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Kira’s smile is a little shy, as she nods. “Yeah. I like him too.”
He looks at our hands again. “Is that why we’re celebrating?”
“Do you think it’d be a good reason to celebrate?” I bring Kira’s knuckles to my lips and give them a kiss.
“What happened to the girl you loved when you were young and stupid?” he asks. His expression doesn’t give us much to go on, with regards to how he’s feeling about our being an item.
“Thatgirl? You’re looking at her.” I move Kira in front of me. “You want to hear the story over ice cream, or should we get Brussel sprouts, instead? Those are your favorite, right?” I tease, watching his face sour in disgust as I chuckle. “Come on. Everyone in the truck.”
I open the front door for Kira, and the back door for Curty.
“This isn’t your truck,” he says as I walk around to the driver’s side.
“I know. It’s your mom’s.”
“You got a new car, too?” he asks, throwing his schoolbag in the back and climbing in behind Kira. “What else did you guys do without me, today?”
Kira and I look at each other and try not to laugh. “Boring grown-up stuff,” we say at the same time.
I lean over, to kiss her pretty smile, and Curty makes retching noises in the back. “If it was a bunch of kissing, I’m glad I missed it.”
We go to the store near Kira’s and basically buy out their whole ice-cream section. On the drive home, I peek at my boy in the rearview mirror every few seconds. He’s looking back at me almost every time I get a chance to check on him, but he’s been pretty quiet.
“Are you going to get married?” he asks when we pull into the driveway.
“We’d like to,” I say before Kira can soften it with something that sounds less concrete. There’s no point in beating about the bush. I’m definitely fucking marrying her. “Yes.”
Curty nods, apparently adding this information to the thoughts he’s clearly having about all of this.
“Will you live with us?” he asks when we’re putting a scoop of each flavor into three bowls, making multi-colored mountains of ice cream.
I glance at Kira, as I’m sticking a cone onto each of Curty’s scoops, until it resembles a spiky, ice-cream hedgehog.
“Yes.” She follows my lead, not sugar-coating anything except, for our celebratory desserts when she shakes a generous amount of sprinkles and choc chips over everything. “Quin’s going to sleep in my room. With me. In my bed.”
Curty pushes a cone into his boysenberry-ripple scoop, to pull it out of the bowl. He watches me, covering his teeth with his lips when he takes each bite, just like Kira does.
“Will you change her fairy room?” he asks after a while.
I shake my head. “Nope. I’ve only ever wanted to be part of your mom’s special world.” I shrug. “I mean, I may get a matching toadstool pillow, for my side of the bed, but I don’t think that’ll change the aesthetic.”
“Mmm,” Curty says with a nod. “You can hang out in my room if you need a break from the girly stuff.”
My smile comes so easily. “Thanks, bud. That’s real sweet of you.”
He grunts, gets his next cone of ice cream ready so he has one in each hand, and then nods at us. “Okay. Go. Tell me all the things. I’m ready.”
He listens to the wholeverysimplified and child-friendly version of our story about childhood sweethearts, driven apart on our parents’ orders, and then finally reconnecting and learning the truth about who Curty’s father really is, and that we both couldn’t be happier about it. Our son doesn’t interrupt, and his questions afterward are pretty tame. It sort of feels like we got off easy. He may have more questions when he’s older, but I won’t ever be going into the finer details of what we’ve escaped. He doesn’t ever need to see that darkness.
“I’m glad you’re my dad, instead of Jack,” he says, starting on his fourth cone.
My heart could fucking melt I love him so much.
“So am I, Bud,” I say, holding my ice cream toward him for a toast. “To us.”
Curty bumps his ice cream against mine, and then tastes the spot where our flavors mixed. Apparently not too bad, if his connoisseur’s expression of approval is anything to go by. I try the splotch of lime he left on my chocolate and can’t say I disagree.
Kira giggles. “You two made the exact same face.”
