Page 43 of Mister Mom

“What do you mean you can’t?” I ask. “Hold on,” I say as I make a hard break. Traffic has slowed to a crawl in the blink of an eye as it’s liable to do in L.A. at any given hour.

“I can’t because it’s wet.”

I suck in a breath. Fuck me.

I chance a quick glance in the back seat since we’re only moving at about ten miles per hour and immediately wish I didn’t. My eyes widen as they take in the ice cream dripping down the cone, over Payne’s hand and what’s left sitting in his lap.

Shit. I open my center console while keeping an eye on traffic, stopping and going every few seconds. Without taking my gaze from the road I feel around inside and plastic wrappers topple out and onto the floorboards. The box of condoms that I keep in my glove compartment in case of emergencies is open and condom wrappers are scattered inside the glove box and across the floormat below.

How can a kid his size be so messy?

Manny fail.

“I’m sticky,” Payne half says, half cries.

“Okay, okay. Hang on. Let me think.”

“It’s all over my privates!” Payne wails and then starts sobbing.

I adjust the rearview mirror so that I can get a better view of him and realize that he’s now holding the ice cream cone out to his side so that it’s dripping all over my interior.

“Oh, buddy, don’t do that. Leave it where it was.”

“No! It’s cold and sticky,” he screams and continues to cry.

“You’re going to have to wait until we get back to your place and then we’ll get you cleaned up okay?”

I grip the steering wheel harder imagining the state of my interior by the time we reach Layla’s in this traffic. I could take the next exit, but by the time I make it across the two lanes of traffic we won’t be far from Layla’s anyway.

Payne sniffles behind me. I ruined the kid the first day.

“Can’t I use one of those?” he asks.

“One of what?” I turn my head quickly to see what he’s looking at.

“Those,” he says and points with his free hand to the condom wrappers.

“Uh…no, bud. Those are for adults.”

“Mommy lets me use her Wet-Naps.”

Relief floods my veins that at least he doesn’t know what condoms are and won’t go telling his mom.

“Oh, those aren’t Wet-Naps,” I say, hoping he’ll drop the subject. I honk my horn at the guy in front of me. Why are there so many damn people in LA?

But of course, he doesn’t.

“What are they?” he asks.

I try to think of something to say—something that won’t lead to another question and another. I’m at a loss and so finally I say, “You know what? That’s also your mom’s department.”

Thankfully, he accepts my response and goes back to sniffling about his melting ice cream. “Mommy always gets me the kid scoop,” he mumbles. “This never happens with Mommy.”

I’m a cars length away from sniffling too, thinking of what that sticky liquid is doing to my interior. There’s more to this manny stuff than just keeping the kid alive.

* * *

“Do you like basketball?” I ask Payne, later that afternoon after we’ve got him all cleaned up.

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