She nodded.
“Ivy, I’ve been with her for five days after school. Your kid likes to eat, so we have snacks. Not shockingly, you’ve raised her to speak her mind. She has zero issue extolling the merits of certain foods over others.” I pressed a kiss to her head. “And in case I’m not clear here, I think that’s a good thing.”
Tears began forming again in her beautiful eyes that were looking more blue than green today. I kissed one tear as it slipped over her lower lid. “Babe, why the waterworks over her snacks?”
“Her dad doesn’t know what snacks she likes, Jake. Noah’s a great guy and he does her best, but sometimes I get a sense of what Addie has missed out on. I can’t be everything for her, as much as I want to. And now we’re going to brunch with your parents and siblings, when my parents have seen her a grand total of four times in her life.” She pressed her face to my chest and continued, though her voice was a bit muffled. “It’s just a lot.” With that, she let out a sigh so large it seemed too big to have kept in for so long.
“Babe.” I kissed her head again as we swayed around the kitchen. “I’m so sorry your parents are dicks.”
She snorted. “Jake…”
“No other word for it, Ivy. Their loss, clearly—”
She interrupted. “They’re not dicks, exactly. They’re just emotionally closed off. They’re not cruel, but in their brain a visit once a year is plenty.”
I shook my head. “Not going to debate their obvious dickheadedness right now, babe. But I want to say I’m sorry you don’t have more of a support system. I’m sorry Addie’s dad has missed out. And I wish like hell that your nana was still around for you.”
She squeezed me tight and pressed her face to my chest. I could feel moisture gathering, so I’m guessing some tears were flowing. “I do miss her so.”
“Not sure how much it helps, but you’re welcome to my family. They’re a lot to take at times.” I smiled thinking of their texts last night.
She laughed. “I love your family. And while I’d be glad to borrow them, I’m not sure how smart that would be.”
I stopped swaying and pulled back, looking down into her face. She was a bit blotchy from the tears that seemed to have stopped. “Why wouldn’t that be smart?”
A crease formed between her brows. “I don’t know. Because we don’t know where this is going?” She gestured between the two of us.
My stomach dropped with the thought of trying to define whatever the fuck we were doing while another part of me wanted to ask why she wouldn’t assume we were building something together. Not at all confusing. Sure.
Pounding feet pulled me out of my internal tug-of-war. “Momma, Jakey, where’s my snack tray?” Addie appeared at the door and placed her hands on her hips in a Wonder Woman pose. This kid.
“Miss Addie, is that how you ask for something?” Ivy faced Addie, mirroring her stance. Damn, she looked hot.Not the time, man.
Addie immediately looked chagrined. “Sorry, Momma. Is my snack tray ready please?”
Ivy nodded, apparently pleased with the change of tune. “It is, babe. Do you want to watch cartoons or play games while we snack?”
Addie did a little shimmy dance as she turned to race back to the living room. “Cartoons! Let’s go!”
Ivy grabbed her coffee and mine. “Can you get the tray?”
“Sure,” I said as I turned to grab it and then followed my girls to the living room for a morning of snacks and cartoons. Sounded surprisingly like a good time.
19
Pancakes and Sleepovers
Ivy
Jake and I headed down the sidewalk toward his house behind a twirling Addie. As she went, she talked to the leaves underfoot, bare trees soaring overhead. We passed houses with dogs barking from inside, to which she answered each in a singsong voice. To say she was excited about pancakesanddonuts would be an understatement, but that wasn’t the only reason for her unbridled joy. She was just a happy kid.
I didn’t know what to think about the fact that she hadn’t reacted at all to waking up to find Jake in my room. Part of me felt the need to explain it, to see if she was okay. Another part of me felt that I wanted her to grow up with positive feelings about what sex was and to never feel shame toward it. My parents were closed off in regard to conversations about sex, to say the least. There was zero discussion about it other than good girls weren’t doing that. Fortunately for me, Nana did not subscribe to that philosophy. Chalk one more reason to miss her. She wouldn’t have felt I was living in sin by having sex, much less a child, out of wedlock. She would have just celebrated along with me.
All that was to say I missed the heck out of her, and I needed to figure out what, if anything, to say to Addie. So far, my parenting conversations had been guided by her inquisitive nature. We talked about all the parts of our bodies without shame. I told her about penises and vulvas when they came up.
Before we moved, her gymnastics teacher had told the kids he was having a surgery. He left it up to the parents to elaborate if we felt like our children were ready for it. I’d explained to Addie that some folks were born in bodies that didn’t fit who they were and that Cody had been born with breasts, but that he was a boy and he was having surgery to have them removed. Addie had rolled with it, wanting to make a card for Cody after his top surgery and bring him some cookies and dinner, so we did.
We’d talked about sex when she asked where babies came from, but I hadn’t thought about how to teach about sex for pleasure. She was so young, but when do you have that conversation? What if I waited until it was too late? How did you know when it was right?
