“About?”
“Things changing.”
He frowned. “How so?”
“I… you know. With a kid and everything. We had Tyson, and he’s only just gone out on his own. This is the first time it’s been just Otter and me, and we’re—”
“Are you guys doing okay?”
“Yeah. Sure. We’re fine. Great, even. But that’s what concerns me. Having a kid is going to mess with that, you know? We won’t…. You can’t ever undo that.”
“Well you could—”
“Creed.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He sighed. “Look, you want me to be honest about it?”
“Uh, I think so?”
“It’s terrifying.”
“Great. There’s the reassurance I was hoping for.”
He bumped his shoulder against mine, holding his hand out for another plate. “It is! Bear, it’s scary as fuck. It’s also stupid and aggravating and annoying. You don’t sleep, you eat like shit, you look like shit. You don’t have any money. You don’t have any time for yourself. You get poop in your hair and snot on your shoulder. Have a healthy sex life? Yeah, you can forget about that for pretty much ever. You worry all the fucking time about the dumbest things, like if your kid will have a lazy eye or if the guy that drives the ice cream truck around the neighborhood is as creepy as he seems and wears a necklace of finger bones under his shirt.”
“You are not making me feel any better—”
He ignored me. “You’ll get pissed off at everyone who gives your kid shit. You’ll see more bodily fluids than you ever thought possible. If teeth come in crooked, you wonder if it’s your fault. When they’re screaming in the grocery store because you wouldn’t pick the right goddamn apple, you’ll wonder if adoption is still a viable alternative. When they’re telling everyone on the plane that the booger they just ate was as big as their fingernail, you’ll daydream about going out for a pack of cigarettes and not coming back.”
“Wow, you would think, given the parental history some of us have?
?”
“And there will be times you want to throttle the hell out of them, and the only thing that actually stops you is that it’s technically illegal—”
“Oh my god.”
“But Bear, I promise you, the moment they look at you and smile and call you Daddy, it’s just… it’s everything.”
I exhaled sharply.
“Look,” Creed said, setting another plate in the drying rack. “It sucks. Being a parent sucks. You’re always being looked down upon for everything your kid does. You always think you’re doing it wrong to the point to where you wonder if you’re messing them up irreparably. And people, all those other people who don’t have kids, are fucking judging you when your kid is acting like a douchebag in public, like you’re such a shitty person that you can’t control your own child. Seriously, I never thought I’d hate childless couples who fucking snark and roll their eyes at us because I used to be them. Dude, they are such assholes. Like, I’m sorry my child is being loud while you’re trying to enjoy your hipster cup of coffee while doing your fucking Sudoku, you weird fuck, but my kid is just a kid. He doesn’t know that you’re a dick, which is why he’s asking you about your stupid fucking bowler hat that you got at a swap meet because you’re goddamn ridiculous.”
“Whoa,” I breathed. “You have so many feelings about hipsters.”
“They are the absolute worst,” Creed growled. “Fucking man buns and T-shirts from the eighties worn ironically with stupid fucking names like Xander or Josiah. You are not cool, and when you buy a repurposed log for six hundred dollars that’s supposed to be a chair, you are not allowed to pass judgment on my child.”
“I am weirdly uncomfortable right now.”
“Sorry. I just… I just hate them so much. Like, what are they trying to be? Because if they’re trying to be bitches, then by god, they’re doing it right.”
“Can we get back to the part where you’re supposed to be making me feel better about everything?”
“Oh. Right! Where was I?”
“I honestly don’t even know.”
“The daddy thing. Papa Bear, all that other shit just falls away when they call you Daddy. Man, I can’t even begin to describe what that feels like.” He smiled as he looked down at his hands. “And they’re funny too, you know? I didn’t… I didn’t expect that. JJ is… I know he’s not like Ty was. He’s not… the smartest kid in the world. But he just… he gets me, you know? And I get him. Anna says he’s my kid, through and through. And he can make me mad, and yeah, there are times I’ve wondered about what my life would be like if we hadn’t fucked up and gotten Anna pregnant. But then he’ll call me Daddy, or he’ll say something funny, and I’ll just laugh, you know? I’ll laugh, and it will have made everything we’ve been through—all the poop and snot and fucking hipsters—worth it. It’s worth it, Bear. And nothing will ever happen to make me think otherwise.” He frowned then. “Unless he grows up to be the next Charles Manson or something. If that happens, we’ll probably need to revisit my assessment.”