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“I suppose I deserve that one.” I slap my hand on the counter. “Am I at least in the top five?”
Tipping his head back and forth, he chews on his lip like he’s trying really hard to think about his answer.
“For the love of God,” I groan. “Tell me I’m at least ahead of Tiller.”
Carl snorts, disgusted. “That dude you brought home from Abu Dhabi is ahead of Tiller.”
I laugh and peel myself off the counter. “Taco?”
He nods. “Whatever his name was.”
“Whatever happened to him?”
“He got deported.”
“That sucks. He was cool.”
Willa steps into the kitchen, a crying Berlin in her arms. She notices me and glares. “Well it’s nice to see you’re not in jail.”
I shrug, slumping back in the chair. “I might be better off there.”
With a chuckle, she sets Berlin dressed in pink flower pajamas on the counter, her tears subsiding but frantically grabbing at her bunny yelling something along the lines of “Rummy!”
Willa’s frustration gets the better of her and she hisses out a breath. “Toddlers are worse than drunk man-children.”
I find that offensive because you and I both know she’s referring to me, and my brothers, but mostly me. “That’s rude.”
She waits, a sippy cup of milk in one hand, a bunny in the other. She stares at me expectedly. “So, how’d it go?”
“How do you think it went?” I ask over a screaming kid, playing dumb.
I’m not sure why, but Berlin reaches for me, slides off the counter and into my lap. Willa laughs and hands me her blanket. “Good, you can put her to sleep,” she informs me without a trace of regret.
I lean back in the chair, adjusting Berlin in my arms. Her cheeks are red, dark curls matted to her sweaty face as she rests against my chest. Instinctively, I rub her back, thankful to have some sort of distraction from my own head.
Don’t look at me like that. I’m really good with kids. I only wish Ophelia could see this. Maybe it’d change her mind about Aladdin.
Carl downs the remainder of his water, and then lifts his eyes to mine and nods to the left. “I’m gonna get some sleep.”
When he’s out of the room, I move to the living room and lie on the couch with Berlin on my chest. She’s wide awake and talking to me in child gibberish. I can’t make sense of any of it other than it might have something to do with her bunny and maybe it’s in a time out.
No clue.
But something happens in the next hour. I confide in a two-year-old. Weirdest hour of my life. It starts in a moment of weakness, after me telling her she might as well forget it, she’s never dating. Then I ask her, “Why are girls so hard to understand?”
She answers by hitting me in the face with her bunny and shrugging.
I stare at her bright blue eyes as she refuses to sleep. “I should have told her the truth from the beginning, huh?”
Another slap to the face. “You know—” I take the bunny from her. “—this is strangely similar to the conversation I had with O.”
“Mine!” she screams, taking her bunny back.
When I give it to her, she smiles, holds it to her chest and then lifts her butt up only to plop back down on my stomach. Then she laughs. This becomes the game for the next twenty minutes and finally I get her to fall asleep, and just in time because my stomach hurts and I might puke.
Eventually, I must doze off too, but startle awake as Willa slips back downstairs.
“She never sleeps very well in this house,” she whispers, smiling at us.