Page 33 of Puck the Halls
“Come on, Crew!”
Little girl voices ring out from the bus windows.
I look at Nathan. He looks at me. “Little girls,” he says.
“Yeah. A bus full.”
“How old are they?”
“Six, seven, and eight.”
He nods. “Okay.” He starts toward the bus.
Okay? I’m not going to poke this bear any further. I jog into the restaurant and get him a large coffee and a large hashbrowns.
When I get on the bus, I find Nathan in a middle seat, little girls all around him. Some turned in their seats to face him, some hanging over the seat from behind, and one sitting right next to him showing him something on her iPad.
I hand over the food and lean to look at the screen.
She’s showing him videos from the skating club, clearly.
He is watching intently. He doesn’t even acknowledge me, but does take a long draw on the coffee.
“So how old were you when you started skating with this club?” he asks the girl.
“Four,” she tells him. “But I was skating with my family before that.”
He nods. “My little girl is skating already. She’s almost three.”
“Can I see a picture?” the girl asks.
Oh Lord, this kid might regret that. Nathan Armstrong can talk about our children for hours.
He asks her to hold his hashbrowns, as he leans to pull his phone from his pocket. He starts swiping through photos. He shows her several of Isabel and Oliver together, then finally gets to the photos of Isabel in her skates.
One of the photos is me holding Isabel in her skates.
The little girl looks over at me where I have taken the seat across the aisle.
“She’s your little girl too?” she asks.
“Yeah, Nathan and I are both her dads.” I glance toward one of the moms. Wow, I hope this isn’t going to be a problem.
The girl nods. “My best friend has two moms,” she says. “Which is a good thing because one of her moms is really bad at French braiding.”
I chuckle. “Well, Isabel’s other dad is really good at French braiding, but I’m learning.”
She looks up at Nathan. “You’re good at French braiding?”
He shakes his head and swipes through a few more photos until he finds a photo of all six of us. “This dad is good at French braiding,” he says pointing at Michael. “Crew is really good at skating.”
“What are you really good at?” the girl asks, seemingly unfazed by the fact that Isabel hasthreedads and a mom.
“I’m really good at cuddling, and story time,” he says.
I nod. “He seriously is.”
I was as shocked as anyone when I first heard Nathan doing different voices for the characters in the stories at bedtime.
