Unsuitable

He strapped Mia in her car seat. She strained to look into the front of the car. “Where’s Snapper?” She checked beside her and on the floor.

“Who’s Snapper?”

“My fish. I need my fish.” She tried to push him out of her way and wriggle free.

He frowned, bent awkwardly half in, half out of the car. Mia wasn’t going anywhere. “Which one is Snapper?” He’d never heard of Snapper before.

“I need him now. Now. I need him.”

There were tears already. “Okay, which one is Snapper?”

“My fish. My fish.”

“Mia, tell me which one is Snapper and I’ll get him.”

“The orange one with the blue tail. I need him badly for swimming.”

Blue tail. He’d bring everything orange with a blue tail. “You sing Let it Go and I’ll get him.”

He left the door open, went around to the other side of the car and opened that door too. The tears disappeared. He turned stereo on, found the track. He had approximately three minutes to find Snapper, or one minute to find Snapper and two minutes to work out if Audrey was naked under the robe. That felt like an inappropriate allocation of limited time. Fuck it.

He barrelled into the house. He had no memory of a fish toy. Audrey came out of her bedroom and met him by the front door. “What did you forget?”

“A fish called Snapper.”

She shrugged. He grinned and reached for her. They could hear Mia singing from the car in the driveway. Not every sound coming out of her was an actual word. “Can you orgasm in two minutes?”

“What?”

He steered her back into the wall, pulling the cord on the robe, sweeping it open. God, yes, she was all bare skin beauty and lavender soap smell.

“Reece.”

He ran his nose over up the side of her neck. “I need a fish with a blue tail and I need you to come.” He straightened up, tucked his hand between her legs and she grabbed his wrist, her eyes going wide, but her head went back against the wall as his thumb went to work.

“Oh God.”

She closed her eyes and parted her legs for him. He rubbed and rolled and pinched and she went from surprised to wet and shaking in double quick time.

He put his thigh to her hip to hold her. He put his other hand to the back of her head so she didn’t brain herself on the wall.

“Give it up, baby. I still have to find the fucking fish.”

She bore down on his hand and grabbed his shoulders for support. In the driveway Mia hit the chorus again. Audrey came with a breathless shout, her head smacking into his hand. She was flushed a fantastic shade of pink. He stole her unwinding sigh with a deep kiss, and he’d have stayed there all day but for the kid in the car and

the fish and the swimming lesson. He left her propped there, pit stopped in the bathroom to wash his hands, blinking at himself in the bathroom mirror. Fuck yeah, he’d just done that and it felt amazing.

Nothing resembling a fish in Mia’s room. He found a plastic orange blob with what might be a tail, it was at least blue, in the toy box. He had hope. Audrey was where he left her. She looked dazed. He had more than hope. He had love. He kissed her with the fish blob in one hand and her butt in the other.

When he got back to the car, Mia was still singing. He looked at the stereo unit and laughed. He’d somehow punched the button to make the song repeat and it was on its second go around. She held her hand out to take the blob, said “Snapper,” as if this toy was her most favourite thing in the whole world and kept singing.

When they got to the pool, Mia wouldn’t get in and no amount of cajoling would make her. He stood in the hip high water and she stood on the deck. Whatever genes Barrett had donated to the process, Mia was all Audrey in terms of looks and stubborn determination.

“She’s usually so good.”

He turned to a woman in racer style swimmers. They knew each other by sight. Her little boy was kicking his legs as she held him on his back, her hands under his armpits.

“Can’t win them all.”