Pulling up the keyboard, I dialed my mother. It only took two rings for her to pick up. I could hear Hank in the background singing.
“Gerard?” she asked, then seemingly pulling the phone away from her yelled, “Hank, turn that down!”
“Hi, Mom,” I said.
“Hello,” she said, “how are you?”
“I am really, really good.”
There was a pause and then the sound of a door shutting on the other end of the phone.
“Did you say really, really good?” she asked. “I had to get out of the living room. Your father was singing to Pavarotti again.”
I laughed. I remembered many days where Hank would play his Three Tenors CDs and sing along with them. Considering he was babbling and had no clue what the Italian songs were about, he sounded rather convincing. He had a booming voice, and I often wondered what had stopped him from pursuing a career in music.
“Yes, things are really good. Remember Malia?”
“Of course,” she said. I could almost hear the smirk in her voice. “You called me about her.”
“Right. Well, I saw her again.”
“And?”
“I think—no,” I said, correcting myself, “I know we are a couple now.”
“Really?” she asked, excitement in her voice. “Oh, Gerard, I am so happy for you.”
“Really?” I asked. “You don’t think she’s too young for me?”
“Like I told you before, love does not know age. As long as everyone is legal and consenting, then it is beautiful.”
“I can see it being a thing,” I said. “Like a real thing. Like I feel like I could fall for her.”
“I am so happy for you, son,” she said. “Hank will be too. As soon as I can stop him from singing about… whatever those songs are about. Why are there no French operas?”
I laughed.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably something to do with Pavarotti being Italian.”
“Well, he should have been French. Then I would understand him better.”
We both laughed, and there was a slight pause.
“Thank you for supporting me,” I said.
“Of course,” she said. “Always and forever. Remember? Always and forever.”
I smiled, remembering many of the times she had told me that exact phrase. How many times had I asked if they really loved me before it? How many times had I needed that reassurance that I wasn’t going to be tossed away again, because I did something like get a lower grade or come home five minutes after I said I would. All the things that used to trigger my bio parents.
“Always and forever,” I repeated.
We spoke for a little while longer, but apparently Dad was busy working on his car while he was singing, so I didn’t get a chance to talk with him. It was just as well. I enjoyed my chats with my mom immensely. She was always my biggest cheerleader, my biggest supporter. Even when I didn’t deserve it, back when they first took me on, and I was sullen, rude and hard.
But she loved me until I was functional, and now I felt like Malia might be able to love me into normalcy. Or at least as normal as I might get. Which probably was just enough, since her life would never be “normal” again either. And I was okay with that.
Smiling, I tossed the phone into the pocket of the shorts, slipped them on, and headed for my weight bench. It was time to catch up to where Finn was going to be for the week.
29
MALIA
It’d been a few weeks since my first trip to Nashville, and I was getting ready to head out in the next few days for the second. It was an exciting time, and I was just happy to be getting along to the next step, both in my general life with the prosthetic and in my relationship with Gerard. I couldn’t really tell which one I was most excited by.
The weeks had flown by, and I had spent quite a lot of them at Gerry’s. Enough that, while I had seen her often during the day or on weekends when we would hang out, I hadn’t really spent many nights back at Dee’s house. Spending the night there that Thursday was a planned thing, so that Dee and I could watch an awards show together like we had done every year. I was also planning on using the night to talk to her about her feelings about Gerry, now that things had gotten suitably serious and had stayed that way for a few weeks.
“God, that dress is ugly,” Dee said, sitting down next to me with her second bowl of kettle corn.
“Right?” I asked. “I swear, some of them do it on purpose. They want to get called out just so people talk about them.”
“It’s the only explanation I can come up with too,” Dee said. “Hey, that guy kind of looks like Gerry.”