And I have a desperate, unquenchable desire to know what Emma looked like when she was carrying Bash.
How it felt when he kicked inside her.
If he ever got the hiccups and made her entire belly shake.
I want to have been the one fixing her a spinach and cottage cheese omelet in the middle of the night.
Or whateverhercravings were.
Will I miss acting?
I will. It’s always come easy and I like it.
But there’s a hole in my life that I can’t fill with roles playing someone else, no matter how big the roles might be. I missedBash’s birth. Holding him when he was a baby. Sending Emma back to bed while I changed a diaper or gave him a bottle in the middle of the night. His first birthday.
I don’t know what his first word was. What his first solid food was. When he started walking. If he’s ever needed stitches. How often he gets his hair cut.
How she did it all on her own.
I’ll miss acting.
But I can’t miss any more ofthis.
Oflife.
“I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I think Bash has as much energy as all of our camp kids combined,” Begonia says. “He wins. Stick a fork in me. I’m done.”
“I’d prefer to simply take you home,” Hayes says, rising from the lawn chair beside me.
“That’ll work too.” Begonia hugs Emma. “Thank you for the pizza party. It’s like you knew what I was craving.”
“Thank you for coming. Bash had a great time.”
“That’s the Marshmallow effect.”
Hayes grunts.
Begonia giggles.
The dog in question sticks his nose out of the back door, a chicken in his mouth.
“Marshmallow,” Begonia chides. “Drop the chicken.”
Hayes adds a throat-clear as he stares at the dog.
Yolko Ono squawks once, and Marshmallow sets her gingerly back on her one leg, then licks her.
Yolko Ono flaps her wings at him, just once, then hops under him and settles to the ground beneath the dog’s chest.
Like he’s her shelter from the rain that isn’t falling.
All of us stare at the two of them for a second before Begonia giggles again. “That—that was not funny,” she says between snickers.
Hayes smiles and loops his arm around her neck, pressing a kiss to her head. And then he snaps his fingers. “Marshmallow. Car. Now. Before you squash the chicken.”
I have never been so jealous of my brother in my entire life.
Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever been jealous of him. Everything that’s come easy to me has come hard to him, and I know it.
