“Dyl, you sweet, innocent baby boy,” Jesse said, leaning on the table like the conversation was making them weak. “I’msogay. Super gay. Extra gay. I like boobs and vaginas.”
“Okay,” Teddy called in warning. “That’s enough of that.”
“Gross,” Finn gasped.
“And you’re not into nonbinary folks, right?” Jesse said, raising their eyebrows. “So it’s a non-issue on a variety of levels.”
“Thank God,” Teddy whispered to me with a look of horror.
“Well, I mean, you have all the right parts,” Dylan argued.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Teddy griped.
“Dyl,” Jesse said, shaking their head. “Come on, man. Be real. You like girly girls. Girls whoknowthey’re girls.”
“Fair point.”
“So tell Isla. I don’t care. Shout it from the rooftops if you want. She’s got a better chance with me than you do.” Jesse smiled widely, and Dylan chuckled.
“I didn’t even think about that,” Teddy said to me as we turned back toward the counter. “No wonder Isla’s constantly checking in. Jesse’s never been attracted to boys, so it wasn’t even on my radar.”
“I saw Jesse fart on Dylan two days ago,” I replied dryly. “Maybe Dylan should’ve shared that tidbit with his girlfriend.”
The kids started talking about something else, and I tuned them out as I heated up the tortillas for dinner. It had been three weeks since Teddy’s little interview at the club, and things had been relatively normal. We’d started eating dinner at the table, which was new for me and Dylan, but it was nice. He didn’t bring his phone with him, so I actually got to have a conversation with my son at least once a day. We had a pool party, dinner, and a couple of movie nights with Draco and Kara, Charlie and Bishop, and Rebel and Wes. Teddy took the kids on hikes, to the river, and got them library cards. Even Dylan came home with stacks of books.
If someone had asked me, I would’ve called it an ideal summer. All of us had gotten tans from working in the yard and hanging outside. There was always lemonade in the fridge. Half the time, the kids stayed up later than we did, watching movies and playing video games, and then slept until noon.
Grease let me know that Grandpa Casper had spoken to Granger and told him flat out that Teddy and her kids were family and therefore off limits. The conversation had gone about how they’d expected, but we hadn’t heard a word from the man since. We got Teddy a new phone and kept the old one so we could check it each night for messages, but so far? Nothing.
I’d been keeping my head down, getting my shit done, and coming home. Teddy had forgiven the stunt they’d pulled right after it happened, but I wasn’t there yet. Even if she hadn’t been mine, she was a woman, all alone, with two kids who were dependent on her. That should’ve been enough for them to treat her carefully, and if it wasn’t, I no longer recognized the club I’d grown up in.
“We cooked,” Teddy said after dinner, rising from the table. “You three clean up.”
“Got it,” Jesse replied.
“You really gonna let her boss me like that?” Dylan asked me, grinning.
“Kid, she buys the food. You wanna keep eatin’, I figure you should probably do what she asks.”
“All right, that’s fair,” he said, nodding as he reached out and pulled Finn’s plate away while the boy was still scraping the last bit of cobbler off it.
“Hey,” Finn whined.
“It was gone, Finn,” Dylan teased. “Accept it and move on.”
“I’m gonna steal your dessert tomorrow,” Finn replied, pointing his fork at Dylan. “You won’t even see me coming.”
“Good luck.”
“Did you see what we did today?” Teddy asked me, nodding toward the slider. “Come look.”
I followed her outside onto the clean patio and looked around the yard. We’d started the process by gathering up all the garbage, which had filled the back of Dylan’s truck when we took it to the dump. The grass was still high as fuck, and I hadn’t even started on the overgrown blackberry bushes, but I saw immediately what they’d done while I was at work. All the cedar branches that were scattered around the yard had been cut up and piled neatly next to the house.
“Dylan used the chain saw,” Teddy informed me. “He wanted to teach Jess how to use it, but I stopped them before anyone lost a hand. I told them to wait until you were here.”
“I can teach them,” I agreed. “You guys didn’t have to do that while I was workin’.”
“I was bored,” Teddy confessed, wrinkling her nose. “I’m not used to being home all the time. It’s strange not having a job.”
