Page 52 of My Redneck Baby Daddy

Regina picked her own baby up off the counter seat. "Come on, sweet girl. Auntie Rue Boo don't appreciate one thing your mama has done for this family."

I came through for a beer. "What's going on?"

"Your wife's best friend is why I am in this situation," Rue said.

"MY wife?" Hamilton hollered from the couch.

I looked at Regina, then at Rue, then at my son, who had ahold of the dog's tail, and my daughter chewing on her mother's sleeve.

"She kinda is."

"You shut up too."

Thanksgiving at my house had turned into something I never planned.

It’d started the first year with Cody Vance having nowhere to go, and now half the company comes through at some point. Not all of them stay. Marcus brought his wife and both girls for dessert and left with a plate. Somebody's mama sent a pan of dressing I didn’t ask for and wouldn’t be returning.

Cody came in around two with a baby carrier in one hand and his wife behind him, and I watched Rue notice him.

She told me later what she was thinking. The first time she ever set foot in that concrete yard she was still working out whether I was a decent man. Cody had to have been about twenty-two-year-old, a kid, who’d ordered the wrong yardage and thought I was going to take his head off.

Now he was my foreman, and he was standing in her kitchen with a baby.

Hamilton came out to the fryer with his youngest against his chest.

"Remember when your wife set me up with Rue?"

He slapped me on the back. “Unfortunately."

I looked towards the sky for just a second, remembering how pink Rue’s cheeks had gotten. “Thought she was gonna run straight out of that restaurant on that date.”

"She almost did." Hamilton shifted the baby. "Jordan asked me the other day how y'all met. I told her to go ask her mother."

I looked through the window. Rue was laughing at something my mother said with her head back.

"Best damn thing y'all ever did."

Hamilton shrugged, “You could say thank you."

"Let's not get carried away." I nodded at the bundle against his shirt. "Never thought I'd see you carrying one of them again."

"You got two. Shut the hell up."

Around three I caught my mother checking the clock over the stove. She did it twice more in ten minutes, and the last time she pretended to be looking at the oven light.

"Mama. Who you waiting on?"

"Nobody."

I didn’t push it any further. “Mm."

"Bobby Jo, stir that gravy and mind your business."

The doorbell went off four minutes later. BJ took off like a shot. "I GOT IT!"

"BJ." I came around the counter. "Do not open that door."

That boy has never once in his life waited on me.