Well, Ihalf-proposed. The second I got down on one knee, Annie tackled me to the kitchen floor, screamed, “Yes, Chef,” and I barely managed to slip the ring onto her finger before her tongue was in my mouth—effectively cutting off my grand speech.
It’s okay, though. She let me finish the speech later, in bed, while she sobbed over the new diamond resting over the diamond tattoo on her ring finger.
Our book went viral. Television networks and social media influencers had the two of us on their shows—I’d do the cooking and the science and Annie would provide the hilarious commentary. We had great chemistry, everyone had said.
I only made one moreNakedReactionsvideo. Annie wasn’t involved. The end ofNakedReactionswas our only regrettable decision, but it was because we were sad about the additional income we’d be losing. It didn’t last very long, though, ‘cause not long after that, I started my own food consulting business. The two of us got to travel to restaurants all around the world—Tokyo, Paris, London, Bangkok, Mexico City, Singapore, Rome, Lima, Lyon, Marrakech—helping chefs improve their menus of kitchens big and small.
We danced in all those cities.
Annie wrote poetry. She’s still publishing, and she’s raking it the fuck in. Turns out her style of poetry has a solid market in millennial women who scream-cried My Chemical Romance into their iPod Shuffles.
We were married in a small ceremony overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains, surrounded by the people who love us. Even her parents were there—Annie and May’s compromise of staying no-contact except for big events and holidays. A boundary that protects their peace while still honoring the cultural respect that shaped them.
Cleo was born nine months after that.
Think of the children, I remind myself, before replaying the night Cleo was conceived. But hot damn.
We finally get to the overwhelmed ice cream man, where our youngest is leading a rhythmic “swirl with sprinkles” war chant. Annie moves to her side and uses her charm to begin negotiations for a deal on twenty ice cream cones. I step to her back and dig my thumbs into the base of her spine, right where I know she’s sore, and she melts in my arms.
In three months, our Fort Greene brownstone we bought a year ago will be filled with four girls. My girls. Four majestic, terrifying, wondrous angels of wrath.
Life is stretched-out hair elastics, floor bananas (entirely peeled with only one bite taken out), big feelings, and little to no sleep.
We’ve never been happier.
“Daddy,” Cleo asks me, as we step to the side. “How do they make ice cream in the truck? Is there a freezer in there?”
“Yep, there’s a freezer in there, but the real trick isn’t just keeping it cold—it’s how you freeze it.” I bend to sneak a bite of her cone. “You gotta keep it movin’. They mix cream, sugar, and flavors, then spin it while chilling it so that it freezes smooth instead of turning into one big ice cube. That’s how you get soft, creamy ice cream instead of a block of frozen milk.”
“It’s like we did at home, Cleo, remember?” Annie looks at me when she says this, though, eyes sparkling, licking her cone slowly, in a way that’s reminiscent of last night. In our bed, after the girls went down. While I straddled her face.
Think of the children, I mouth at her, pinching her ass.
“Oh yeah,” Stella chimes in, now somehow missing the other shoe. And sock. “Daddy shook the plastic bag when we made ice cream.”
“Our ice cream tasted better,” Cleo says.
“That’s ‘cause it was made with love,” I let her know immediately.
Three pairs of eyes roll in simultaneous choreography. Well, two pairs. Stella still hasn’t figured out how to do it, so she just looks up at the sky instead.
“Hey!” I feign offense, but really, this is a reaction I’m used to. “I just love you all so much. Food tastes better when we make it together.”
Annie, who has had my back for the last seven or eight years, depending on whether you count the Chef year or not, takes her place once more. “Daddy’s right,” she tells our daughters. “Thinkof the chicken parm we all made last night. It was the best chicken parm I ever had.”
I think of the disaster of flour and egg caked into the crevices of our kitchen drawers and all of our hair, our identical grins. “Mommy’s always right.”
“Neither mommy nor daddy is always right,” Annie reminds them. “But it’s okay to be wrong sometimes.”
Stella scrambles back up to my shoulders while holding her cone, soaking my shorts, shirt, and neck in chocolate-vanilla swirl. “Can we make more ice cream in bags when we get home?” she asks. “Mine is all gone.”
I wipe a glop of it off my arm. “Sure.”
There is suddenly a moment of buzzing silence, tense with energy.
Annie and Cleo look at one another, a shared understanding passing between them. I watch as their bodies start to fill with a familiar freneticism.
Oh, fuck.
