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Chapter 11
Harper
“One more kiss.” Our slightly overly excited girl bounced up on her toes, giving each of us a kiss as we stood outside her house. They were both sweet pecks, but while I got an innocent smile, Gaylen got a wicked giggle. “I’ll talk to you later.”
As I nodded, giving her hand one last squeeze, Gaylen said something odd. “Are you sure, kitten?”
They were up to something.
Her nod was entirely too eager and she was nearly rubbing her hands together like a Disney villain. “Yes, Sir. I’m sure.”
Yep, that wasn’t suspicious at all.
I did my best to pretend not to notice anything odd, but I had a feeling I’d missed something important when I’d gone to find her diaper bag before we’d left to take her home. Giggles from her and a smirk from Gaylen as I’d walked back into the living room said they’d been naughty but I’d thought that’d been about kisses or something like that.
I’d underestimated their ability to get in trouble in a matter of seconds.
But I wasn’t going to ruin whatever ridiculous surprise they were cooking up, so I just kissed her cheek as she bounced between us one more time and wished her good night. It wasn’t a quick process, but eventually she was inside, still grinning ear to ear, and we were on our way home.
Pushing their shenanigans to the back of my mind, I closed my eyes as I settled back in the passenger seat. “I know that went great and I have no worries, but it feels like I taught a dozen classes today.”
Gaylen chuckled softly, reaching out to take my hand as we got on the road. “Because we were both worried it would go badly again. Those kinds of emotional ups and downs are hard.”
Stroking my fingers, I could hear a smile in his voice. “Just take a deep breath and tell me what your favorite part of the day was.”
He was so ridiculous.
“Coming back into the living room to find her on your lap, or maybe when she climbed on your lap to cuddle when she was little.” There’d been a lot of good moments today that would stay with me and it would be almost impossible to pick just one favorite. “This went so much better than I’d feared. Do you think it was Ender setting a different tone or did we do something?”
Instead of answering my question, Gaylen chuckled. “No, you cannot adopt him like some kind of puppy.”
“But he makes her happy and he speaks fluent Tabitha. It’s helpful.” There was no reason to make mistakes over and over when someone had the directions. That just seemed logical. “I don’t mind that he doesn’t want to have sex with us.”
That got more snickers from the silly Dom but I was being serious.
We had enough room.
“No, you cannot keep him. He is her friend and they have a unique relationship but nothing in what he’s said or his behavior said he wants it to be more than that.” Gaylen’s tone was theput his foot downtype, so I shrugged.
“Fine.” He was probably right. If I couldn’t have a goat, he wasn’t going to let me have a person. “But we need to make sure he doesn’t feel left out or pushed away.”
Or like we were replacing him.
“Agreed.” Gaylen continued to pet my hand and the slow, soft motions were more soothing than he probably realized. “We’ll do our best and we’ll communicate our intentions to him as well. He seems too logical to think it would be weird.”
“And besides, he seems to be using Tabitha as his control group, so I don’t think anything we do will stand out. We’re not going to drive him nearly as insane once we stop making stupid decisions like letting her walk off after she said she was fine.” That was an error we would only make once.
“Yeah, he thought we were stupid.” Gaylen sighed, not appreciating that in the slightest. “But you’re right. He’s used to Tabitha, and I think her coworkers are just as smart and interesting as she is, so that’s skewing everything.”
Yes, I hadn’t met many research mathematicians but they seemed to be just as curious as everyone else who went into the sciences and research in general. It was clear the people in that field were interesting when my colleagues were considered boring in comparison, but from our few work-related conversations, it was clear she loved her job and I was going to have fun talking with her about it.
“Was that what he meant when he was talking about being the keeper of the nerds?” Thinking about that had me opening my eyes and looking over at Gaylen, who was almost giggling he was grinning so widely.
“Yeah, I asked him about working at the same company as Tabitha and was just trying to get a better feel for things.” Gaylen chuckled. “His job sounds interesting.”
Managing Tabitha and her coworkers sounded like he was wrangling monkeys. There were a handful of brilliant, genius-level people at the college where I taught and they were fascinating, so I could only guess at the chaos where they worked.
"I think it would be wonderful.” Gaylen’s groan said he didn’t agree with me, but while I liked the insanity that sometimes came with teaching and research, Gaylen liked order and control.
