“The day was March twelfth—”
“It was well into April,” Tony said.
“Can you not interrupt my story?Thank you.Anyway.March twelfth, last year.Here we are, walking along the Chicago River on this beautiful spring day, enjoying the sun—when suddenly, an evil duckling emerges from the dark water in front of us.And Sami, quick as a whip, correctly assessed the immense threat of the situation.He threw his ice cream down and ran.He fell onto the steps and crawled them up backward like a man possessed by a demon, just to get away from the cutest little duckie I’ve ever seen.”
A laugh bubbled out of Baz.He wished he had seen this cool, collected man lose his composure as though he had been faced with an alligator instead.
“Thatadultduck was ginormous!It was basically a goose.And it chased after me!”
If it had been a goose, that would have made a lot more sense.Those things were vicious.But a duck?
“What is wrong with you?”Baz asked, still fighting for his composure.
“I don’t like ducks!They make me shifty.”
“Understatement of the century,” Kaina said.
“Why?”Baz asked.
“Why does there have to be a reason?”
“Because otherwise, it’s insanity.What did ducks ever do to you?”
“Fine.Don’t laugh, but when I was a kid, I may have come a little too close to some ducklings, and their mom chased me for ages.They getsoangry.Have you ever been bitten by a duck?Fucking hurts.”
Baz didn’t know which was more endearing, a grown man panicking at the sight of a duck or the mental image of baby Sami being hunted by one.
“Let me get this straight.When you were a child, you poured boiling water down your armsandpicked a fight with a duck?I take it back, common sense clearly doesn’t know you.”
“Experiences are how we learn!”
“That implies you have any sense now, which isn’t the case.”
“On the contrary, I have developed the sense to leave the offspring of animals alone.”
“Well.”That was Naija, the heaviness of a hundred stories weighing in a single word.
“Okay, that baby bat was wounded and would have died without me, and I will not have you claim otherwise.”
Smiling, Naija reached out her hand.Sami intertwined their fingers despite the pout he still wore.
“You are so resistant to learning, it’s incredible you have gotten this far in life,” Baz said.
“Like you never did something stupid as a child.”
“Nothing that stupid.”
Some might claim that changing schools at sixteen and running away to the city with his sister and her high school sweetheart had been stupid, but aside from having very good reasons, it had worked out well for them.Better than if they had stayed.
Jack’s pitiful face forced its way to the forefront of Baz’s mind.His rough voice, hoarse after years of shouting at them…
“Come on.You got no one to impress here.”Sami nudged his shoulder.Baz pushed the image away.
“I’m serious.”
Sami regarded him for a long moment as if he was looking for a sign that Baz was lying.The frown lines carved deeper and deeper into his forehead.“Huh.That’s sad.”
“At least I don’t know what it feels like to be bitten by a duck.”
