“That, too.”
“Are you sleepy yet?”
I think about it for a moment. “Actually, yeah. I feel pretty cozy right now.
“Thank you, Cal,” he says sarcastically.
I roll my eyes straight through my skull. “Thank you,Cal.”
“Me, too, by the way. I feel pretty damn good now.” He yawns loudly, making me yawn back. “Alright. How about tomorrow night? We can watch a kids’ movie, get popcorn and sticky candy all over your furniture, and we’ll have to rewind the movie every five minutes because everyone’s talking. But you and I will snuggle until the kids go to bed, then we can talk.”
“That’s oddly elaborate. I’ll take the snuggling part.”
“One snuggle is marked on my calendar for tomorrow night.”
“O-kay… Time to call it a night.”
“Night, Tiger.”
“Night, Joker.”
Chapter 21
Calvin
I’minthekitchen,sipping on my usual chicory coffee as Braeden is eating a bowl of cereal and scrolling through his phone. A typical morning for us.
“How are you liking school so far?” I hadn’t asked before, giving him space, and he hadn’t exactly offered up the information freely.
“It’s fine.”
God, he sounds like I did when I was his age.
“Make any friends yet?”
He shakes his head as a dribble of milk spills out of the corner of his mouth. He wipes it away as he continues to play on his phone.
Cicero suddenly jumps up onto the table and tries to lap up the milk from Braeden’s bowl.
“Hey!Pst! Down, Cicero. Down!”
Braeden lifts the cat and sets him on his lap, petting him. But the cat’s now annoyed he didn’t get any milk, so he jumps down and saunters off before giving me a baleful look.
“Brat,” I say as I watch him go. “That cat’s stomach is a void.”
Braeden chuckles, but says nothing.
That’s good, right? I made him laugh, even a little. This parenting thing has been hard, but things are starting to click into place, or so I hope. You’d think I’d have more empathy for my mother raising me alone, but she’s done too much damage to me. And soon, we’re going to have to talk about it all. I need to set more boundaries and be firm about them. I have way too much on my fucking plate to deal with her calls. I’m finally starting to feel confident in raising Braeden, so I don’t need any help to dismantle that.
“What do you think about me inviting Seth and his kids to go with us today?”
He looks at me with those big blue eyes. They’re bluer than Seth’s. “Yeah, okay. He’s nice.”
“Cool, I’ll text him.”
I finish my coffee, lift my phone, and tap out a message to Seth.
Me: I know it’s last-minute, but I’m taking Brae to tour
