“Oh my god, how did I forget how beautiful you all are? Have you been practicing your flips?” I ask, bracing to receive their hugs and try to avoid getting mud, and whatever else, on them as I do.
The two youngest nod and preen under the praise, but Lily shies from it, as though I hadn’t really meant to include her. “Wow, Lily, your hair in the sunlight is… beatific. You look like a goddess in a painting.”
Heath’s jaw tightens. I’m not trying to go overboard; she really is so beautiful with her green eyes and her gorgeous peaches-and-cream complexion. Still, I take his hint and pull it back, simply offering her a high five, which nets a small smile.
“Is Roly going to watch us?” Molly asks, getting right down to the meat of it.
“No, girls, we’re going to go to the zoo, and Roly here is going to pick up the dog poop and mow the backyard.”
I turn and look up at him. “I’m going towhat?”
He smiles down at me, unfairly gorgeous and good-smelling as he actually ruffles my hair.
“Oh, I’m pretty sure you heard me right the first time.”
“You want me to pick up Sasha’s dog poop?” I ask, using kid-friendly language.
“Yep.” Way too fucking chipper.
Molly hugs my waist tight, and it makes my heart happy. “But I want Roly to come with us to the zoo!”
“No, Molly, sweetie, Roly has to stay here. He’s doing daddy a favor.”
She grabs his hands with a pleading look that I would never, ever be able to say no to. “But he’s so much fun!”
Luna joins in. “Yeah, we like Roly!”
“Can Jules come with us, too?” Lily’s ask is soft, and she looks to me for approval. My heart melts at the thought of them including Jules, but I dare not say anything because I’m trying to keep the focus on Heath, and if I screw this up again Evie will laugh at me for the next year. I simply turn to him and hold up my phone, willing to make the call. He give a quick shake of his head, and I slip my phone back into my pocket.
“No, this is a daddy-daughter date, but we can invite Jules for the next time we go out and do something, how about that?”
“And Roly, too?”
“Probably not,” he says, looking at me. “Roly is a busy guy and often doesn’t have time to do anything else.”
The girls complain, and he cuts them off. “Girls, we gotta leave now. Make sure you have everything you want to bring with you to your mom’s house, because we are not coming back here for your missing hair clips or homework or iPads.” Lily’s eyes go big, and she runs to her room while everyone else goes back into the living room and heads toward the front door. I see a flash of red hair and a shy smile in my direction when Lily runs through the living room to the front door, Kindle in tow.
I’m left reconning the backyard, identifying several dozen small mountains of dog shit, and sigh. I call up Elijah and Nick, farming my afternoon training sessions to them. A promise is a promise. #fml
Chapter Nine
Heath
I walk in the door, exhausted from taking the girls to the zoo, glad I could drop them off a few blocks over and then come home and pass out. I’m kicking off my shoes and putting them in the basket near the front door when I see a dark brown smear on the sliding glass door across the living room.
“What the hell?”
I walk to the living room and notice that, in addition to the brown smear of mud on my sliding glass door, the garden hose is lying like a spent dick on the newly built, soaking wet back porch, and Roly’s shoes and socks are stacked next to it, caked in mud. The eye-twitching vignette continues into my living room, where muddy watercolor footprints track through the pristine deep-pile cream carpeting to the driftwood gray porcelain tile in the hall, ending at my freshly remodeled bathroom.
At the risk of repeating myself I walk up to the hall bathroom and bang on the door. “What the hell, Roly?”
His voice sounds small through the door. “I’m sorry about the lawn mower, I promise I’ll fix it.”
I stalk back to the living room into my backyard and find that my lawn mower is in about three hundred pieces laid out across the unevenly cut grass. Sasha the foster has climbed the fence again and is peeing on my brand-new lawn mower’s engine.
I race through the living room to the bathroom door and bang on it again. “Roly, open the door! What thehelldid you do to my lawn mower!”
“I’m going to open the door, but keep in mind that I am going to fix everything, I promise. I’ll have your rug cleaned, I will have the lawnmower put back together or I will buy you a new one, and I promise—I promise—I will replace your towels.”
