“Those aren’t pants, they’re pajamas.”
“So?”
“You can’t wear pajamas out to dinner. You can put them on when you get to Daddy’s house.”
The doorbell rang. I passed Delia her coat, hoping Zach didn’t manage to strip himself naked while my back was turned as I answered the door.
“Whoa!” Javi said, dodging a flying sneaker as he came inside. I turned in time to see Zach strip off his other one, the lights in their soles blinking as he tossed it over his head and sprinted behind the couch. I pinched the bridge of my nose as a pair of overalls flew over the back of the sofa and landed on the floor. Zach darted out of his hiding place and streaked past both of us, his bare butt on full display. His turtleneck was stuck around his head, the empty arms flapping behind him as he tore wildly through the house. I caught him around the waist before he could run face-first into the wall.
“Vero!” I called out. “Javi’s here!”
She was still putting in her earrings as she came down the stairs. “Naked time?”
Javi’s brows shot up. “Absolutely.”
She rolled her eyes as he kissed her on the cheek. “I was talking about the kids.”
Zach wailed and attempted to rip off the rest of his shirt. There was a familiar rap on the door. Steven cracked it open and peeped inside. “Everyone ready to go?”
“Almost,” I said, struggling to get Zach back into his Pull-Up.
Vero handed her purse to Javi. “Hold this.”
Steven and Javi watched with matching expressions of fascination and horror as Vero and I re-dressed my screaming toddler in a rehearsed coordinated effort in which one of us held him in a bear hug while the other worked him back into his clothes. I slung him over my hip when we finished. He writhed for a moment before finally giving up, leaving a trail of tears and snot on my shirt as he collapsed against my shoulder.
“What’s going on?” Steven asked me.
“The boot camp didn’t work. We’re back to Pull-Ups, but Zach refuses to keep his clothes on. Everything I’ve read says it’s just a phase.”
“How long will it last?”
Vero gave Steven a pointed look. “I hear some children never grow out of it.”
I passed Zach to his father before he could flip her off. “Let’s go,” I said, putting the straps of the diaper bag over Steven’s free shoulder. I gave each of the kids a kiss. “Have a fun weekend. Be good for your dad.”
“Better hurry,” Vero told Steven when Zach started squirming. “It’s only a matter of time before Mount Vesuvius erupts.”
“We’re definitely going to the pharmacy for condoms on the way home,” Javi said to Vero.
“What’s a condom?” Delia asked her father as he shooed her out the door.
The house fell blissfully quiet once the children were gone. The only sound was the game show Mrs. Haggerty was watching on the TV in the next room.
“Who’s that?” Javi asked, tipping his head toward the sofa.
“A displaced neighbor,” I said before Vero could supply an adjective of her own. “Her heat’s not working and she needed a place to stay.”
Javi leaned down to give Vero a proper kiss hello. She smiled as his raven-black hair fell over both of their eyes. The plastic ring on the fourth finger of his left hand caught in the strands as he raked them back, and he gently pried it free. He’d acquired it during their drunken late-night trip to a cheesy hotel wedding chapel in Atlantic City. Judging by how often he’d been showing up here lately, I didn’t imagine he’d be taking it off anytime soon.
The purple glow-in-the-dark bat ring was barely visible under the layer of glittery violet spray paint on his fingers, suggesting he’d come straight from Vero’s cousin’s garage. Javi did salvage and bodywork in exchange for free rent and a place to sleep on Ramón’s sofa, and since Vero’s cousin and Javi had been best friends since elementary school, the arrangement had been working out fine. That is, until Javi had told Ramón that he and Vero had (sort of) gotten married. Javi’s cheek still carried the ghost of a bruise.
Vero caught his hand and smirked. “That’s a pretty bold choice,” she said, raising an eyebrow at the purple paint on his knuckles.
“Tell me about it,” Javi said irritably. “I told Ramón’s customer the same thing when he picked out the color. I didn’t even finish spraying the front end of his truck before the asshole changed his mind. Now I’ve got an open bucket of Eggplant Ecstasy sitting on a shelf in the garage.”
Vero laughed. “You’d better go wash that mess off your hands before you take me out to dinner.”
“I was kind of hoping we could stay in.” He dangled a set of keys between them.
