Last week, K__ took I__ on a road trip to Florida with T__ and his two kids to visit grandparents. He’s from money, or at least a lot more money than I’m from (something is greater than nothing), and I think they’ve got a vacation house. I’m not familiar with the exact details, and I like it that way.
I missed him terribly even though I basically spent the entire time camped out at B__’s house getting a too-much-too-soon taste of cohabitation in her ~650 sq ft one bedroom. The trip and calendar worked out that I had I__ for Easter weekend.
So, B__, I__, and I hung out downtown soaking in some of the most beautiful weather we see in this part of the world. We participated in the city egg-hunt kid-fest that, had it been indoors instead of at a city park, would have easily violated fire code. The volunteers didn’t so much hide eggs as sow them seed-like in the grass and mulch. The result, if it wasn’t already predicable, was repeated several times throughout the day in case you missed it: 1-2-3- GO! and a hundred little kids are set loose all at once to pick their by-age-group corner of the park clean in about ten seconds. Locusts would marvel at the lack of restraint and table manners. This was followed inevitably by tears as the slower, shyer kids came to the realization there was nothing left to find, their baskets as empty as they’d been during the half hour they spent waiting in line — a line that had no discernible purpose to begin with. Then, if this didn’t strike you as pandemonium already, parents would begin calling the names of their little ones, unable to bear being out of eye-contact for fifteen seconds. As the parents invaded the kids-only space, the wee ones would be further lost in a sea of fast-moving legs and still-echoing cries of the tearful candyless.
All-in-all, great fun, I must say. I__ found five eggs and (as far as I know) didn’t have to throw a single elbow to keep them. We got lunch and generally had a blast. It wasn’t long after arriving at B__’s place for a break before I__ asked if we could spend the night. Sharp little fucker. How’d he know we’d been shacked up all week?
We gave each other a knowing grin and worked out sleeping logistics. After cooking out with the neighbors, a bath, storytime, and a night-night phonecall to mom (wherein I was immediately ratted out) he slept like a brick. I moved him to the couch a few hours later and I don’t think I’ve been able to do that without waking him up since he was an infant. Not even then usually.
This morning at brunch, who should we run into but C__, T__’s ex in the booth behind us with her kids — the ones I__ spent last week in Florida with. R__ town is small enough, I knew I’d run into her eventually, and I knew I’d be unable to resist asking some tough questions when I did. She gave me her card, and I’m looking forward to it with a kind of morbid curiosity.
As is usually the case, by the time I get my chance, I’ve already given up caring, and now it’s kindof like finding out the answers to a test that’s already been graded, on material I had no interest in absorbing in the first place.
Speaking of morbid, B__’s grandfather died Friday and I’m attending the funeral tomorrow. I’ll probably meet her mom and an assortment of other relatives. As much as I’m completely unready, I do want to be there for her. The whole affair will be impossible to keep light and casual, and upon reflection, that’s probably fitting given that everything about the relationship so far has been exactly that.
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