He just hasn’t reached that stage yet where he’d ask whohisdaddy is.
“Well, Jonas is your daddy,” I tell him.
He stares at me with those big brown eyes that he got from his daddy, then looks at Jonas, whose breathing has gone a little uneven. “Dona my daddy?” Bash repeats.
“Yep. Jonas is your daddy.”
“’Kay. I go see dick-dick.”
He slides off my lap, leaps up, grabs a stick, and starts chasing imaginary pirates around the chicken coop. And Jonasslides over closer to me, his fingers linking in mine while our thighs line up.
“That’s not how it goes in the movies,” he says a little hoarsely.
I squeeze his hand. “It’ll click eventually. And he should know. You’re his family too.”
“Em—if he repeats that—”
I kiss his cheek and put a finger to his mouth. “You’re family, Jonas. We claim our family around here.”
And Bash will repeat what I just told him. He absolutely will. Probably at daycare this week, the first chance he gets.Dona my daddy.
Jonas clears his throat again and drops his head to my shoulder. “This is way better than playing a role in a movie.”
We spend the rest of the morning watching and playing with Bash while he battles pirates and asks for more food and drags his blocks out to tell Jonas to build a better dinosaur.
And in the middle of showing Jonas how to do it himself, Bash squints at him. “You my daddy?”
Jonas goes misty-eyed all over again, which makes me go misty-eyed too.
“I am,” he tells Bash. “But you can call me Jonas or Daddy or Hey You or whatever you want, okay?”
Bash stares at him harder. “Dat a bad dibobor.”
“Not all of us can build good dinosaurs,” Jonas replies in his Panda Bananda voice.
Bash makes a face. “I fix it. You go ’way.”
“Bash, we share with friends,” I remind him.
He looks at me, and then he hands Jonas two blocks. Just two. “You pway withdese. I pway withdose.”
I shouldn’t laugh.
But today, smiling, laughing, and loving are all I seem capable of doing.
Eventually, Jonas and I end up sitting side by side on the quilt again. But this time, when he presses a kiss to my shoulder, he murmurs words that make me sigh.
“My mother apparently arrived in town last night. She wants to meet you two. You can say no. She’s…a lot.”
I slide a look at him.
Pause.
Weigh my words carefully.
And then decide if he’s serious, if he loves me, he can handle this. “You’rea lot.”
His eyes flare wide for a second before he cracks up. “Not wrong.”
