Page 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

LEVI

“Babbo, since I’m the guest, shouldn’t you have let me win?” Nico asked with a wide smile.

“Nope,” I answered with one of my own, then took a breath before I continued, “Do you remember what happened when you got here last night?”

Putting this off wasn’t helpful to anyone. If what I suspected was correct, Nico wanted me to step forward despite his insistence he was only interested in casual, no-strings-attached fun.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Right, so you know the flower beds I started working on yesterday got all kinds of messed up?”

I’d peeked outside when I got up this morning and mess was a generous description. They were trampled with hours of work wasted.

“Did I ruin them?” Nico bit his lip in worry.

“They are fixable, but I’d appreciate it if you’d help me.”

His scrunched-up nose was adorable. “But, Babbo, I haaaaaate yard work. It’s messy, and my hands get all gross.”

“That’s why gardening gloves were invented.”

Nico’s grumpy expression was a clear reminder that he was a middle and he’d been teetering on the edge of falling into that space all morning. If I were lucky, he’d feel secure enough to fall the rest of the way.

“Sweet Boy, we gotta fix the messes we make. Right?”

His sigh was long-suffering, dramatic, and cute.

“Babbo, I don’t like it when you’re right.” He pouted.

“It’s annoying, isn’t it?” I laughed.

“Very much, yes.”

“How about this? We go back to your place for some work clothes, you help me in the garden, and when it’s done, we get out the controllers and order a pizza for lunch?”

Nico nodded and asked, “Can I borrow some slides to go home in?”

“Sure.”

I rummaged in the closet to find something for him. Nico put them on and then borrowed a jacket since it was still chilly outside. When he reached the back door, he paused, looked at me, and asked, “Are you coming?”

“Of course. One sec though. I need to get my shoes.”

Shoes found, we headed out the back door and directly to the bungalow. I waited behind him while he punched in the passcode on the automatic lock before going inside. He stopped before he opened the door, blocking my view of the interior.

“Babbo, before you go in, I just want you to know I planned on cleaning it up this weekend.” Nico stepped back and allowed me to enter the bungalow.

I couldn’t tell whether he was making a joke or not when I stepped inside. I saw a recently cleaned kitchen and a somewhat messy living room. There were some leftover breakfast dishes on the counter, along with some cereal boxes, and a blanket was tossed on the couch. The messiest part was the pile of shoes near the door. The game controllers were a haphazard mess of wires like most people. I mean, I wouldn’t want to live in it, but it was hardly a disaster zone. My fingers twitched to tidy up anyway.

“Are you messing with me, Sweet Boy?”

“Me? I would never do that, Babbo.” His grin told me he was full of shit.

“All right, go ahead and get your clothes while I do the dishes.”

After a small disagreement about whether he needed a jacket—he did—we headed to the garden shed to get the tools to try to fix the trampled flowers. Some of them probably could be saved, but I would guess that at least half of them were a lost cause. It didn’t matter much—they were just flowers I’d gotten on sale at the garden center, but it was the principle of it.

“Babbo, what do these do?” Nico held up a little trowel and weed digger thingy. I don’t know what it was called.

“It just helps move the dirt and gets rid of the weeds. I don’t actually know what it’s… Okay, never mind,” I interrupted myself when it appeared that Nico was no longer listening to me and instead gathering every hand tool I had in my shed. “We don’t actually need all those.”

“I think we do, Babbo. I think they’re important.”

Nico looked so earnest and sure of himself that I didn’t have the heart to tell him no again. “Okay. You know best. Do you want me to help carry them?”

“Nope,” Nico answered with a pop of the P . “I gots it.”

Nico always said he was a middle, but this morning, he didn’t sound like one. He sounded little. I doubted he’d knowingly mislead me about something like that. Was it possible he didn’t know that he might be both?

I understood his concerns about going to the club, especially since he knew his boss was a frequent visitor there, and he worried about the impact on his job. I didn’t know Gabe that well, but I couldn’t imagine he would have looked down on Nico for being a middle or a little, given the fact that he was a Daddy. But when fear took over, logic was usually the first thing out the window.

Unfortunately, now was not the time to figure all of this out. Instead, I shut the door behind Nico, his arms full of completely unnecessary gardening tools, and we moved into the front yard. I tried to give him instructions about how to fix the plants. He worked hard but inefficiently because he kept getting sidetracked by looking for earthworms. He’d find one and relocate them to a safer area while assuring them their new home was much better. For the most part, I fixed the flowers myself. As predicted, only about fifty percent were salvageable. I pulled up and tossed the unsavable one in a pile for the compost bin.

“I sorry, Babbo.” Nico seemed genuinely upset when he saw the pile of pulled flowers I had accumulated. In fairness to him, he’d been drunk and had tried to use the sidewalk. He’d just gotten confused about where it was. There was an argument to be made that it was my fault because I failed to have proper lighting outside. With sufficient lighting, it wouldn’t have happened. This was on me.

“Maybe I should apologize to you?” Nico cocked his head and looked quizzically at me. “If I had proper lighting, you wouldn’t have gotten confused about where the sidewalk was.” Nico’s full belly laugh had me joining in, and there was no denying the joy in it.

“Babbo, you silly.” His chuckles trailed after him as he went back to relocating earthworms.

I had intended to stay focused on gardening because that was typically my happy place. I loved grubbing around in the dirt with my flowers and bushes, but the sweet boy playing in the front yard distracted me.

There was nothing middle about Nico this morning. He was little, through and through. Nico had moved on from earthworms and was creating dirt tracks around a dormant flowerbed. Given the mess it was making, I was glad he was otherwise occupied because my job was exponentially faster without his…help. But I did need to find replacement flowers.

“Sweet Boy, do you want to come with me to pick out new flowers?” I didn’t get an immediate answer, but Nico jumped to his feet and raced over to where I was tossing the pulled plants into the compost bin.

“We gonna go now?”

“Yes, and then we’ll come back to plant them. The yard will be good as new.” Nico immediately headed toward my car. The yard tools he’d scattered around the yard still lay where he’d dropped them. “No, sir. You pulled all these tools out, so now they need to be picked up.”

“But, Babbo, I gonna need ’em.”

“You won’t, but if you do, you can pull them out again from the pile. We can’t leave them in the yard, so they need to go on the porch. The store isn’t happening until it’s cleaned up. When we get back, we’ll put them away properly.”

Nico’s mutinous expression was equal parts adorable and frustrating. “No.”

“I’m not asking. I’m telling.”

Nico stomped his foot, crossed his arms, and stuck out his tongue at me. The final straw was the defiant shake of his head.

Internally, I cursed myself for not having a boundary discussion before this moment. What I wanted to do was threaten—and then follow through—to paddle his butt for sass and stubbornness. But thanks to me, I hadn’t had the discussion and now I had no business mentioning it. Before going any further, I took a deep breath and gathered my patience.

With a stern, no-nonsense expression, I stalked over to him. Nico raised his chin in defiance, and the stubborn gleam in his eyes was unmistakable. This was a battle of wills.

“Nico, I’m not going to let you sass me, and you’re not leaving these tools in my yard. You can listen and behave, or we won’t go get more flowers. What do you want to do?

“It dumb.”

“I’m going to give you ten seconds to decide, or I will decide for you.”

It took every ounce of self-control I possessed not to threaten to spank him. It was a miracle that I succeeded, but it was a near thing. Nico pushed all the way to eight seconds before I heard a muttered, “Pick them up.” It came with a pout and crossed arms, but I hadn’t specified that it needed to be said nicely, so it was a win for me.

Once we started gathering everything, it took less than two minutes. Given how quickly he finished, I had to wonder if he wasn’t putting me through some kind of test. If he was, it was anyone’s guess if I’d passed.

“Good boy.” Nico smiled broadly at my praise. “We can go as soon as our hands are washed.” His beaming smile turned crestfallen.

“Babbo, my hands are clean. See?” Nico held up his hands, and while they were less dirty than mine, no one would call them clean.

“Nico, you aren’t getting in my car with dirty hands, and neither am I.” Before he could argue, I held up my hands to head him off before he could get a word out. “We’re going in the kitchen. We’re washing our hands. We’re going to the garden center. We’re coming home to plant flowers. We’re going to order a pizza for lunch. That’s our list. Got it?”

“Got it, got it. Let’s goooooooo.”

Never once during any of our hookups had I seen this facet of Nico. I don’t know where it had been hiding, but I was fucking here for it. His stubbornness. His cuteness. His goddamn pouting. I wanted every drop of it because, even with the obstinateness, he was visibly more at ease. The tension lines had left his face. His shoulders were not hunched up. He was no longer worrying about the stupid plants that got trampled. Nico looked happy and carefree, as if the weight of the world wasn’t settling around him. I wasn’t even sure if he knew this was where his mind wanted to go, but I was beyond proud that he trusted me enough to share it with me.

“All right, ladybug, let’s go.” I stretched the O out to mimic him. I earned a giggle.

“I not a ladybug, silly.”

“Well, I’m not gonna call you worm.” Nico’s giggles turned to belly laughs, and a little of my burden slipped away too.

* * *

“How’s it possible to get this messy eating pizza?” I asked Nico as I wiped more sauce from his face. His answering grin and shrug didn’t bode well.

After our trip to the garden center, we came back to the house and planted the flowers we’d picked out. Nico had insisted we get only pretty colors. He declared that meant roses that bloomed pink, yellow, and lavender. They didn’t have purple roses, so we’d added some lavender plants to the cart. Problem solved.

We worked fast because the dark clouds that had been threatening all morning finally let loose. The rain wasn’t heavy, but it was chilly. As predicted, we didn’t use the tools I’d told him we wouldn’t need. Thankfully, Nico was more amenable to putting the tools away than he had been earlier.

We ordered a pizza and sat in the living room to eat. Nico managed to get sauce all over his face. I kept wiping his hands, but I wasn’t convinced I’d be able to save his T-shirt. He was careful not to get sauce on the couch or carpet, which I appreciated. Every time I praised him, he sat a little taller, a little straighter.

“Didn’t I say you got to pick the movie?”

“You did! You did! You promised.”

“I’m not gonna go back on that one. Don’t worry, Sweet Boy.”

Nico settled and gave me suggestions that weren’t helpful at all while I tried to find the remote. I wasn’t sure why he thought it would be in the freezer, but I didn’t bother to look. Luckily for us, I finally found it underneath a couch cushion. Once located, I scrolled through the streaming options until I came to a channel that was mostly cartoons.

“Here you go, Sweet Boy, pick the one you want.” Nico clicked through the options carefully and methodically. He paused on a few, cocking his head to the side as if thinking deep, deep thoughts, and then moved on to the next one. After a few minutes, he decided on a movie about talking cars who lived in the desert.

“Babbo, this okay?”

“I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never seen it. Is it a pretty good one?”

“It’s super-duper good, Babbo. You gonna like it.”

“If you’re sure I’ll like it, then it’ll be fine.”

I got the movie all set up for us. Nico was cuddled up next to me, but I noticed his fingers were drawing patterns on his leg as the cars were doing whatever it was they were doing. He needed something more. Decision made. I got up from the couch, went into my office, and scrambled around until I found leftover crayons from god knows when and blank paper. I placed them on the coffee table in front of Nico. When his eyes lit up with excitement, I knew I’d made the right call.

“Draw Babbo a picture while you watch the movie.”

“Okay, Babbo.”

Nico settled on the floor and drew scenes of the movie while he watched it. At one point, he made a map of the town to help the newcomer car find his way around town. By the time the film was almost over, Nico had finished his drawing and scooted over until his head rested against my knee. Almost on instinct, my hand dropped onto his head to play with his hair. My fingers carded through the soft strands, occasionally twirling the longer pieces around.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a bottle or a sippy cup for him, but I made a mental note to make sure I had them available in the future. The sleepier Nico got, the more his hand found its way toward his mouth. At first, he was tapping against his lips, and then he was pinching them after a little. After a while, he started nibbling the edge of his nail. I knew what my boy wanted.

“It’s okay, Sweet Boy. If you want to suck your thumb, go on.”

Nico looked at me with startled eyes and asked hesitantly, “Me not bad?”

“No, Sweet Boy. There’s nothing wrong with sucking your thumb. It’s fine…go on, put it in.” When he faltered, I guided his thumb into his mouth. He immediately latched on.

The soft sounds of the sucking competed with the movie. He closed his eyes and settled back against my leg. His blissful expression was all I needed to see. Encouraging Nico to lean into the little side emerging from him had been the right decision.

His thumb didn’t leave his mouth for the rest of the movie, while his other hand was wrapped around my calf. Nico hugged it like a toy. Unfortunately, like the nonexistent sippy cups, I didn’t have any stuffies in my house either. Obviously, that would need to be rectified immediately. Since this appeared to be new territory for both of us, I’d guess he didn’t have any at his house either.

In his current state of mind, there was no way I could talk with him about what this new aspect meant. But that conversation needed to happen sooner rather than later because there was no damn way in hell I was going to let Nico slip through my fingers.