Page 31 of A Very Grumpy Father's Day
“Just a little knotted up. I’ll be fine.” I lift her back up onto her feet and lean in to kiss her, but my mouth lands awkwardly on her jaw.
She gives me a sympathetic pat on the back. Which is the absolute worst kind of pat on the back when you’re trying to seduce someone. “C’mon, Big Daddy,” she says. “Let’s go home.”
We enter the terminal, arm in arm, and get in line behind approximately every fucking drunk teenager in the tristate area. This is also problematic. Why are they here? Why are they so noisy? Why are they drunk? Why can’t I ignore them and focus on my wife? Where can we raise Ciara so she doesn’t grow into a drunk teenager?
Maddie rubs my back reassuringly. It is not a sexy back rub either, but I actually do need some reassurance right now. “They probably all finished their exams yesterday,” Maddie says, resting her head against my shoulder. “They’re letting off steam. Ciara won’t be like that.”
“Should we move to Canada?”
“I’m pretty sure they have alcohol in Canada, Dec. And the legal drinking age is eighteen there.”
When we’ve boarded the boat, I lead Maddie through the cabin to the upper deck she led me to on the best Christmas night of my life. It smells like a seaside dive bar’s anus in here tonight. I am going to insist we throw out our shoes before setting foot in our condo because these sticky floors are disgusting. We should probably set fire to our clothes and douse ourselves with antibacterial gel before touching the baby too. But then Maddie starts walking ahead of me, leading me by the hand like she did years ago, and I see her ass in those jeans and remember why we’re here—to bone on a boat. For romance reasons. And I can forget about all the germs and odors and drunk children for as long as it takes to make sweet stand-up love to my bride. I can throw caution to the wind on this stinky, filthy ship. I’m going to.
Come what may.
Fortunately, we both manage to avoid stepping in the neon-yellow pool of vomit as we head out the door.
There are a lot of people on this ferry tonight. More than thirty of them are on the upper deck, and most of them are not old enough to legally drink alcohol in Canada. They are loud, and they are not throwing caution to the wind so much as they are hurling their concern for the rest of humanity overboard in the loudest, least graceful way possible.
I am only thirty-five. I don’t want to be the guy who despises the youth for being youthful. But I am that guy. I am also the guy who doesn’t understand why he can’t fuck his wife against an orange metal gate in a secluded corner in peace. But I am mostly a dad who wants a better future for his baby girl. Because if any of those shitheads try to date Ciara when she’s older—if they even try to date Piper now—they will wish they’d never been born.
These kids don’t even notice us as Maddie leads me to our special place because we are old enough to be their very young, hot-as-fuck parents, and because we aren’t concealed containers of shit mix.
Maddie clutches the cake container in one hand, touches my face with her other hand, and I turn my attention to her. She has the strangest, sexiest expression on her face. There’s a lot going on between that raised eyebrow and the upturned lip. She is all at once daring me to go through with this, mocking me for having the idea in the first place, and silently reminding me that this is what happens when I don’t consult with her about things first. That’s what marriage is for a man, most of the time: being silently taunted and judged by your wife for being a horny idiot and wanting to show her who’s boss by proving to her that you might be a horny idiot but you can still make her come like no one else on earth.
I stare down at her full lips, curl an index finger under her sassy chin to tilt it up, and kiss her so I don’t use my mouth to admit that she was right about this and absolutely everything. I kiss her slow and deep, the way only soulmates can kiss. The way husbands kiss their wives when they want to win an unspoken argument while being sexy. I will kiss her until one of us has a secret orgasm or until one of us decides to acknowledge the fact that a bunch of drunk teenagers are laughing and yelling, “Get a room, boomers!”
Yeah, it’s me. I’m the one who decides to acknowledge it. I pull my lips from Maddie’s so I can turn to those idiots and say, “Get a job, juvenile delinquent!”
And now I have become my father, and I don’t even mind it all that much because he’s a good man, I’m in better shape, and I’m a much better dresser than he is.
Maddie takes my hand again and pulls me inside the cabin. The sound of the juvenile delinquents’ laughter echoes across the harbor. And they can all kiss my beautiful millennial ass.
We take a seat, facing away from the hooligans out there. I am not sad, exactly, because I’m married to the best woman I know, so I have no reason to feel sad. But I am disheartened, I suppose. Wistful, for certain. I love what we have now, but we may never get what we had back.
“I don’t even know what I was thinking, babe,” I say, so softly I’m surprised she can even hear me. “That night. That whole time, it’s a great fucking memory. Really great. You remember?”
“Oh my God, Declan.” She turns my head to face hers again. “Of course I remember. I think about it all the time.”
“I love you. So much. I wish I had more time to show it.”
She gasps and plants a life-affirming kiss onto my mouth. She rests her forehead against mine and places the palm of one hand over my heart. “Declan Sullivan Cannavale. You couldn’t stop showing me how much you love me if you tried. I just wish we had more time to get busy with each other.”
“You and me both, Cooper. You and me both.”
“Here,” she says with Staten Island flair. “This’ll make you feelbetta,mistah.” She opens up the Tupperware and pulls out a plastic-wrapped spork and paper napkin that Aunt Mel probably saved from a bag of takeout in the nineties. My wife unwraps the spork, hands me the napkin, and feeds me a bite of Cool Whip–coveredwhatevah.
And as always, she’s right.
I feel better.
