Chance’s eyes dart over to me from where he is behind the wheel.
“Fish sauce? And peanut butter?”
“Yeah. I wanna whip up a noodle dish.”
“Ew, Mommy!” Preston calls from his carseat behind us.
“Yuck!” Ford agrees.
I look back at them in time to see Brad stick a finger in his open mouth, pretending to vomit.
Lea has no clue what sounds gross about it. “Yummy, Mommy!”
Chance’s knuckles go white on the steering wheel. The second we’re at a stoplight, his sole focus is on me.
“Christina.”
“Mmm?”
“Do you have something you want to tell me?”
“That my favorite Asian market is that way, so you’d better turn at the light?” I blink at him innocently.
“The last time you had me go there… The last time I had to go get you fish sauce was when,” he nods, gesturing to the backseat, using his head to point at the ones listening to our conversation right now, “we had to go from a Traverse to a Tahoe.” His eyes are near bulging out of his head. “Are you telling me we need to get a Suburban, Chrissy?”
“The light’s green,” is all I say.
“Do we need to get a fucking Suburban?”
So testy. His volume is really getting up there.
The curse word triggers a response in the kids, and the car is suddenly full of gobbling.
“Gobble gobble!”
“GOBBLE GOBBLE!”
“Gobble gobble gobble!”
Their mismatched pitches and giggles are contagious, and I start gobbling with them, as Chance loses his ever-loving mind.
It’s just another weekend for the Anderson clan, which we now spend mostly together, thanks to me shifting around my schedule with work. I got smart about which clients I accepted, and when to say no. I’ve been able to prioritize family time, and the occasional friend time, too, while still getting to work on my career. The last couple of months have been full of silly days like this each weekend, and I wouldn’t wanna trade them for anything.
Chance turns at the light, still nearly hyperventilating, and pulls over into the strip mall where he can park and assess me, the ridiculous gobbles still ricocheting off the doors and windows. His eyes stick to my stomach.
“Are you—" he points at my belly, unable or unwilling to get the question out.
“Am I…fucking with you? Yes, yes, I am.”
He throws his head back against the seat, hands covering his face and exhales deeply, groaning. “You almost gave me a heart attack, Di. That’s not funny!”
“Gotcha,” I tell him playfully. And I disagree, because I think his face right now is abso-fucking-lutely hilarious.
“You know it’s only just now hitting me that I had that surgery. Like my head was empty of everything but internal screaming for a good minute there. Logic wasn’t even in the picture.” He shakes his head, a smile returning now.
“You know…” I drift off until he turns to face me, suspicion all over his features again. “That surgery isn’t one-hundred-percent effective. There’s always a chance, Chance…”
* * *
