door. “Tristan!”

For a moment she thought he was going to pretend he didn’t hear her, but then he turned. “What?”

“Be back before it gets dark.” That didn’t give him much time, but the thought of him running alongside the rural roads or even the highway in the dark twisted her stomach. “I mean it!”

He gave her a wave that might as well have been a flip of the bird, and took off down the driveway. She watched him until he disappeared past the trees, then went back inside. She stabbed again at her salad before dumping it in the trash and clearing away the table. She took her time with the cleaning spray and dish cloth, making sure to get all the smudges. She moved to the stainless-steel fridge, then the fronts of the microwave and oven, the stovetop. The cabinets.

Nothing was really dirty, but she cleaned it anyway.

In the days when Jeff had lived in this house, there’d always been too much clutter, too much mess, for Stella to keep up with. It had been like living with a hurricane. Kids, dog, cat, spouse—every other creature in the house had seemed to create a swath of destruction while she ran behind with the vacuum and mop, her laundry basket overflowing. Now, with Tristan spending half the time with his dad, sometimes the only mess in this house was one she made herself.

Sometimes she left her laundry on the empty side of the bed for the whole week without putting it away. She left the cap off the toothpaste tube, didn’t put the lid down on the toilet before flushing. She bought the brand of coffee she preferred and played the music she liked best as loud as she wanted. Basically, she did everything she wanted, how she wanted it.