From the back door he watched Julie’s rental car pull out of his driveway and head toward town. She hadn’t been able to get a flight out of Sun Valley until the next afternoon, and she’d just assumed she would be staying with him and Adam. After the past hours he’d spent with her, there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d agree to let her stay with him. He’d called the Sandman and got her a room for the night. By morning, the whole town would know his business, but for once he didn’t care. If he had to spend any more time with Julie, he couldn’t promise that he wouldn’t strangle her.
She’d totally crapped out on him, making it sound as if she would have married him if he’d ever asked her. He’d never asked her, because they’d talked about it and decided that a baby wasn’t a good enough reason to get married. They’d both decided that, not just him, because the truth was, if she’d felt strongly about it, he would have married her even knowing it would be a mistake.
He shut the back door and went in search of his son. He found him lying on his bed, crying into his pillow. One of his sneakers had disappeared, his socks were scrunched down around his ankles, and his shorts were twisted around his waist. He was a pitiful lump of misery.
“Are you hungry?” Dylan asked from the doorway.
“No.” Adam rolled onto his back, and his face was splotched from crying. “Why’s my backpack outside?”
“Hope and I hiked up to Sawtooth Lake.”
Adam looked across the room at his father. “She used my backpack?”
“Yes, she did.”
“I don’t want her to touch my stuff. I hate her.”
Dylan moved toward the bed. “Just a few weeks ago you liked her.”
“That was before.”
“Before what?”
Adam turned his face to the wall. “Before you guys were doing sex!”
About a year ago Dylan had explained most of the birds and the bees to Adam, but not the real embarrassing stuff. He thought about his response and chose his words carefully. “There is nothing wrong with what Hope and I were doing. We’re both adults and you weren’t even supposed to be here until Sunday.”
Adam sat up and his eyes got squinty. “You don’t have to do that any more ‘cause you got me. Let her find someone else to make her a baby.”
“What?” Dylan sat on the edge of the bed. “People don’t have sex just to make babies, Adam.”
“Uh-huh. That’s what you said. You said men put their penis in women to make babies.”
Okay, maybe he’d screwed up the whole birds-and-the-bees thing more than he thought. “Men want to make love to women even when they don’t want to make babies.”
“Why?”
“Because… well…” He didn’t know what to say, but he’d already messed up, so he figured he’d just muddle through with the truth. “Well, because it feels really good.”
“Like how?”
How did you explain sex to a seven-year-old kid? “Hmm… like when you finally scratch an itch that you’ve waited all day to scratch. Or when your feet are really cold and you slide into a warm tub and get all shivery,” he said and watched himself fall in his son’s eyes.
“Sick!”
“You’ll feel different about it in a few years.”
Adam shook his head. “No way.”
Dylan figured it was time to change the subject. “Why don’t you tell me about your trip?”
Adam looked as if he wasn’t going to let the subject drop, but he did. “It was okay.”
“Your mom said you met her boyfriend, Gerard.”
“He talked funny.”
“Your mom also said you called him a fag. That wasn’t very nice.”