My stomach too.
One of the triplets—pretty sure haircut says Decker—deposits an end table next to Emma’s seat.
He eyes me but doesn’t say a word.
To me, anyway.
“Look at this, little bro. Table built for you. Wanna let your mama eat?”
Bash looks up at him. “Decka go ’way. I eat wif Mama.”
“You can eat with Mama with your plate on the table,” Emma says. “And be nice to Decker. He fixed the slide for you.”
Bash eyes me.
I hold my hands up. “Can’t help you, bud. I do what my mommy says too.”
Decker coughs like he knows my mother doesn’t yet know that I’m off in the Colorado mountains meeting my son.
Everyonewould know if my mother knew.
And byeveryone, I mean my father. Keisha and her wife. Other relatives.
Not the general public.
But the people who matter and who’d want to be here to meet Bash too.
“My mama eat,” Bash says to me.
“We should all eat,” I agree.
Is that what I’m supposed to say to a kid?
Legit don’t know.
Other than Begonia’s sister’s kids, or at appearances where it’s easy to ask what’s on their shirts or what their favorite color is or if they had fun doing whatever we were doing at charity or promo events, I don’t have a lot of experience with kids.
This is one of those times I’d ask my mom for guidance, except I’m not talking to her right now.
She’s fantastic ninety percent of the time and an overprotective bear who forgets thoseboundariesEmma was talking about the other ten percent of the time.
Ask Begonia.
Or don’t.
She’d laugh too hard right now, and she sincerely hates laughing when she’s pregnant. Makes her have to dash to the bathroom.
“Do you take good care of your mama?” I ask Bash.
Shit. Is that an appropriate question?
I don’t know.
But he looks at Emma and grins with a mischievousness that suggests this kid is learning more from his Uncle Theo than Emma might like. “My mama well at dick-dicks.”
“Mama only yells at the chickens when they get out of their pen and try to run into the woods.” Emma puts Bash’s plate back on the side table as Decker pulls a juice carton from his back pocket and sets it next to the plate.
Bash leaps on the juice like it’s oxygen, then dives into his plate, apparently forgetting he wanted to eat off of Emma’s lap.
