Pal-entine's for Single Parents

I laughed, and our conversation was interrupted by the girls running back to us as they urged for pushes on the swings. That whole process brought a lot of giggles from them, and June taught May how to 'properly' jump off a swing - she was my little daredevil, sometimes, and jumping off and getting some hang time was an important lesson for her new best friend.

Then, all of a sudden, swing time was over and they rushed back towards the big jungle gym.

"So I got the backstory from my sister on her history with Francine," I said to Olivia as we walked around the outside of the play area, keeping the girls in sight.

"Don't tell me they were high school rivals or something," Olivia guessed.

"No, it doesn't go back that far," I chuckled. "Francine's oldest is the same age as my youngest niece, so Rebecca has been dealing with her crap for a while now. Apparently, she's trying to get on to the PTA leadership team at the high school as well, and Rebecca is running just to keep her off of it."

"Damn, entering politics for spite?" Olivia grinned. "I like your sister more and more."

"So how is the video editing business?" I asked. "I honestly have no clue what that would entail."

"It's good," Olivia said. "I can be as busy as I want to be, really. I have a few long-term clients that bring me repeat, stable business and then I pick up other freelance work to fill in the gaps. It's a lot of staring at the computer screen, mostly, so wearing out May with stuff like this so that she'll have a quiet afternoon is helpful."

"Well, the girls seem to be having fun," I said.

"They do," Olivia smiled. "You know, May came home yesterday and asked if she could have school on Saturdays too, just so she could see June more often?"

I barked a laugh. "I hope they can both keep that outlook on school," I said. "I'm dreading the terrible teens."

"We've got a few years of sweet and simple left," Olivia said.

"That we do," I agreed as we watched the girls chasing each other across the rope bridge. June and I had watched the original Pirates of the Caribbean for our Daddy-Daughter Movie Night, and I was pretty sure she was telling May all about how they could sword-fight pirates and find buried treasure in the boat-like play area.

My daughter, I grinned to myself, was a cool little girl.

- - - - -

October

"Ugh, I hate these things," Olivia mumbled to me under her breath before taking a sip of beer.

We were in the backyard of Annabelle Child's house and were surrounded by screaming children. The birthday party was probably being considered a success by most measures. All twenty-five of the girls from the Second Grade were dressed up as Disney princesses and were screaming and running around like little maniacs as a couple of Princess actresses were facilitating games for them. Where the parents foundtwo Princess Party actresses in our town I couldn't start to guess.

June and I had gotten some looks when we arrived - my daughter, still on her pirate kick, had asked to dress as Elizabeth Swann. Considering she was a woman from a Disney movie, I was down for it; the only problem was that Miss Swann didn't exactly have a standard 'look.' It turned out that a little pirate coat with some trimming done up by my Mom on her sewing machine, a tricorn hat, a foam sabre and a boxy compass on a twine necklace was all she needed.

The hat and the occasional flailing of the foam sword over her head definitely made my daughter stand out among the various dresses of the other princesses. May wasn't far behind - as soon as she found out that June wasn't going to be a 'normal princess,' I'd gotten a sarcastic 'Thanks for that' text from Olivia because May wanted to be Rey from the new Star Wars films. Not as great a pick, in my opinion, but still unique.

At least my daughter wasn't the only one running around with a fake sword, and the lightsaber noises May made werevery cute.

"Awkward social gatherings where you have to interact with other people, birthday parties, or just other people's mouth-breathing kids?" I asked Olivia quietly.

Olivia snorted and shook her head, giving me a warning look not to make her laugh with more statements like that. "The first one," she said. "Though a big helping of the last one, too. It always feels so contrived, making small talk with some of these parents. Like, lady, I get it. You have errands to run and laundry to do and your husband comes home from work late and your therapist has taught you buzzwords like 'narcissist' and 'enabler.' Idon't care."

I chuckled and looked out across the party. There were about half the number of adults as kids, which boggled my mind a bit - who just dropped their seven-year-old off at someone's house without any prior vetting? Still, beyond the birthday girl's parents, I'd already made my rounds with the other Dads who were present. Jack was a 'Sports Dad' and wanted to know who I rooted for, Drew was the resident 'I brew beer in my garage' guy, and Paul was clearly whipped by his domineering wife and rarely left her side. The other seven adults were mothers who were swapping between trying to be helpful, looking helpful without actually doing anything, or gossiping.

Very few of them were sparing a glance for the kids unless they were taking a photo of them.

"So what did you end up getting for a present?" I asked Olivia. We'd texted some ideas back and forth as I tried to figure out the 'present giving meta' for the school year.

"I went with that big 120-colour marker pack," Olivia said. "May says Annabelle is big on art, and I figure the kid can draw all over her walls in a couple of years as an act of rebellion. You?"

I snorted lightly and smirked. "Nerf gun. I can get away with it since I'm a single dad."

"Asshole," Olivia chuckled, keeping her voice low so her swearing wouldn't be overheard. "You do realise that half of the presents are going to be educational 'Girls in STEM' kind of things, and the other half will be girly crap, right? Everyone is going to think you're a crazy guy trying to teach their kids about the Second Amendment."

"Good," I said. "The more unhinged they think I am, the less likely they try to pull some shit."

"Crap, hold on," Olivia said, starting towards one of the groups of girls where May was currently pretending to stab the birthday girl with her lightsaber and then cut her head off. "Mayday, that's not how we treat our friends on their special days, is it?"

I covered my mouth as I laughed, watching Olivia try and wrangle her daughter into letting the birthday girl try out the toy lightsaber. Of course, I made sure June wasn't pulling the same shit with her foam sword - thankfully, she was busy pretending to be stabbed by her own deadly weapon, the foam blade caught between her torso and her arm as she staggered around like a goofball making some of the other girls laugh.

"So, you and Olivia, huh?" Drew said as he sidled up to me.

"Hmm?" I asked, then shook my head. "No, not like that. Our kids are just friends."

"Really?" he asked, raising his bushy eyebrows in surprise. He was a stout guy and worked some sort of mindless office job he didn't want to talk about. Our conversation earlier had revolved around how he was trying to fix the hoppiness of his latest batch of beer. I was more of a whiskey man so I hadn't had a whole lot to offer, but had played along. "A couple of the moms were saying you two were becoming a thing."

"Why would- What?" I asked.

"Just the rumour mill, I guess," Drew shrugged. "You two talking all the time and stuff. So you're really not... Y'know? Because, I mean, if I found myself single after a tragic accident..."

"No, man," I said with a sigh. "May and June are friends. We organise playdates and stuff, and we're friendly. We're not seeing each other." I ignored the lightly veiled suggestion; it wasn't anywherenear the dirtiest thing I'd heard in regards to a woman, and him saying it seemed more like a 'male bonding' thing than a comment meant to degrade Olivia. And, to be fair, Oliviawas an attractive woman. I still couldn't get over that smile when she was about to laugh, and physically she was- well, she was attractive. I'd never deny that.

"Well, if that's the case, Sharon is definitely going to farm some social points off of that. Mind not mentioning that to anyone today? My wife could use a win, that Francine lady has been on her ass about some crap with the PTA and I never hear the end of it," Drew said.

"Sure," I said. "As long as you promise that it gets out there. I don't like people talking behind my back, and we aren't in high school. Suggesting Olivia and I are hooking up is childish."

"Oh, yeah. I can promise that," he chuckled.

"Alright, no more decapitations," Olivia said, cracking her knuckles a little unladylike as she came back over to us from the girls.

"I think the line is 'No disintegrations,'" I said.

"OK, nerd," she chuckled. "Drew, how are you? Have you guys signed Wendy up for gymnastics this year?"

"Sharon mentioned she was going to do that," Drew said.

"How about you, Adrian?" Olivia asked. "Is June going to hit the mats? Classes start in a couple of weeks."

"I hadn't really thought about extracurriculars for this winter," I said. "June hasn't shown interest, but I'm sure if May is going she'll start to."

"The girls who run the club are pretty good," Olivia said. "Not, like, Olympic level or anything but the main woman was on the State college team and she gets athletes out from their program to help. All you need to do is sacrifice your Saturday mornings at Ass O'Clock."

Drew chuckled. "And that's why I let Sharon take care of it."

"I'll see if June is up for it," I said.

"It's cheaper than hockey," Olivia said. "And less sexualized than dance or cheerleading."

"Sold," I said with a rueful smile.

Drew wandered away, likely to go fill in Sharon on the latest gossip developments, and Olivia shuffled a little closer to me. Sometimes, when she was close like that, I felt like I towered over her a bit at over a foot taller, but she had a big personality that filled the gap.

"Just FYI," I said. "The latest from Drew was that people are saying we're a thing. I tried to squash it definitively, I know you don't want shit like that getting spread around."

Olivia rolled her eyes and took a deep breath before letting it out. "Whatever," she said. "Those bitches will always have something to talk about. You better be careful, though."

"All the single ladies?"

"All the single ladies," Olivia confirmed with a smirk. "I bet Cathleen over there would be down for a quickie in the tool shed if you asked her."

Cathleen was a divorcee who would have fit into the stereotypical Trophy Wife category back in Cali, but up here in the midwest could just have easily been a well-endowed girl from good farming folk. She was curvy in all the right ways, tall, and from what I understood had dropped a good twenty pounds since her divorce.

"Not exactly my type," I said.

"Tall, leggy and blonde?" Olivia asked. "Whose typeisn't she?"

"Mine," I said.

"Too much like your ex?" Olivia guessed.

"No, actually," I chuckled. "Too much like my ex before her. Less crazy, but still not great. That's how I ended up in my ex's web to begin with."

Olivia laughed and took another swig of beer. "So what you're saying is that you've got a broken romance radar. I'll keep that in mind and try and give you some hints if anyone is coming on to you."

"That," I said. "Would be appreciated. But make sure your hints come in the form of big red flags."

"Noted," she laughed.

- - - - -

"Morning," I mumbled as I opened the back door of Olivia's SUV and lifted June's booster seat in. It was the second week of gymnastics and we'd decided to carpool. Since Olivia had the bigger vehicle we'd take hers, and I'd pay for coffee.

"Morning," Olivia said back, turning in her seat to give me a weak, early-morning smile. A 7 AM start in the next town over meant a 6 AM departure time for us to get there in time and for the girls to be ready, which meant we'd both been up by at least 5:30 AM to make sure the kids were ready to go and had their breakfast. The first week I'd been cursing the decision to get June enrolled into the gymnastics program, but after the giant smile and how excited she'd been coming off the mats in the big gymnasium, it was hard to consider pulling her back out.

I got June's booster seat locked in, then lifted her into the seat. She immediately reached over and hugged May, who hugged her back, which was cute as hell.

It was already starting to get cold and it felt like all at once the trees had turned from green to orange - after years down in California I'd forgotten howfast autumn really happened. I climbed into the passenger seat of the SUV and Olivia got us moving. We were quiet for the first bit other than a couple more mumbled pleasantries until we hit the Dunkin' just outside of town. Then, with large coffees for both of us and donuts for the girls for a nice little extra kick of sugar and carbs before they had class, we started to perk up.

Everything went smoothly on the ride in and Olivia and I got the girls inside and ready with time to spare. The class was almost thirty strong, mostly girls but a few boys, but the program had way better ratios than a school classroom with five college-aged assistant coaches helping out the head coach. They started getting the kids warmed up with a couple of little games before they went into stretches, which left Olivia and I free to sit in the stands and focus on our coffees.

"Ugh, that's just not fair," Olivia murmured. I glanced at her and followed her gaze off to one side where a couple of the assistant coaches who weren't running the warmup game were talking. One of them, a girl with the calves and shoulders of a gymnast who could flip themselves around in the insane tumbling routines that I'd seen when watching the Olympics, had her foot up on the wall as she stretched out - well, something. I wasn't exactly sure what lifting your foot over your head and pulling it towards your body was supposed to stretch.

"Not fair?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"OK, maybe that's not exactly right," Olivia said. "More like... 'fuck the inevitable passage of time.' I used to be able to do stuff like that."

"You were a gymnast?" I asked, surprised she hadn't mentioned it.

"No, cheerleader," she said. "I was a short, skinny twig of a thing until I hit seventeen so I was the girl getting thrown around at the top of the lifts and stuff. Then I finally got a bit of boobs and butt, but I was still light enough that I could fly so I didn't lose my spot my senior year. I could put my leg behind my ear, standing on one foot while balancing on a guy's hand, then do a flip and he'd catch me for a soft landing."

"Jesus," I said. "That sounds wild."

"Yeah, well, things change," Olivia said. "I can't even remember the last time I could go to a yoga class, let alone pull a move like that. I'd probably pull every muscle I have if I tried it now."

The class was an hour and a half, and by the end, both May and June were panting and sweaty but grinning from ear to ear. They got high-fives from all of the coaches and one of them came over and chatted with me briefly, encouraging me that June had some real potential for a newbie. When she left, and I'd helped June into her jacket and she was busy putting on her outdoor shoes alongside May, Olivia shook her head as she smirked at me.

"Naughty, naughty," she said.

"What?" I asked.

"Flirting with the co-eds?" she raised her eyebrows.

"I wasn't flirting," I said. "She was talking to me about June."

"Jesus, you weren't joking about you and your exes," Olivia said. "Adrian, she wasdefinitely flirting with you even if you weren't flirting back."

"No," I said, looking back towards the coed. She was talking with some of the other assistant coaches and saw me look and smiled. I turned back to Olivia. "Shit, she was."

Olivia snorted hard and grinned as she rolled her eyes. "You asked for red flags? There's one right there."

"Note to self," I said. "Never wander around the facility by myself. I might get cornered."

"Good boy," Olivia laughed, patting my arm.

"As a thank you for clueing me into a possible disastrous misunderstanding, how about you guys come over for lunch?" I offered.

"Sure," Olivia said. "We'll head home first, get the sweaty little gremlin cleaned up, and come over for noon?"

"I'mnot a sweaty little gremlin," May said, standing up and looking crossly at us.

"Neither am I," June said. "We're sweatyathletes."

"Oh, you are?" I asked, glancing at Olivia as we both grinned. "Well, I dunno. Because to me youboth look like sweaty little gremlins!" I growled the last part as I lunged forward and scooped both girls up around their waists, lifting them high and then heaving them a little so they were both thrashing and giggling as they hung off of my shoulders.

"Come on, little athletes," Olivia said as she chuckled and led the way out of the big gymnasium. "Gremlin or not, you two are sweaty andstinky."

I set the girls down so they could scoop up their indoor gym shoes and chase after her, both of them arguing that they were sweaty butnot stinky.

- - - - -

"Call me Livvy," Olivia said.

"Hmm?" I asked.

We were all out in the backyard and we'd eaten lunch at the picnic table I'd built shortly after June and I had moved into the house. The yard still needed some work and I had a laundry list of stuff to do next spring, but it was relatively flat and uncluttered which meant there was plenty of space for the girls to practise their gymnastics moves. The fact that they were taking turns being the 'coach' and giving each other notes was fucking cute.

"You can call me Livvy, Adrian," Olivia said.

"OK," I said, frowning for a moment and then shrugging.

After a long moment, Olivia let out a breath. "You aren't going to ask why?"

I looked back at her and cocked an eyebrow. "Do you want totell me why?"

"Well, yes," she said. "I guess."

"O- Livvy," I started and then corrected myself. "We've already established that I'm bad at picking up on romantic hints unless they are right in my face. Well, here's something you should know about men - we're simple creatures at the end of the day. I'll call you whatever you want - I like Olivia, but Livvy is obviously more familiar and I appreciate that we're becoming friends and not just the parents of our kids' friends. But, dear God, if you want to tell me something, or ask me, or whatever it is, you can just say it or ask it, OK? Me not asking a follow-up question to something you think I should doesn't mean I'm not interested, it means it either sounds like something I'm taking at face value, or I'm assuming you don'twant to share with me at that moment because you're not offering it."

Olivia pursed her lips and then breathed in through her nose and let it out. "That explains... a lot," she said.

"Did I just blow your mind with how simple communicating with a man needs to be?"

"Maybe," she said, then smiled. "Asshole."

"See, I get nuance," I said. "By 'Asshole' you meant, 'buddy who is saying something smart that I should have known already.'"

She grinned wider and rolled her eyes.

"I'll promise to try and be your gal pal sometimes too when I clue in, by the way," I said. "So, Livvy, what's the story behind your nickname?"

"It's not a nickname really," she said, taking a sip of the beer I'd served her for lunch as she looked back out at the girls playing and practising. "It's more like - OK, maybe it's technically a nickname. Only my parents, my ex and closest friends call me it though. Most of my high school friends I'm not in contact with anymore even on social media now, so it's just a few girls I was close with back in LA while I lived there. I just- It's good to have a friend, y'know? Like, I trust you, Adrian. With my kid. And that feelsweird to me, to feel close to you like that and you not be in my circle of friends. So, call me Livvy."