Free to Love

Chapter 31

Shawn

"Well this is just weird," I said out loud after I got home from dropping the kids off at school.

Grace was in first grade. I'd enrolled Nolan in junior kindergarten at the same school for the convenience. I'd taken them both over early, just as I'd done the year before with Gracie. She was in Mrs. Walker's class this year. Nolan had Mrs. Doucet. Both teachers seemed extremely nice. Grace insisted that we stop by Miss Finlay's class. I'd seen Joanna a few days prior when I'd met up with her and her boyfriend, plus Brian and Darcy, for drinks. Grace didn't know about that, though. I was worried she'd think it was strange that I was friends with her teacher.

With the kids in school, I had the whole day to myself.

The condo was eerily quiet. I thought about driving up to the house in the woods to do some much needed yard work, but I didn't want to be that far away in case one of the kids had an issue at school. I plopped down on the couch and called my mom. Her phone went right to voicemail, which meant she was probably with a real estate client. I was about to put my phone on the coffee table when my phone started buzzing. I looked at it, expecting to see my mom's name. It was Andrew.

"Hey, man," I said as I took the call. "Long time, no talk."

Things had not been easy between us since I'd quit music.

"It's been too long. You got a minute?"

"I have a ton of them, actually. It's the first day of school. I'm sitting in an empty condo missing my kids," I told him.

"I can't believe both of them are in school now. I haven't seen them in forever."

I felt a pang of guilt.

"You should meet us at the house one weekend. It's still warm enough to hang out by the pool."

Andrew hesitated. "You serious? Because I'd love to do that. Maybe this weekend?"

I smiled. "Awesome. We'll be driving up after school on Friday afternoon. If you fly to Toronto, we could grab you on the way."

"I'm going to book a flight."

"So what did you need to talk about?"

"If I'm going to see you, we can just talk then. Cool?"

"Sounds good," I said.

We said goodbye. A bit later I got a text with his flight info.

                              ~~~~~~

"Daddy, you smell," Nolan said, wrinkling his nose at me.

"Yeah? I bet I do. I just mowed four acres of grass. Let me jump in the shower and then we can play in the pool." I turned to Andrew. "Can you keep an eye on them for five more minutes?"

"No problem," he said. He then picked up a ball and resumed the game of monkey in the middle he'd been playing with them.

I was soon back outside in my swim trunks. "Last one in is a rotten egg!"
I screamed as I took a running leap into the deep end of the pool.

Nolan and Grace hopped in the shallow end and swam towards me. I was so proud that they were both such strong swimmers.

"Andrew is the rotten egg!" Grace yelled.

After playing with the kids for over an hour, I got them a snack that they chose to eat in the fort of their big wooden swing set.

"So talk to me," I said to my manager as we got comfortable on the lounge chairs.