Beautiful Scamp

“You order it,” I tell her, “and I’ll pick it up on the way back from collecting your mom. Her flight will be landing in two hours.”

We don’t get pizza delivery out here. The nearest place is too far away. But a quick zap in the microwave gets it hot again, unless Scamp’s too hungry to wait and just scoffs it cold.

She frowns. “Two hours? Val, I’m hungry now.”

Going across to her, I wrap my arms around her waist and pull her into me, kissing the top of her head. “I’ll make you something, baby. Tell me what you want.”

“I wanted pizza,” she pouts.

“It would take me most of an hour to get there and back anyway.”

She huffs and softly stamps her foot in frustration.

“Grilled cheese and tomato bread?” I suggest. It’s something I do for her when the pizza is going to take too long. Like a mini, quick pizza of our own that isn’t quite perfect but is better than nothing.

“I guess,” she says. Lowering her voice, she adds, “Will you feed it to me in the bath?”

“Eww gross.” Pip makes a choking noise behind us, and I laugh. Her ears are sharp these days.

“You don’t want any then?” I ask her.

“I can wait until Mom gets here, then we can have a real pizza. And in between I can poke out my eardrums so I don’t have to listen to you two.”

“Love is beautiful, Pip. There’s nothing disgusting about it.” Scamp leans up and kisses me softly. “Love you.”

“Love you too, baby. Go get in the bath, I’ll be there in a minute.”

She smiles and turns, and I give her fine ass a little slap to send her on her way. Pip might make a fuss, but it’s not the first time she’s seen the evidence of our affection and it won’t be the last. I love my wife with all my heart, and she loves me. That’s never going to change, even if we live to be a hundred and fifty.

As for her mom, that’s been a long road, but not one with an unhappy ending. My investigator found her living on the streets of Miami, though how she got there is still something of a mystery. She was in a bad way, very dependent, and there were things she’d done I’ll never tell Scamp or Pip about. They don’t need to hear that about their own mother. I wasn’t sure at first how things would turn out, not that I wouldn’t try but some people just don’t want to be helped and it seemed like that might be the case here.

But I’m pleased to say that with a lot of effort from a lot of people, not least from herself, she got cleaned up, and two months ago we flew down to the rehab center to see her. Scamp cried, Pip was a little shy, and in the end they all just love each other enough to make it work. For the time being, she’s going to move in here and we’ll see how things go. If she decides she wants her own space, we’ll talk about that further down the line.

All in all, we’re about as happy as we can be. Happier than I ever would have guessed for two people from the wrong side of the tracks.

I don’t know if I believe in God, but I believe in fate. These things were meant to be. Meant to happen. Scamp and I were in the right place at the right time to find each other again, and I have no doubt that some higher power made that happen.

All that’s left is for us to write our ending: And they lived happily ever after.