"Whatcha watching?"
Dad looked up at me from the sofa. Dressed in a white t-shirt and a pair of dark boxers, my father looked like he was about to head to bed.
"Oh, just this show called
Easy
on Netflix," he replied while picking up the remote. The only light in the room was coming from the television, which stopped flickering because he paused the show. "Can't sleep, baby?"
I always liked when Dad called me, "baby." It was incredibly comforting and reminded me of when I was younger. When life had been easier. It had been a tough few years for us, though he always tried to hide his pain from me. First, the cystic fibrosis that Mom fought with her whole life finally beat her. Mom made it much longer in life than most people with CF and never wanted to hear about how there was no cure and eventually, CF would kill her. She was/is my hero. She wasn't even my biological mother - Dad and Mom made the choice to avoid potentially passing CF to me. Her cousin and best friend, Bethany, is my actual birth mother. That said, Mom raised me from the start. I never asked the particulars of how Dad got Bethany pregnant.
Six months after Mom's passing, my husband of just less than three years, Frank, informed me that he felt we had rushed into marriage and I was pushing the prospect of having children on him too much. All of that was code for "I've been fucking two different women." Luckily, I found that out before agreeing to a 50/50 split of assets with no alimony. For the record - fuck Frank.
"Yeah, I'm tossing and turning," I said with a sigh. I sat down next to Dad, who was nursing a Killian's. "Brain's racing, I guess."
He nodded and drank a little more from his bottle before placing it down. I grabbed it and took a gulp. I hated Killian's, but I'd try anything to get some sleep right now.
Once Frank and I divorced, we sold the house I planned to raise a family in and I moved into a cute little cottage. I loved that place, but I couldn't keep up with payments once I lost my job because of COVID. And that's why, at the age of 26, I'm back at home with my father. I've tried to make the best of a bad circumstance. Dad needed a lot of help around the home because, unlike me, he could work from home as a software engineer so he did not have an over-abundance of free time. Beyond that, after Mom's death, he hadn't been doing a lot of the regular stuff Mom used to handle on her good days. When she had a lot of good days, she'd have beautiful flower beds and the house would look like a million bucks. Even when she had a bunch of bad days mixed in, she still found time to keep the house clean and orderly with a dinner ready for her husband later that evening - even if she had to bite the bullet occasionally and order some delivery.
I'm not as amazing as my mother, but I've tried to do my best. I even sometimes laugh in my head as I pretend to be my Dad's new wife. It's not a romantic thing, but merely an observation of our new life together. My mac and cheese isn't as delicious as Mom's was, but he scarfs it down like it is. I make a pretty good steak, too. I've cleaned and organized the rest of the house - often turning rooms that had not been used since Mom's passing into something functional once again. The flower gardens are a work in progress, but dammit, I'm trying.
"So, what's
Easy
about?"
Dad got up and walked toward the kitchen while explaining the show to me. According to my father, the series was about several different people, modern relationships, and how they work. The episode he was watching included a couple from the previous season who were giving an open marriage a shot. "But almost every episode has different people in it," he said, passing me a Mike's Lemonade while he placed another Killian's down for himself. Finishing off the first bottle, he opened another as I took my first sugary sips of Mike's. "Honestly, I think Jane put it in the watch-list for us to watch sometime and we never got around to it."
Pressing play, he sat back. Only a few minutes later, despite the sugary nature of Mike's, it didn't take long for my eyes to once again get a little heavy. Placing the drink down as we watched the couple dealing with the new challenges in their life from their choice to have an open marriage, I yawned. My eyes slightly darted away and I looked toward the steps that I would need to climb to get back to my room. It seemed so far.
Besides...there was no one else up there.
"Mind if I cuddle a little and close my eyes?" I asked. "Like I used to do when I was a girl?"
"You still are a girl," he quipped.
"You know what I mean!"
He laughed and settled to get comfy before gesturing with his hand to lean into him. I didn't want to block his view of the television so I placed my head low on his belly as he chuckled at the program. Dad has a minor gut, but is still in decent shape for a guy who doesn't work out. He used to, but it was something he just didn't have time for when Mom got real bad. Still, I had a growing appreciation for "Dad bods" so I thought the gut worked for him.