JESSIE
Jay stopped me from pacing for three hours getting ready for the park. It was a stupid distraction, really, something he clearly didn't need help doing, but asked me to help him with anyway so I'd stop freaking myself out and overanalyzing.
He rubbed my back absently and let me help him with his excel spreadsheet. I knew less about what I was doing than he did but being a receptionist for a good amount of time gives me some skills with schedules so I was able to help him in little ways.
I sent Dad a text when I got one from Connor's friends' mom that he was being dropped back off soon so that Dad could start the little drive over.
Connor, sooner or later, pushed open the door to the house and I waved a thanks to his friend's Mom, ruffling his hair with the other hand. I'd picked that up off of Jorgen as a dumb sign of affection.
"Mom, Mom," he tugs my shirt. "I think I just saw Grandpa's car. With the dog sticker."
"You probably did," I smooth back the hair that I just mussed. "He's meeting us at the park, if that's okay?"
Connor's eyes go all wide, "he is?"
"He is."
He drops his bag and then grabs my arm, turning right back toward the door. He makes it down two steps before coming to a halt again, eagerness stopped by something, "is Jorgen coming?"
"Right behind you, buddy," I hear Jay's low voice from the kitchen. He's leaning forward on his forearm crutches, long sleeve shirt and pants in the summer. I want to tell him short sleeves are okay but I know he won't take it, too scared of freaking out my dad to risk showing his tattoos.
"Jorgen, Jorgen," Connor gushes. "You're going to love Grandpa, he likes hockey too, that means you're practically best friends already."
Jorgen smiles, looking up at me, then back down at his kid, who's now jumping a little, excited to get going, "sure thing," is all he responds with.
His parents offered to let my dad come over for dinner but we put it off, thinking it was probably a good idea to meet him again before judging if it was a good idea to throw ourselves into it.
Connor makes us speed walk toward the park, and since Jorgen's stride is already incredibly long and he can make it longer on crutches, I'm left mostly in the dust, skipping into a jog every few strides just to keep up with my boys.
I see him first, though, despite being in the back of the pack. He's sitting outward on a picnic bench under a big tree, looking around, phone open in one hand but ignored.
Jorgen hangs back when he sees my expression change, further back when Connor breaks into a grin, taking off.
"Grandpa!" That gets my dad's attention maybe a split second before Connor crashes into him, arms wrapping like a vice around his core.
"Connor," he lets out a little huff of air as Jorgen and I approach. "You got taller."
I come up next to them and don't complain when Dad hugs me next, noticing the worry lines on his forehead and the circles under his eyes but hugging him all the same.
"Jess," he holds me back away from him, inspecting me all over. "You look well fed and well rested."
"You look happy," I respond, noticing that he's let his carrot red beard grow out a little bit and that his normally standard crew cut hair is longer, more like the photos I saw of him when he was younger.
"I've been worse," he confirms, then spots Jorgen behind me. He goes a slight bit pale. "Wow, that is a big man."
"He's not scary," I laugh.
"Yes he is, are you kidding?" Dad cracks a smile at the end of it. "But if you say so."
"I definitely say so."
Dad sidesteps me, offering his hand to Jay, who takes it, "I'm Nick Kingston."
"Jorgen Hadley."
Dad shakes on it, then gives Jorgen a once over, "you know, I should've known it was you earlier, I was moving out of the house back a few months ago and I came across the photo I kept of the frisbee team. That's when I realized it was you, not any earlier, which was stupid. And you did get taller."
"I hit another growth spurt at nineteen," Jorgen offers. "I'm done now, though, we don't have to worry about me getting taller."
"Probably a good thing, I've heard after a certain point it gets inconvenient."
Jorgen smiles, "sometimes it already is, but I can see how it could be more inconvenient."
Dad glances at me for a little conversation assistance but I really don't know what I should say. Luckily, Connor fixes that.
"Grandpa, look, I lost another tooth," he pulls down his lip to show him. "And where's Grandma?"
My dad purses his lips, "your grandma and I are in a bit of a situation."
Connor frowns, "is this why we had to leave?"
Jorgen backs up slightly, not particularly wanting to be a part of this conversation. My dad looks at me, both of us sharing almost the same thought.
"Most of it," he says. He must know I didn't tell Connor the real reason. "We're not together anymore, if that's okay?"
Connor nods, "that's okay, she was mean to you anyway."
"Yes, she was," Dad sighs. "This is too sad, I don't want to be sad. Connor, what have you been doing this summer?"
Connor's eyes light up, "every three weeks I have to spend a week at school because Jorgen's on day shifts but when he's not we've been building all the lego sets he has in his house from when he was my age. It's so awesome, he's got the Death Star."
"How many pieces are in that set?" My dad is clearly excited by this, legos was one of the things that he also really liked doing with Connor.
I step back to where Jorgen is, removing myself from their little geek session.
Jorgen leans down, head next to mine, a little half smile on his lips, "and I thought you were as red of a redhead as it could get."
"Shut up," I poke his side and he just laughs.
"Sorry I stifled that gene," he jokes. "Might be a little hard to get red hair past me."
"I don't know much about genes, but sometimes I do find red in his hair. One or two strands here and there."
He just smiles, "he could pull it off."
"I'd have to see it to believe it."
"So, how... how much are we telling your Dad?"
"About what?"
"Me, generally. Me and you as a side topic."
I breathe out, "I figure... probably as little about the stuff that might scare a suburbia dad as possible until he's more used to you. I don't want to risk getting you two on bad terms with each other. Both of you are too important to Connor and I to have you not like each other. And... probably nothing about what actually happened for Connor to exist in the first place."
Jorgen lets out a small laugh at that, "he wouldn't be a fan of us getting high on your back deck for half of the senior year?"
"Probably not," I brush my arm against his. "Though with him, I'm not sure if he'd be happy or disappointed that I still can't smoke without you there."
"Big weed guy?"
"In college? I'm almost sure of it."
"That's awesome," Jorgen shakes his head. "I like him already."
"I'm pretty sure that's the only reason we got away with what we did is because he knew and didn't ever mention it," I tap my fingers up his back and he just smiles, sweet and soft.
"Patron saint of dumb teenage decisions."
"That's my Dad."
"Though, if Connor ever smokes in the house, I will be showing him who's boss," he raises his eyebrows. "He's gonna have some stupid decision moments if he's related to me, but he should know his Dad is the original stoner of the house."
"Sure, sure," I joke. "You might've been able to stomach a lot as a teenager but I'm not so sure you still can."
"Of course I can," he says, all confident though I know he's joking. "Let me have my moment."
"Will do."
Connor and his grandfather are still deep in discussion about legos, letting Jorgen and I sit down at the picnic table on the other side of them. Only after another few minutes does the attention shift back to a group conversation where we talk about nice things, things that have been happening, general types of stuff. Though I can tell that Dad has things that he wants to say that he won't when Connor is around. I do too.
Jorgen knows, because of course Jorgen knows. He texts me under the table if I want him to take Connor home for dinner but I tell him no because I don't want to have an important conversation without him. He's important now. A linchpin in my life. I don't want to do anything without him because it's all affecting him too.
The solution that he comes up with, quick as ever, is to have his Dad pick up Connor on his way out to go get takeout pizza for dinner. It works like a charm.
"Hi," Joey Hadley offers a hand to my Dad. "Joey, I remember you from St. B's."
"Nick," he shakes on it. "I remember you from the stands at the frisbee games."
They get along well in the neutral light way that Dads normally do, sharing the same four or so interests and bad senses of humor that revolve around movies released thirty years ago.
Joey knows what's going on, somehow the people reading trait was still passed through the family.
When they're gone, Dad looks between us, breathing out long and slow, his posture melting into somewhat of a tired one.
"Serious stuff now, huh?" He asks.
"Yeah," I mumble. "I need to fill you all the way in and you need to do the same."
He glances at Jorgen but I answer that before he can ask. "Jay's here because he's co-parenting with me. He needs to know because it all affects him too."
"Oh," Dad takes that as I explain.
I'd love to just accept him back into my life like nothing ever changed but I know, and I think Jorgen does too, that I'm uncomfortable with all of it. I want to forgive but he did let my mom do all of that and he didn't reach out once it happened and he does have a bit of a history with letting people walk on him a little too much.
"So, me first," Jay sets his hand over mine on the bench on our side of the table. "If you lost access to finances with the hasty divorce, Mom is under full control of both my savings account that I had to abandon and the college fund I was somewhat relying on. Knowing her... I'm not recovering either of those."
"No, you're not going to be able to," he purses his lips. "She shifted both of those over into our account a week or so before I left. There's not much you can do to get anything back. Knowing her."
I wince, taking that information as it comes. Jay squeezes my fingers, a silent little we're okay in the gesture. "I have an emergency account that Inaya, my boss, suggested I make two years ago. It's... I've been working off of it but it's not going in the positive direction. It all would've failed months ago if I hadn't found Jorgen again. Luckily, someone was watching over all of it and made sure I managed to find him."
Jorgen opens his mouth, considering something, "I have... probably the safest financial situation. I have a bigger job up north than down here and my parents aren't stretched thin, but after their favor this summer I won't... I won't be asking anything of them unless it's extremely dire. I'll be better when I get back to Regina, the city is a lot less expensive so it costs much less to keep me sustained up there so I'll be able to funnel anything extra into helping back here, but it's still not substantial."
"Okay," Dad breathes out. "So... none of us are able to handle what's going on financially. That's not comforting but I'll... I've been putting all my effort into trying to get her to split that account. It's gonna be slow but when that goes through I'll be much better off to help."
"So she's really that mean, huh," I manage, coming to terms that my improving view of my mom was just a result of being without het.
"She had been getting worse as you got older," Dad says. "She wasn't always like this. I think... I think she just envied you, almost, and it got worse as you got older."
"Oh," I run my hand through my hair.
"How are... how are we feeling emotionally about this?" Dad asks.
"Not great," I respond.
Jay nods, "not sturdy, at least."
"Yeah, me too," Dad sighs. "How do we think Connor is?"
"Stressed" Jorgen responds. "I spend a lot of time with him day in day out because of my shifts and I've relayed what I've been seeing to Ron, he's my therapist, and he's picking up through me signs of Connor's stress. We're trying to take as much pressure off him as possible but kids are incredibly perceptive of what their parents are feeling due to a survival response so Jessie and I have been rubbing off on him."
"I've been meaning to ask, does... does he know?" Dad directs the question to Jorgen. "He calls you Jorgen."
"No, he doesn't," Jay sighs. "We wanted to take as much pressure off as possible and my position with this is very volatile, so not telling him gives Jessie and I the leeway we need just in case we can't make it work and I have to back away. It's better, mentally, for him to lose me, just me, and not me as a father."
"That makes sense," Dad admits. "That makes a lot of sense. So you're acting as a stand in Dad almost, right? Does that sound right?"
"Yeah, stand in, sure, I'm... I've been trying to spin it showing that I'm a good friend of Jessie's, that way he'll associate me with relation to only her and not him. I've been trying to cut away all the assumptions he could make toward me being his Dad, again, just so it's no worse than it has to be if I have to go."
"Alright, that makes sense. So you've been working with her on all this? Do you want to stay involved with it?"
Jay purses his lips, then nods, "yeah. Yeah I do. But I don't want to make it miserable for Connor so if Jessie cuts it off, I'll back away."
"But you want to be his dad, officially?"
"Yeah, a lot," that's something I didn't know.
Dad nods, "so... just so I'm up to date on everything, you, what's your whole everything? I don't know anything about you."
Jay takes a second to think about it, "I went to school with Jessie until the end of junior year where I left St. B's for personal reasons and went to a year in public schools in the city which was not a good experience. Around April of senior year, I got into an accident and lost most of my left leg, that stopped most of my plans for the future and I ended up in a summer program while I recovered that was training junior EMTs, I did incredibly well and joined Chicago East the second I was confident on a prosthetic. I worked there for around three years until it got to be a little too much for me to handle, in which my Uncle asked if I wanted to fill a position on his staff while he looked for someone with the right titles. I fit better than he expected and sped through the certifications I needed for that, and that's where I've been working until now. This summer I was supposed to come home for only a week but I bumped into Jessie and I postponed going home until I figured out where to go with that. Now I've been working for Chicago East again but am heading back up north for winter."
"Right," Dad nods. "I remember your father telling me that you had a not so good time at St. B's."
"Not fun," Jorgen sighs. "So that's... that's all of it."
"So, we just have to figure out how to take a load off our shoulders," Dad proclaims. "Have we thought about tuition at St. B's? Switching him to public?"
I squeeze Jorgen's hand, telling him to answer that. He does, "we have, um, but the school he would end up at, registered as living at both my house or yours, is the one that I went to for senior year and it's less than good for a lot of things. I've looked back into it and it's still like it was when I was there. Plus the added stress of switching up something in his life. We're going to have to, I think, and we need to make that decision soon, but we really don't want to."
"Good point," Dad sighs. "So we're stuck. Like stuck-stuck."
"Pretty much."
***
almost forgot to post this one
-rabid