On the Fly (32 page)

“
And carrying Mommy when
she hurts her feet,” Tuck added. “Plus, we get pizza if Mr. Soupy
kisses you, Mommy.
Every
day
.”

“
Hold on there, buddy.” I
tried to stay serious, but the urge to laugh was really strong.
“You said you wanted pizza for dinner tonight in exchange for me
kissing your mom.”

“
You can kiss Mommy
tomorrow if we get pizza tomorrow.”

Maddie giggled.

He was a smarter kid than I’d given
him credit for. His negotiation tactics were growing by leaps and
bounds.

“
Do I get a say in all
this?” Rachel asked.

“
Nope,” Tuck said at the
same time as I said, “Of course.”

“
It’s a tie,” Tuck said. “I
win.”

“
If it’s a tie, there is no
winner,” I argued.

“
Home-team advantage,” he
deadpanned.

“
I say,” Rachel said over
Tuck, despite his objections, “that there is no chance on earth
you’re going to eat pizza every single day, whether Brenden kisses
me or not.”

“
Aw, man!”

Rachel reached into the box for
another slice. “I also say I should be the one to decide if and
when I get kissed—and who gets to do the kissing.”

“
But I have to take care of
you, Mommy.”

She grinned and winked at him. “You
are doing a great job of it.”

“
So do I,” I said. Then I
caught Tuck’s eye. “I have to help take care of her. It’s our deal.
And kissing your Mommy is part of taking care of her.”

Rachel’s head whipped around to stare
at me. I might have gone a step too far. She’d said she needed to
talk to them about things, and I hadn’t given her the opportunity
to do that before I was barging in and initiating the conversation.
I didn’t back away from her stare, but I couldn’t exactly turn
back. Not now that I’d started it.

Tuck frowned. “I can do that part. Me
and Maddie. We can give Mommy all the kisses she needs. And hugs,
too. I give good hugs.”

“
You give the
best
hugs,” Rachel
said.

“
That’s important,” I said.
“She needs kisses and hugs from both of you. Lots of them. But
there are other kinds of kisses she needs, too.”

He dropped his pizza to his plate, and
his jaw fell open. “Gross! Are you gonna put your tongue in Mommy’s
mouth?”

Maddie blushed again and turned her
head, giggling.

Lying to him wouldn’t help. It’d only
make things worse. I couldn’t remember a time that my parents had
ever lied to me or Dana, and that seemed like a good policy to go
with. I only hoped Rachel agreed, since we hadn’t had the chance to
discuss that alone yet. “Sometimes,” I replied.

Rachel gave me a look that clearly
meant for me to back off. She got up, took her plate to the
kitchen, and threw it away. “I think that’s enough for
now.”

“
But why do you need kisses
like that?” Tuck asked. “That’s yucky.”

She sighed. “It’s not yucky. You’ll
change your mind on that someday. But there are the kinds of kisses
and hugs that kids and parents give each other, and they’re
important. They help you know that you’re loved, right?”

“
Mmmhmm.” Tuck didn’t sound
like he was all that impressed with the direction of this
discussion.

“
Well, there are other
kisses and hugs that men and women give each other,” Rachel said.
“And they’re important, too. All kinds of kisses are important, as
long as they make you feel good.”

Maddie set her plate down and picked
up a napkin, methodically wiping her hands and face with them. “Men
and women?” she asked. “Like a mommy and a daddy?”

Shit
. My idiocy obviously knew no bounds today. I didn’t know what
I’d been thinking when I started us along this path, but I
definitely hadn’t expected to end up with the
daddy
word coming into the
equation.

Rachel didn’t look anywhere near as
flustered by that as I felt. She turned on the sink and washed her
hands. “Yes, like a mommy and daddy. Or sometimes just like a
girlfriend and boyfriend.”

“
So is Mr. Soupy your
boyfriend?” Tuck asked.

“
Yes, I am.” I met Tuck’s
eyes when he faced me. I didn’t want there to be any
misunderstanding about what was going on here. “For as long as your
mom wants me to be.”

“
Does that mean you’re my
daddy now?” he asked.

“
No, I’m not your daddy
now.”

“’
Cause me and Maddie
already have a daddy, and he’s a bad man, and he hurt Maddie. I’m
not gonna let you hurt Maddie. Or Mommy. I’ll hurt you if you
do.”

Tuck’s face was red and splotchy. Hot
tears poured down his cheeks and made dark spots on his blue
T-shirt, and it was my fault. I’d started this. I might not have
had a clue what I was getting into, I might not have seen where the
discussion would end up, but I’d been the one to fucking start us
down this path. Now I had to sort it all out.

Maddie was crying, too, and Rachel was
standing in the kitchen looking at me like I’d just shot one of her
kids. Right here and right now I was pretty sure I was in over my
fucking head with all of this, and I’d dragged them all there with
me. I had to find a way to get all of us back up to the open
air.

“
Tuck?” I waited until he
met my eyes. “I’m not going to hurt Maddie, and I’m not going to
hurt your mom. I won’t hurt you, either. Remember our deal? We’re
supposed to take care of them, and part of that is making sure no
one will hurt them like he hurt Maddie ever again.
Okay?”

Huge tears kept dripping down his red
cheeks, and his lips were quivering, but he nodded.

“
Some men hurt my sister,
too. I wanted to hurt them back really bad, but I didn’t get to. I
don’t want anyone to hurt her. Now she’s going to marry my best
friend, and if he ever does anything to hurt her, he knows he has
to answer to me. That’s how it works. Because we have to take care
of our sisters. So I’ll make you another deal. Even though I’m
telling you I won’t ever hurt Maddie and I won’t hurt your mom,
those are just words. So if I do, I’ve got to answer to you for it.
Deal?”

“
And I get to hurt
you?”

“
That’s how it
works.”

“
I’ll hurt you real bad.
’Cause I’m the Ginger Ninja.”

“
I’m counting on it.” I
didn’t miss the irony that only a few months ago, Zee had said
those exact words to me when I threatened to shove his head up his
ass if he hurt Dana.

The more I thought about
it, the more it made perfect sense that I wanted to be in Rachel’s
life—and in Maddie’s and Tuck’s lives. Maybe it wasn’t even that I
wanted to be involved. Maybe it was more that I
should
be. Now that I was this far
in, I couldn’t stand the thought of not being around.

Tuck sniffled. He used both sleeves to
wipe his eyes and nose, making a bigger mess than he already had,
as usual. “Okay. Deal.”

“
Mr. Soupy?” Maddie used
her napkin to dry her eyes. “Should we still call you Mr.
Soupy?”

“
You can call me Brenden if
you want.”

“
Do I have to?” She looked
over at Rachel, then back to me. “Can I still call you Mr.
Soupy?”

I had to laugh, which got her to grin
despite a stray tear still dropping slowly from her eye. “You can
call me whatever you want, Maddie.”

“
Good.”

“
Okay,” Rachel said. She
came back into the living room with a box of tissues, giving some
to both kids before taking a few for herself and wiping her nose.
“Have we covered all the bases yet?”

Tuck put a tissue over his nose and
blew, but it only exacerbated his snot issue somehow. “Nuh uh,” he
said, using his sleeve again. “If Mr. Soupy is your boyfriend, he
gets to kiss you. What else?”

I wanted to know the answer, too—maybe
even more than Tuck did.

“
He gets to kiss me and hug
me. He’ll spend time with us like he has been, and maybe sometimes
just with me.”

For a second, I thought she was going
to stop there.

But she didn’t. She reached down
between us and took my hand, twining her fingers with mine. “And
maybe sometimes, he’ll sleep over.”

My pulse kicked into gear.

“
Like a slumber party?”
Tuck said. “Can we make a fortress in the living room and sleep in
sleeping bags and camp with flashlights?”

“
Maybe sometimes,” Rachel
said. “If he wants to. But sometimes, he’ll sleep in my bed with
me.”

“
And kiss you with his
tongue?” Tuck made gagging sounds. “Gross.” Then he giggled and
started eating again.

I figured that meant we were through
with this conversation. Thank God. I wasn’t sure how I survived it,
but I was definitely going to be a lot more careful about what
subjects I brought up with Tuck and Maddie again. That was hell. I
may not be their father, but every day was making it more clear how
much I had left to learn about being around kids.

I was about to pick up my pizza and
take a bite when Maddie said, “Mr. Soupy?” again, really
quietly.

I shot a glance over to Rachel, almost
begging her for help with my eyes, before I answered. Not that she
owed me any help. I’d opened this can of worms. “Yes,
Maddie?”

“
Can I hug you?”

There weren’t too many things in the
world that would bring me close to tears, but that was one of them.
I nodded, trying to blink them back. She came into my arms, being
very careful of my hurt ankle and my plate of pizza, but when she
put her arms around my ribs and tucked her head against my chest
and held on tight, just like Dana used to do when she was a little
girl, I couldn’t hold them back anymore.

Hell, I didn’t even want
to.

I put my arms around her and held her
close. Right at that moment, everything became as clear as a sunny
day in spring. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to keep her safe—to
keep all of them safe.

I wanted to pull them all into my arms
and hold them close and never let anything or anyone hurt them. I
just didn’t know if I could wrap them up tightly enough that I
could shield them from all the evils of the world.

It was Christmas
Eve, and Brenden was already pulling his SUV onto
Eric’s street when he turned to me with a guilty look in his eye.
It was the same sort of look he’d had last night, when he started
talking to my kids about kissing me before I’d had a chance to
broach the subject of our relationship with them. “I should have
warned you before, but I didn’t think about it until now,” he
said.

“
Warned me about what?” My
mind instantly started rolling through infinite possibilities, each
worse than the last. What kind of sordid secrets might he be
keeping about his family? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but if he
felt the need to
warn
me then I probably needed to know, and as soon as
possible.

“
Mom started baking cookies
the second Zee and Dana got my parents back to the house. You can
tell her that the kids can’t have any, but she’ll just sneak them
some when you’re not looking if you do.”

“
Cookies?” I mumbled. He
was warning me about
cookies
? “That’s all you needed to
warn me about?”

“
That and my dad’s likely
to talk your ear off, so you might want to be sure you don’t get
caught alone with him unless you want to hear a monologue on the
current housing market in Providence.” He pulled into the driveway
and put the vehicle in park.

I laughed, unbuckling my seat belt.
“You couldn’t have just said, ‘Oh, by the way, Mom likes to ply
kids with cookies and Dad talks a lot?’ Prefacing it with a warning
is kind of overkill.”

“
Sorry.” Brenden smiled,
and I felt it all the way through to my toes. “I’ll try to do
better next time,” he said.

He opened his door and struggled with
his crutches, and I helped Tuck and Maddie get out of the backseat.
By the time we were all standing on the driveway, a man who could
only be Brenden’s father had come out the front door. He smiled and
headed our way.