“Gonna take his truckin’ face and use it as an excavator,” she continues with a glance down at our three-year-old.
“Digger!” Stella vehemently agrees.
“Honeys—”
“Ref!” Annie finally bursts out, her hands flying into the air, identical to and in tandem with our five-year-old daughter currently on the soccer field.
The beleaguered grandpa currently volunteering as a coach sighs down at my tiny angel of wrath.
“Excuse me, sir,” Cleo seethes through the deep breathing exercises we’ve attempted to teach her. Her little chest doubles then halves in size as the exercise mimics hyperventilation instead of cleansing calm. “Lucas pushed me with two hands three times in a row,” she fumes, really trying to keep her shittogether. “Did you see? Are your eyes broke? That’s a red card! That’s three red cards!”
“Honey—” he begins.
“I’m not your honey,” she sneers.
“You tell ‘em, Cleo!” my wife shouts, aggressively rubbing circles on her swollen belly.
“Dig his face!” Stella yells, starting her march onto the field to defend her older sister to the death.
I grab her and plop her writhing body onto my shoulders, losing one of her sneakers in the process. “For truck’s sake—all three of you,stand down,” I roar.
“My shoe,” Stella wails with a point to the fallen soldier.
“Cleo,” the coach tries again. “This isn’t a real game. This is just practice?—”
“Tell Lucas that,” Annie and Cleo yell simultaneously.
The coach scrubs his face. “Lucas,” he tells his grandson, “can you please apologize?”
Lucas shrugs. “Sorry,” he mutters, with little to no apology in his voice.
“Gotta try harder than that, kid,” I inform him, at the same time Stella screams, “Sorry for what?” while tearing at my hair in her agitation.
Lucas kicks at some grass before looking at Cleo. “Sorry for pushing you three times with two hands.”
“Apology accepted,” Cleo sniffs after a moment. She stares at him, and then her gorgeous eyes light up in a familiar way. “I’m bored. Wanna get some ice cream?”
Lucas grins. He looks at his grandpa, who blows out a breath and looks at his watch.
“We still have ten minutes left,” he says.
Annie cups her hands in front of her face. “Who wants ice cream? We’re buying!”
Fifteen miniscule bodies display an athleticism not previously demonstrated in their thirty minutes of practice as they sprint towards the Mister Softee truck parked at the corner of the park. Stella flies off my body, lands on the ground like Spiderman, and runs after them.
“Stell, your shoe—” I try, waving it in the air half-heartedly for half a second before tucking it into my pocket.
The coach joins Annie and me as we follow behind them. “Any chance you guys want to take over coaching for the rest of the season?” he asks us.
“No thanks,” I answer cheerfully. “We don’t know anything about sports. We’re just here for Cleo.”
“And we’re about to be really busy for a while,” Annie adds on, rubbing her stomach.
“You’re doing great, though,” I assure him.
We haven’t stopped being busy, truthfully. Our lives have been a series of chaotic, impulsive, beautiful decisions since leaving that bookstore.
Annie moved in with me mere months after our cookbook came out. Thank god she was paying month to month. I proposed to her in our kitchen a few months after that.
