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“Ow, fuck.” I place my hand under her chin and pry her wet mouth off my hand. “Stop that. I like girls who bite, but there’s gotta be grass on the field.” Berlin’s barely over a year old and cute as fucking ever. She stares at me, then grins a big two-teeth smile at me.
But I’ll pause on the drool-monster for a moment. Pay attention to the movie. Do you see the beast outside on the balcony with Belle? Do you notice when he says, “It’s foolish for me to think someone like me could ever win your affection?”
Or something like that.
Remind you of any situation currently going on in my life? If not, I’ll tell you a story. And it has everything to do with a flower. Same kind of flower in the movie, I might add.
I’ll even set the scene for you. Picture Southern California, two kids on the playground at school, sunny day. . . and a little boy with severe anxiety he doesn’t yet understand—still doesn’t—and a shy girl afraid of the boy’s darker side. She knows him well, and his temper. After all, even at five, he’s beaten up every boy who’s shown interest in her, including his older brother. So the boy, he hands the girl a rose one day and asks her to be his girlfriend.
She says. . .no.
The boy eats the flower.
The girl kicks the boy in the balls.
That boy? Me. The girl? Amberly. We got history for sure.
How odd is it that I’m sitting here with River watching this movie and the rose is losing all its petals, and the beast is groveling in his misery for losing the girl?
I grab the remote and River stops me. Berlin takes it and chews on it. “Why him not fight?”
I raise an eyebrow. “The beast?”
“Yeah?”
“He’s a pussy.”
She stares at me curiously, but she lets it go and hands me a list from her backpack. I open it and frown.
Amberly left a fucking list of everything River couldn’t do at my house. I look at her. “This is stupid. What are you allowed to do?”
River shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I’ve never been good at following rules.”
She leans in, grinning. “I not supposed to pee in the tub. But I do. All the time.”
“I’m sure you’re not the only one.” It’s hot in here, probably because I have now two kids climbing on me. The pool’s looking better and better. “Can you swim?”
River shrugs. “No.” I can’t believe a kid who lives in California can’t swim. Hell, Berlin can swim and she’s one.
“Well, let’s learn then.” Scooping booth kids up, I jump in the pool with both of them. All of us fully clothed.
Oh, relax. Don’t go freaking out and calling child protective services on me. I jumped in too and she only swallowed a little water. You didn’t think I’d sit on the couch all day and babysit, did you?
Get this. I take her on my dirt bike next. She’d never been on one before. I even put a helmet on her, and I wasn’t even drunk.
And here’s where my heart turns from a hard-ass crazy fucker to maybe sort of a dad. A small resemblance of one.
It’s when River looks up at me with her helmet on, twisting around on the seat of my dirt bike, her cheeks squished together, curiosity dancing in her face. Dirt’s smeared on her chubby cheeks with a faint dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. “I like you,” she says.
The words hit my chest like the wind’s been knocked out of me. You would have thought she told me she loved me, but then again, nobody likes me so to have this kid, my kid, tell me she likes me is enough to make me want to hug her.
I wink at her. “You know, kid, I think I might like you too.”
“We should be friends.”
“I think that can be arranged.”