Page 2 of Divorced from Number Thirty-Eight
I turn to Smitty, who has the most experience with kids. He and his wife, Kailey, don’t have any of their own, but when he was playing with the Breakers, his teammates popped them out on the regular. “Where do we start?”
A particularly loud scream—do babies seriously have the ability to screech like pterodactyls?—has us all jumping.
But we’re hockey players.
We block hundred-mile-per-hour shots. We enact or take center ice hits. We slash and crosscheck and battle along the boards or in front of the net. And we do all that on three-millimeter-wide blades that are sharp enough to wound.
So we get it together.
And when Smitty leads us to the clothes section, we dutifully follow him.
I hold up the tiny outfit.
Are kids seriously this small when they’re born?
Apparently so.
And since it looks like something that could work—meaning it’s sized for babies and I found it in the baby section—I toss it in the cart.
“Dude,” Smitty says—or really booms because the man doesn’t have the ability to modulate his volume.
He comes in loud.
And louder.
“What?” I mutter, grabbing another item that also looks like it could work and chucking it in the cart.
“You can’t just buy newborn-sized stuff.”
I blink.
Then blink again.
“Is the kid not going to be newly-born?” I ask.
But he’s not answering. He’s digging through my cart, sighing. “Seriously, man, more than half of this shit won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” He grabs a hanger and holds it up, shaking it so the bag-like thing for sleeping is at risk of sliding off the plastic and falling to the floor.
I snag it from him, toss it back into the cart.
“Why not?” he asks again then holds up another. “Quantity isn’t quality my man.”
“Don’t kids throw up?” Leo asks. “Like a lot?”
“They do,” Ryan says with some authority (and considering he’s in love with a single mom who won’t give him the time of day but whose kid loves hanging out with him, he would know).
Smitty gives another aggrieved sigh. “Yeah, they throw up. But they also grow fast, dude. We need variety.”
“What’s a onesie?” Leo asks.
“What’s a—?” Smitty is at a loss for words. Which is a miracle. One that lasts for a few seconds, anyway.
Then he grabs a series of hangers.
And suddenly we’re having a chalk talk on onesies versus sleep sacks versus rompers versus footed pajamas.
