Page 133 of Catch Me
“Fuck all of you. I can change a damn diaper. Babies can’t be too hard.”
Kyle and Diego go completely still. Diego slow blinks before asking, “What did you just say?”
I repeat myself.
“Right, not until you’re up at three a.m. with a baby who only stops crying once you keep pacing the damn hallway.”
“Because she’s teething,” Kyle adds.
“Oh, and only wants her mom but you want your wife to sleep so you have to take her to an entirely different part of the house for your baby to accept that she’s gotta stick it out with just you.” That’s Diego.
“So she begrudgingly accepts that it’s you who’ll be the one to put her back to sleep, but she makes you work for it with yet another diaper blowout.”
“And falls asleep while you’re giving her a bath, but by then it’s four-thirty and you get thirty minutes before her next feeding.”
“Which she never sleeps in for,” Kyle again.
“Never,” Diego finishes.
They both pause, arms folded, and stare me down.
“But then, there is that time after feeding they’re clean and calm and they just lay their perfect little heads against your chest with their fists in their mouths, gurgling nonsense.”
A wistful look invades my cousin’s face.
“There is that,” Kyle adds, wearing the same expression. “Or the first time they wrap those tiny little fingers around yours.”
“Oh, and when they see you walk in the door from work and drop whatever they’re doing to smile and crawl over to you,” Diego says.
“That shit is the best.”
“Nah,” Diego counters. “Seeing my wife’s face in that smile is the best.”
“Is it seven yet?” Dae asks, looking at the clock, a new anxiousness to leave in his tone.
Ivy isn’t pregnant with my child, yet, but I feel his urgency all of a sudden.
“What do you know?” Diego says as the four of us look at the clock. “It’s ten of.”
“By the time I make it home it’ll be seven,” I say heading for the door with Dae and Kyle right on my heels.
“Hey,” Kyle calls right as hit the unlock button to my rental. He puts an arm around my shoulders. “You know I love you, right?”
I roll my eyes. “Of course I do, idiot.”
He squeezes my shoulder, hard.
“Dumbass.” I push him away.
“We do this once a month.” He nods in the direction of Diego’s house. “Change the location every time though. So the women don’t get sick of us.”
“Now you’re begging for an invite to L.A., huh?” I joke.
“Never needed an invite.”
“But you have an open one,” I say. “You know that, right?” I turn his question around.
He half smiles and nods. “Noted.” His expression turns serious.
