Connor’s face scrunches and he mouths ‘Katie?’
I offer a nod, chuckling quietly while she runs me through her week and the macaroni and cheese that she had for dinner – which my brother doesn’t make nearly as well as her Aunt Edie does, according to her incredibly-refined palate. I’m kind of surprised that he learned the recipe for her.
I listen more than I talk while she tells me about a fight she’s having with another girl in her second-grade class; a temporary trade gone wrong and a toy not returned to her when it was supposed to be.
My eyes move to Connor while she talks, watching as he stuffs all of his things into his backpack and slips into his riding jacket, pulling the zipper closed to let the smooth leather hug his body.
“Did your friend tell you she was sorry?” I ask my niece, though my focus is glued ahead of me.
Connor turns over his shoulder to glance in my direction, quirking a brow at my question.
“Yeah, but it still hurts my feelings,” she grumbles.
“That’s how it goes sometimes, monster,” I tell her. “You’re gonna piss your friends off, too, and if you want to stay friends with them, you’ll have to tell them you’re sorry and do what you can to try to make it better, right?”
My eyes meet Connor’s again as he leans against his piercing table, crossing his arms over his chest. He smirks at me, not making an ounce of effort to hide the amusement in his features; and I don’t have to wonder what it is that he’s saying to me.
I have the emotional maturity of a pissed off seven-year-old girl.
“Listen,” I say to Katie, “if you want me to fly out there and take the training wheels off this girl’s bike so she falls off and winds up looking like a squished bug, I’ll do it.” Not letting myeyes leave Connor’s, I add, “But I think you should see if you can forgive her, first.”
She groans into the receiver, which tells me that I’m probably the third adult out of three to tell her the same thing today, and that cool Uncle T-Mo has officially dropped the ball on being the cool uncle.
At the sound of her mom’s voice in the background, telling her that it’s time to hang up and get ready for bed, we quickly say our goodbyes so she can get off of the phone.
“That seems like some pretty solid advice,” Connor teases as I hang up the call. “A squished bug?”
“Second day I’m at their house, Katie comes into the room, stares at my beat-to-hell face, and says‘I think your face is what a bug’s face looks like after you squish ‘em,’” I laugh.
“You’re really good with her,” he tells me, slipping a hand into one of his gloves. After slipping on the second, he’s quiet for a while, the wheels visibly turning in his head while he watches me too closely. “Is it okay to ask you if you think you’d ever do it again?”
Strapping my thigh bag into place, I blow out a heavy breath.
It’s a question I’ve asked myself a million times and a conversation Jules and I have never had; whether because we were too afraid to or because we didn’t want to scratch at an already-festering wound.
“You can ask, I just don’t know the answer,” I tell him. “There’s this look Jules gets on her face sometimes when she sees a baby - like she wants to, and yeah, I’d like to get to do all the dad stuff; but I think after Paxton, we’ve both just been too scared to risk it again.”
Moving his fingers to the back of his neck, gesturing to the space in which I tattooed a set of initials into my wife’s skin, he says, “So PJM is…”
“Paxton James Montgomery.”
“That’s a good name,” he says, the corner of his mouth ticking up. “That’s a guy we’d take riding with us.”
My head dips as I hide my smile while I pull on my helmet; I’m not sure why.
As he reaches for his own helmet, Connor pauses.
“I’d do it, too, if I got the chance to,” he says. “I thought I screwed up with Irina, but she’s doing great. Healthy relationship, headed into a real career…the girl’s got it.”
I flip open my visor, my brow furrowing as I look at him. “You thought you fucked her up?”
“I was eighteen and trying to raise a seven year old,” he chuckles. “Of course I did.”
“Nah,” I say with a shake of my head. “The only reason she’s as well-rounded as she is because you only fucked up normal brother stuff like you were supposed to.”
“That’s why you like me,” he says with his eyes softening, using his head to gesture toward the back door. As we walk through it together, he adds, “Our screwed-up pieces line up.”
“The jury’s still out on if I like you or not,” I grumble.
