Page 111 of Just Like Summer

“How you get out?” Kairo was so inquisitive. He always asked all the right questions, so enthralled with the layers, taking things apart and putting them back together. “Kick, you punch him?”

“No, I wanted to.”

“Did you bite him?” Kairo continued. “How you get out, Mommy?”

Kamilla huffed and kept her even expression. Kairo was locked in with her emotions and changes in her expressions. So much that she made sure it wasn’t anything that could distract him from being the child. She wouldn’t do to him what her mother had inadvertently done to her.

“If I ever get out, I’ll let you know. Until then, my moon, can you do mommy a favor?”

“Mmm, depends,” he countered.

“Play in your playroom or the living room, not in the kitchen with the hot pots. If it burns you, Mommy will have to dive deep, deep, deep into the ocean, wrestle a biiigggg fish, take its skin and put it on you. I don’t like my Kai Baby with fish skin.”

“Fish skin is stinky,” Kairo commented, pinching his nose. “Ugh, nasty.”

“So are we going to run in the kitchen?” she asked, kissing the top of his head.

“Yep,” Kairo said as he wiggled off the island. “Are you making me that juicy chicken?”

“I am,” Kamilla assured with laughter at his assertion. He was going to do what he wanted when he wanted to do it. He was his daddy’s son. “With your sticky rice and veggies.”

“Oh yeaahhh,” Kairo grunted and danced away. “Go chef mommy!”

She laughed more while watching him run through the living room to his playroom and back again. She was going to let him tire himself out because if he got a nap, she got a nap. Dinner done and on the counter, she let it cool while she grabbed her pint-sized tyrant.

“Dinner is ready, let’s wash up. After a baby nap, we can go get ice cream,” Kamilla shared.

“I’m not a baby. No baby nap. Can you make the ice cream here?” he propositioned her. “I can sleep in your bed with you all night.”

Kamilla looked at her son tiredly and pretended to hate the idea. “I can dig it as long as you don’t kick me.”

“Can’t promise, I’m a wild man,” he stated, running off to the bathroom with his head of curls flopping in the wind.

“You are indeed a wild man,” Kamilla stated as a knock furiously beat against her front door.

The knock felt threatening and anyone who needed to be here had a code along with a call, telling her they were coming. Considering the amount of break-ins, she quietly closed Kairo in the bathroom while he splashed and went to retrieve her gun and her phone. Seven missed calls from Dania and another one coming through. She bypassed that for the cameras, finding her giant. Red face, nostrils flared, and his car haphazardly parked in her driveway.

“Ahh shit,” she huffed, putting the gun back in its hiding spot. It was time for her to face her fate. As she pulled the door open, Cairo forced himself in and glared down at her. “Hi, hello, how are you?”

“Don’t. Don’t play those fuckin’ games with me” he warned. “Where is my son?”

“First of all, temper that shit,” Kamilla warned in return. “Second, this is my house. Take your shoes off.”

She turned on the balls of her feet, stomach in knots as she walked back toward the bathroom where she’d left a bad ass five-year-old unattended. Opening the door to Kairo wrapped up mummy-style in toilet paper and water everywhere, she huffed.

“Who is that?” Kairo asked, frowning at his father. “And why you beating on my mommy’s door?”

Kamilla shook her head and unwrapped him. “That’s your dad. Remember I told you about him?”

Kairo nodded. “You said he was far away.”

She squatted down to eye level with him. “What else did I tell you?”

“That he was the moon and I came from the moon. He looks like me,” Kairo said, looking up at Cairo, was who fighting to hold it together.

“Mhmm. I told you. From your hair to your eyes. That frown and that smile. Do you want to say hi?” Kamilla asked, feeling like she was in another heartbreak psychosis where Kairo said yes and then she woke up.

“Yes,” Kairo answered, watching his mother gather up the toilet paper, wipe his hands and move out of the way.