Page 16 of Painting Together a Family
“Do you like pineapple? We have a tray of pineapple, mandarins, and strawberries.”
“Stawlberries!” Micah put his hand in the air as he said it, just like he’d cheered for ‘balls’. It was adorable.
“I love pineapple. You gotta love a fruit that eats you back.”
“I’ll get it, Daddy,” Marley said, hopping up.
“Pineapple eats you?” Micah asked, eyes huge.
“In a way, but don’t worry about it. You eat it more than it eats you,” Bry assured his boy.
“Okay. I’ll have strawlberries.”
Bryan chuckled. “Sounds good.”
“I want the mandarins. They’re my favs.” Juni snapped up the last of her taco.
“I am going to have a little bit of each one. Fruit is delicious. It’s like nature’s candy.” He preferred it to candy, actually, but Bry knew that put him in the minority, especially when it came to this particular table.
Cue his older boy. “It’s not as good as candy!”
“It’s better than some candy,” Juniper argued. “Not as good as others.”
“All candy is good,” Dylan insisted. Micah nodded his agreement with his older brother.
His boys were still at the age where they didn’t distinguish. If it was sweet and sugary, well then it was yummy and they were happy to eat it. Of course, that meant that they could have the cheap candy so it didn’t cost him the earth to treat them.
“I like peppermint and dark chocolate together the best,” Marley added.
“Mint is too spicy,” Dylan noted. “But chocolate is awesome!”
“I like squishy worms.” Micah started counting off on his fingers, and when he ran out, he just started back at the first one. “And choco bars, and squishy bears, and crunchy candy, and pixie sticks, and nerds, and sweetarts.”
“Basically, he’s saying if it’s candy, he likes it,” Bry noted, rubbing the hair on Dylan’s head. “Though he doesn’t get it that often.” Because the way Dylan was talking, it sounded like he ate candy all the time.
“It’s okay, man. This is a no-judgment zone, you know?”
“That’s good to know.” Man, he’d really become defensive about the boys, hadn’t he? He thought it was a result of what had happened. He was defensive because he judged himself badly for losing all that money; he’d already let them down so badly.
Dev nodded and patted his hand. “It’s hard. I get it. We’re going to make him pay.”
He nodded and turned his hand over to hold Dev’s and squeeze it. “That sounds really good.” It was also really good to not be in this alone. He hadn’t realized how isolating being taken advantage of like that had been until he had someone else to talk to who got it. “Thank you.”
“It’s okay. No judgment.” Dev winked at him, and Marley brought a plastic tray of fruits from the fridge and some plastic chopsticks over to the table.
“Skewers!” Juniper clapped and bounced.
“What’s those?” Dylan asked.
Bryan figured he’d let Juniper answer as they seemed to be a favorite eating utensil of hers, and he was curious to see how she used them.
“We poke the fruit, and then munch.” She skewered a piece of mandarin with the tip of one of her chopsticks, then ate it off the end. “Yum!”
Micah grabbed one of the chopsticks and stabbed it into a piece of pineapple, then ate it off the end of the stick and said, “Yum!”
And that was adorable.
Dylan also took a chopstick and used it to spear a piece of fruit—choosing a strawberry as he’d said he would—then ate it.
