*Thank-you for the reviews on the last chapter, they were greatly appreciated thank you all so much*
Once the children have left the kitchen leaving Ana and I alone I give her a smile and she smiles back at me. "So what did you want to talk about?" she asks.
"It's about Alexander," he says.
"I figured, so will he be staying for dinner?" she asks.
"Well, I was hoping he could stay for a little longer than just dinner," I say. "I was thinking that we could give him a place to live for a while."
"Um, what?" she asks. "What do you mean a place for him to live?"
"Well, you see he's living in a shelter, he doesn't really have a home, he's actually in the foster care system. He needs a home, Ana. I think we can give him one."
"We don't even know him, Jon," she says, "and you think it's a good idea to move a teenage boy that we don't know into our home when we have 4 kids?"
"I know enough," I say, "he may have gotten into some trouble but he's on the right path now."
"What kind of trouble?" she asks.
"He had some trouble with drugs and got kicked out of his foster home. The state hasn't been looking for him. His father left him when he was 3 years old, his mom died. He literally has no one, no home, no place to go and being 17 years old living in a shelter is not the life he should be living."
"He's not a lost puppy, Dean, he's a 17 year old male full of testosterone, that has probably seen so much in life that our kids have never seen, I don't know if I want that influence in our house, Jon. What made you think it would be okay to bring a 17 year old homeless kid into our home when we have a 17 year old daughter?"
"I know he's not a lost puppy, Ana, hear me out. He reminds me of the kid I used to be. He wants to be a wrestler, he feels like no one gives a shit about him, I want to be that person that makes him know someone does give a shit about him. I want to take him in, I want to put him in school and train him to be a wrestler. I lived this life when I was 17 years old, I know what the streets are like, I think we can save him just like your dad and you saved me," I say.
"My dad couldn't stand you," she says honestly.
"At first but then I proved to him that I was a good kid because you were the one person that give a shit about me, Ana. I want to pay back everything your dad did for me for Alexander," I say, "so what do you think?"
"I think it's a crazy idea, Jon, we don't even know this kid, we don't know where he's been and who he has hung out with. It's not safe, we have 4 kids in this house, Jon. Their safety is the number one priority as far as I am concerned. We don't know him," she says.
"You didn't know me either but you let me hide in your house when I didn't have a home," I remind her, "can't you find it in your kind heart to help Alexander?"
"Jon, it's not that I don't want to help him it's just that I don't know if it's safe, I have to think about our children, I have to think about our 17 year old daughter living in the same house with a 17 year old boy that's NOT family. I don't like the idea."
"What do you think could happen, Ana?" I ask.
"What do I think could happen, what happened to us, Jon? I became a mother at 17 years old and went through my senior year raising a baby," she says. "That's what could happen."
"Okay, that was a completely different situation," I say, "Everything turned out all right, look at us now, 17 years old we were pregnant, we had a baby and 17 years later we're still in love with each other, married and living our life while others just thought our lives were over."
"Call me crazy but while I have never regretted my choice or our choice to keep Natalia and raise her, the last thing I ever want to see is my 17 year old daughter going through the same thing we went through. She has her mind set on college and I don't want her to have any distractions."
"I really think you're overthinking this, Ana, just because Alexander lives with us doesn't mean that him and Natalia are going to get involved and be sexually active. Natalia knows what we went through, she knows to use birth control when she thinks about having sex but I really don't think allowing Alexander to stay here is going to cause her to fall in love. Natalia is fickle in case you haven't noticed and she has had NO interest in boys yet."
"Yet," she says, "I don't know, Jon," she says as Natalia comes down into the kitchen wearing a sports bra, and short shorts with her hair pulled up into a messy bun. "Natalia, go put some clothes on your father has brought company home," she says just as Alexander comes into the kitchen with Ace.
"Mr. Ambrose," he says pausing his words as he sees Natalia.
"Please call me Dean," I say,
"Hello," says Natalia with a smile, "I'm Natalia."
Alexander smiles at her and says, "I'm Alexander. It's nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you too," she smiles.
"So," I say breaking their little introduction maybe Ana is right, it's too risky to bring a teenage boy into our home. "What did you need, Alexander?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, Ace said he needs to use the bathroom. I didn't know where to take him."
"I got him," says Natalia as she walks over to Alexander. "Come on, Ace," she says with a smile before Ace reaches for her. She leaves the room to take Ace to the bathroom.
"Make sure you put a shirt on," I call after her. "So, Alexander, that's my daughter and if you do stay in our house there will be some rules, the number one rule being stay away from my daughter."
"Jon," says Ana giving me a look.
"What?" I ask.
"Excuse me, Alexander I would like to talk to my husband alone."
"Okay," he says, "and it's noted to stay away from Natalia."
"Thank-you," says Ana before he leaves the kitchen. "Stay away from my daughter, you sound like my father. Remember when he told me to stay away from you and told you to stay away from me?"
"You moved me in and you couldn't stay away," I say.
"Exactly, so don't make rules saying stay away from our daughter it could turn back and bite us," she says.
"I understand, so what do you think, do you think he should stay here or should I just let him stay at the gym."
She lets out a sigh, "as much as I want to say I don't want him to stay here I don't want to send him away. He deserves a chance. I don't have the heart to say no but as long as he follows the rules we set then I don't mind him staying here."
"Thank-you, Ana."
"You're welcome," she smiles, "he does kind of remind me of a younger version of you."
"Yeah, he definitely has the same life I did, that's why I want to help him."
"You're a great man, Jon, despite what anyone ever said or thought about you, you're amazing. I love you."
"I love you too," I say, "so what's up with Oliver, what happened today?"
"He just had a rough day, he won't give me the full story but something involved him raising his fist to another child, him being removed from the classroom and they want to meet with us."
"All right," I say, "I'll go take care of it, I'll go talk to him."
"Thank-you," she says with a smile, "if any of our kids got your genes the most it's him."
"I don't know, I think that Ace is going to be pretty challenging too," I smile.
"I don't know to the extreme of Oliver but definitely going to keep us on our toes," she smiles. "Dinner will be ready soon."
"Thanks," I smile. I kiss her forehead before I head upstairs to talk to Oliver. I knock on the door before I hear Oliver tell me to come in. I walk into the room. "What's up, Oliver," I say. "I heard you had a rough day at school."
Oliver laying on his bed sits up as I take a seat on his bed. I motion for him to come over to me. He makes his way over to me and I wrap my arm around his shoulders. "It was a bad day, Dad," he says.
"So what was so bad about it, tell me about it."
"I just get tired of being the bad kid, everyone thinks I am the bad kid. Am I a bad kid?" he asks.
"No," I say, "you're not a bad kid. Do you always make the right choices? Not always but does that make you a bad kid? No, it just makes you a normal kid."
"People don't think I am normal," he says. "This kid was making fun of me because I can't sit still and I got frustrated because I couldn't do my math work. He made fun of me because I couldn't sit and read the book. It's really hard for me to sit still. I try but I can't," he says breaking my heart.
"What did he say?" I ask.
"He called me stupid, he said I was a loser and that I was the bad kid in the class, that no one likes me," he says breaking my heart further. I was Oliver once, I was the bad kid, kids made fun of me for being poor, not being able to read, just because I didn't fit in with them I was Oliver too it was hell. "All the kids were laughing at me. I hate it."
"Let me ask you this, are you stupid, Oliver?"
"No," he says. "I'm not stupid, it just takes me time to understand things."
"Do you have friends in school?"
"No, not really"
" Do you think you're a bad kid?" I ask.
"Sometimes," he says, "sometimes I am the bad kid."
"Hmm," I say, "I don't think you're a bad kid and I love you, your mom loves you, your brothers love you and even if Natalia doesn't seem like it she loves you too, you're an awesome kid and you're not stupid. I think you're one of the smartest kids I know especially in Science, you're the only 6 year old that can tell me all the names of dinosaurs and remember you built that really cool volcano and you can name all the facts about space and I think you do really well in Math. I think you do well in a lot of things but like you said it takes a little extra time for you to understand things. Oliver, you're not a bad kid, you just make bad choices sometimes because you're impulsive. I was impulsive too. I made decisions without thinking, I did things without thinking. You know what, people used to make fun of me too, they used to tell me I wouldn't do anything, that I was stupid and that I wasn't going anywhere in life. My biggest mistake was believing them, there was one person that never thought I was stupid, one person that understood me and saw the best there was in me. I know words hurt, Oliver and being told over and over again all the things you do wrong can get imbedded in our minds, and we start to think that, I thought I was a bad kid, I thought I was dumb but like I said there was one person that has always seen the best in me, that made me find the best in myself, to make me want to be better and that person was your mom. I love her for that, she saw the best there was in me, she had me become the best me that I could be and you know what I did, and you know what happened to all those people that made fun of me?"
"What happened to them?" he asks looking up at me with his dark brown eyes that he inherited from Ana, he looks exactly like his mother but he has my personality.
"They are living a miserable life and they aren't as happy as I am. I grew up to be something despite what everyone said to me and about me. I have learned that the kids that make fun of others are just unhappy with themselves. You know you are an amazing kid, you're smart and you are going to grow up to be something special, NEVER let the words of others bring you down, so what did the teacher do about all this?"
"Nothing," he says, "she didn't do anything, I told her and she told me to sit down, the kid tripped me on my way to my seat so I punched him in the face."
"So you told the teacher and she didn't do anything?" I ask.
"No, she told me to sit down, then he tripped me and I got frustrated and punched him in the face, then my teacher sent me to the principal."
"And what happened to the other kid?" I ask.
"Nothing," he says, "nothing happened."
"I will take care of that," I say, "but remember when you get frustrated you can't just hit someone in the face, you have to take a minute, take a breath, let it out and say what the problem is, hitting isn't going to solve the problem."
"Okay, Dad," he says letting out a breath, "I don't want to go there anymore."
"I will talk to your mom and see what she wants to do," I say, "I love you, Oliver."
"I love you too," he says before I give him a hug.
I get up and leave the room, trying not to lose my temper about his teacher. I had my share of bad teachers that didn't give a shit about me either, they helped me tear myself down, helped me become the person everyone said that I was until my junior year, my English teacher she changed my life, she showed me that she cared, that she wanted the best from me just like Ana, I will never allow any of my kids to go through the torment that I went through in school. I will never allow it. I make my way downstairs just in time to help Ana set the table for dinner before we sit down and have a family dinner together, then after dinner I do the dishes for Ana while she takes care of giving the kids a bath and before they go to bed we have a family meeting that goes pretty well, we talk about Alexander staying with us, go over some of the rules such as him helping out around the house, following a curfew, going to school and so on. I'm not sure how well this is going to work out but we're going to give it a try and see how it all goes. I just want Alexander to know someone cares for him, the moment someone showed me they cared about me is the moment my entire life changed for the better.
"So did you talk to Oliver?" Ana asks as we get into bed together.
"I did talk to him and you know I don't think this school is the best for him. I think we need to find him a new school."
"It's one of the best schools academically for him," she says, "it's one of the best schools in Connecticut."
"While it may be the best school academically, it's not the best school for his mental health. He was telling me about being bullied and his teacher not doing anything. I lived that life Ana and I don't want that to happen to him or any of our kids. We need to be more aware of their mental health than their academics, if they aren't strong mentally, they can't be strong academically."
"I understand that," she says as I wrap my arm around her. "We'll meet with the school, see what they say and go from there, if you think this isn't the best environment for him then we can look into other schools."
"Thank-you," I say. "Thank-you for being the one person that saw past everything people ever said about me and caring about me, thank-you for making me want to be the best person I can be."
She smiles and says, "Jon, you have always been amazing, you just developed a hard shell because of all the trauma you endured earlier in life but that great guy was always down deep, I saw it when others didn't. I'm proud of you and proud of everything you have become. We got this life, we did this life together and we still have a lot more life to do together, like maybe having another baby together?" she suggests.
"Another baby? I thought you were against the idea of having a baby."
"I was but now is the best time to have a baby if we are going to do it, I'm 34 you're 34, you have some down time before you start your next adventure so it's really the best time to do this."
"I mean if you're down to have another baby, I am down to give you that," I smile.
"Hmm, is that so?" she asks.
"Yes, that's so," I smile. "Let's get started!" She lets out a giggle before we spend the night making love, at least until Ace comes to find us in our bed in our room. I wouldn't want to do this life with anyone else but Ana.
*A/N: What did you think? What do you think of Ana allowing Alexander to stay at their house, is it a good idea or a bad idea? What do you think of Dean's relationship with Oliver, what about the talk he had with him? What do you think about Ana suggesting they have another baby? Please review and thank you for reading.