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Honestly, having me as a father was pretty much like winning the jackpot in the chromosomal lotto.
With the television on and last year’s National Spelling Bee front and center on the screen, and Cassie and her glorious tits sitting beside me on the couch, I unwrapped and plated our burritos and passed my wife’s plate to the top of her curled-up knees before even glancing at my own.
Damn, this is going to be a good night.
Good food. Good company. Good sex.
I looked forward to it all.
Cassie sighed contently and bit into her food like an adorable savage. Satisfied that she was all set, I picked up my own burrito and leaned over my plate on the coffee table to scarf down a big bite without dropping all the fillings everywhere, and I looked to the TV over the top of it.
A little brunette by the name of Kelsey Mahir walked to the front of the stage. She couldn’t have been older than nine, and she looked fluffing focused.
“Eudaemonic,” the spelling bee pronouncer stated.
“Eu-dae-monic,” Kelsey repeated. “What is the definition?”
“Eudaemonic means producing happiness.”
Kelsey stood there, her little brown pigtails hanging toward her face as she looked down at her shoes and tried to mentally work through the word in her head.
“C’mon, Kelsey!” I cheered toward the screen. “You fluffing got this, kid!”
“Spell the shit out of it, Kels!” Cassie chimed in, her focus completely fixated on the kid on the screen and her burrito currently ignored.
I almost reminded her to eat, but then I remembered that she was pregnant and, unless I wanted her to go praying mantis on my ass and bite my fucking head off, I needed to let pregnant Cassie do whatever pregnant Cassie wanted to do.
Instead, I quietly took bites of my burrito and waited patiently for the kid to spell her word. I felt a little like time was a vortex as she stood there, contemplating her answer, but you couldn’t really rush greatness.
“You got this, Kelsey!” I shouted toward the TV.
“Shh!” Cassie shushed and slapped one hand to my arm. “She needs to focus, Thatcher.”
Instantly, sarcasm sat heavy on my tongue. For one, Kelsey couldn’t hear me. And two? This rerun was over a year old.
But again, being the dutiful, understanding, compassionate, and self-preserving-of-my-own-life husband that I was, I filled my mouth with Chipotle instead of mockery.
“Eu-dae-monic,” Kelsey repeated. Sweat dripped off my brow and into my cheesy rice with anticipation—both for Kelsey’s answer and the upcoming effects of this meal on my Tex-Mex-burned-out-rawhide-intestines—and then, finally, she began to spell. “E-U-D-E-A-M-O-N-I-C.”
Uh oh.Reflexively, my fingers clenched into the tortilla of my burrito, shooting cheese and rice and meat up and out of the top and onto the surface of my plate. It was on the tip of my tongue to make a joke about blowing my load unexpectedly, but Cass’s devastation at the little girl’s failure cast a pall over the room that I knew not to mess with.
“No, Kelsey!” Cass shouted at the television. “No! You fluffed it up! You fluffing fluffed it up! What are your parents going to do with all that tuition money now? Start an underground casino? You’re from Hillsdale, Iowa, for sneakers’ sake. There’s no way it’s going to be successful! Gah!”
“I’m sorry, Kelsey, but that is incorrect,” the spelling bee pronouncer stated, and Kelsey’s little shoulders sagged forward.
“Poor kid,” I said softly, not knowing how my sympathetic approach would be received by my pregnant and hormonal company, and I watched as Kelsey walked past her now-empty chair and off the stage. “She was so close.”
Turning back to my burrito, I waited patiently as the next kid stepped onto the stage, but when the sounds of whimpering filled my ears, I looked to my side and found Cassie’s lip quivering and tears filling her eyes.
“Cass? Honey? You okay?”
She shook her head but didn’t say anything else.
Fuck.
I dropped my burrito, wiped my fingers off on my napkin, and reached out and placed my hand gently on her shoulder. “Baby, what’s wrong? Are you not feeling well?”
When she didn’t say anything, I started to get worried. I mean, this was my wife and she was pregnant and with the way her face was scrunching up with tears, she looked like she was in pain.
