Hot Stuff

“Dad, you’re being weird,” Sarah interjects.

“No, I’m not.”

“You are. Even I know you are,” Hayden says, picking up his spoon and blowing on its surface to make it fog up.

Sarah snorts. “If Mr. Poop Jokes thinks you’re being weird, you’re being weird.”

Hayden shrugs.

“Can everyone stop worrying about me and focus on ordering food, maybe?”

Jake laughs. “We all already ordered.”

“You didn’t wait for me?”

“Nope,” Jake confirms without shame.

“Wow.” I turn to my kids and pretend to pout. “I don’t even get any loyalty from my own flesh and blood?”

Sarah lifts her shoulders and lets them fall with a plop. “They have toast and Nutella. All loyalty stops at Nutella.”

I chuckle. “Hay? You ordered without me, too?”

“Yep. I got waffles.”

“Man. You guys are surprisingly merciless when it comes to complex carbohydrates.”

“Only a man would think that,” Holley says with a snort. “Women know that a man who stood in the way of carbs was actually the cause of the First World War. Waffles and toast? Always cutthroat.”

Jake and I both turn to look at her with skeptical smiles, and she shrugs.

“It’s true. You won’t find it anywhere other than the dark web, but it’s true. Media cover-up.”

“Okay, the dark web? Do I even know you at all?” Jake asks, the corners of his mouth curved nearly all the way to his ears.

His wife is one of the funniest people I’ve ever met, and half of her charm is in her delivery. She’s real and relaxed, and it always makes me feel good to be around her.

I’m so thrilled that when Jake finally decided to end his decades-long run as a singleton, he chose to do it with her.

That said, I’m not entirely sure she’s joking now, but I’m going to pretend for the sake of my sanity that she is.

Jake bends down and kisses the corner of Holley’s mouth lovingly. She smiles before looking down at the angel they created together, cooing happily from her car seat beside them.

Hadley Brent. She’s eight months old, and just like her father, she’s a freak. She likes the cuddly tightness of her car seat way more than high chairs, and she often stays so quiet at the table you don’t even know she’s there. As a result, her smart parents decided to roll with it.

I’ve always been of the mind-set that you shouldn’t make parenting any harder than it already is.

And she probably won’t fit in the infant carrier all that much longer—although, she is a peanut—so they have to savor it while they can.

Sarah still makes an occasional expression for Hadley, just to amuse her, and she tinkles softly into the mix of restaurant noises around us.

I smile at her sweet baby face and sigh. How bittersweet it is to have my kids at an age where they’re capable of handling their own basic human functions.

It’s the whole point of rearing kids—to raise them so they can survive in the world on their own—but there’s nothing quite like the feeling of being needed by a little human of your own creation.

And the truth is, I missed far too much of Hayden and Sarah’s childhood because of work, so I never felt the frustrations that come with it for most parents. I was always grateful—for every sleepless night, every football game, every shrieking toddler struggling to go to sleep at night. I loved every second.

“Listen, Holl,” I say, a teasing lilt to my voice. “Could you keep an eye out for me on the dark web for a couple things?”

Holley shakes her head and widens her eyes in a way that suggests the only two reasons she’s not giving me the finger right now are sitting right beside me and share my DNA. “Uh…no thank you.”

Sarah doodles on the backside of the paper place mat with a pen from her little leather backpack she carries everywhere and speaks, taking us all by surprise. We shouldn’t be shocked—kids are always listening—but we are. “I heard the dark web is the best place to find a hit man without leaving a paper trail.”

Jake, Holley, and I—well, it seems like we all gulp in unison. Holley’s hand reaches out to Hadley’s car seat on instinct.

My asshole puckers.

Jesus Christ, this is my twelve-year-old daughter. Why on earth does she know about hit men at all?

“Uh,” I start, trying to gather the strength to send words through my throat. Jake stretches the cords of his neck in concern. As if my daughter is a powder keg just waiting to go off like dynamite and he doesn’t want me to do something to set her off. “Where’d you hear this, Sar?”

She shrugs, unbothered. “Google.”

“And, uh, what were you googling?”

She rolls her eyes and sighs, completely put out with me. She’s way too cool for parental questioning of any kind—even when she’s talking about highly illegal activity. “The dark web. Not hit men. God, Dad.”