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“Crusty turd,” Kyleen whispered as her head came to rest on my shoulder. “So no pony.” She sighed to herself, her eyelids growing heavier by the second. “Maybe a puppy…”
She drifted off. I rolled my eyes. Zada gave me a sideways smile. “A dog would be nice,” Zada commented, needles flying, the TV playing an old Disney movie that Kyleen had chosen, then forgot about when the Santa letter pressure had gotten to her.
“We have a cat,” I reminded her, jerking my chin at the feline a few feet away. “Goldberry would terrorize any dog that dared set paw in this house.”
“She is a bossy thing,” Zada agreed. I rose and shifted Kyleen up to my hip. “You going to put her down?”
I nodded. Playing at night so often, I missed out on putting her to bed so any chance I got to tuck her in I took it. Also, my aunt appeared to be comfy. It was much easier for me to scale the steps than it was for Zada. I climbed upward, moved into the smallest bedroom on the second floor, and gently laid Kyleen on her bed. She rolled into a little ball, her eyes never opening. I lingered in her room for a bit, putting away books and toys, and picking up socks and tops before venturing back downstairs to resume reading. Zada had flipped the channel to an old British mystery about an old British gal who always seemed to stumble over dead bodies just lying around.
“You look lost,” Zada commented as her show went to a commercial.
“Not lost just…” I couldn’t find the proper word. “Stuck? I feel like I’m spinning my wheels when it comes to my personal life.”
“This about the big Baskoro secret?”
“Yeah.” I stared at the screen as a bucolic British countryside was shown. Shit would be going down soon so those unsuspecting Brits had best be enjoying their tea while they could. A cold body was hidden somewhere amid the thatch-roofed cottages. “I know you’re tired of hearing me whine about it, and I know I shouldn’t, but it’s so frustrating to be locked in this holding pattern. I’m starting to wonder if he’s—”
“The first bit of advice I have for you is not to sit there wondering. Ask the man.” She shot a familiar look at me. It was the same expression that Kyleen got when she was being stubborn just to be stubborn. “Sitting around stewing on something that would be easily cleared up with a simple question seems silly to me.” I slid down on the sofa further so that my chin rested on my chest. “Your daughter gets that same look when I tell her something she doesn’t want to hear.”
“I’m not making a look of any kind.”
“Mm-hmm. If that lower lip were to stick out any further, a bird could land on it.” She sniffed as she knitted.
I pulled in my pouty lip and sat up straighter. Nothing like being compared to a kindergartener.
“Fine, I’ll call him and we can talk.” I rose, grabbed the now chilly cup of decaf peppermint tea I’d been sipping, and made my way up the stairs just as the wail of a European police car siren could be heard flowing out of the TV. Called it.
I took a few minutes after entering my room to sort and put away the clean laundry I’d done earlier. Man it was nice to have these nights off to be the domestic daddy that my child needed. If only there were more of them. After I took care of my clothes, I sat on the edge of my bed, stared down at my phone, and did my best to get my thoughts lined up. I had so many things that I wanted to say to Baskoro that they were jamming up like logs in a narrow flume.
I ran my thumb over the fingerprint reader and was bombarded by game scores. Shit, yes, the Gladiators were playing tonight. I scrolled through the app to find the Gladiators and smiled to see that they were handing the Providence Blues their asses. Basky was in net and had not allowed one puck to pass. Just like Gandolf. Excellent. Knowing that the man would be busy for another sixty minutes at least, I got comfy in bed, back resting on pillows, legs stretched out in front of me, ankles crossed, and I watched the Gladiators wreck the Blues. No lie, Watkins Glen was the team to beat this year. Granted, they had dropped a few games here and there—a couple against the Comets, I was proud to note—but they were a force. Liam and Baskoro had some insane stats that made my really good season look meh in comparison. If they kept rolling along as they were, they would be nearly impossible to knock out of first place. They now sat atop of the Atlantic Division with ten more points than us, which tweaked my competitive nature.
Over the course of the remaining periods, I dozed a little, waking up to find that the game had ended, and the Gladiators had won, and Baskoro had texted me. Rubbing at my sleepy eyes, I hit him back asking for a FaceTime to talk.
The call came through after about five minutes or so. He’d had to slip into the bathroom he shared with Liam for some privacy as his roomie was conversing with his boyfriend, who was doing some work on his home in Georgia. Was it Georgia? Well, somewhere down south.
I answered as soon as the call came in and smiled at my boyfriend resting on the floor, the shower stall behind him, his hair loose, phone propped up on the closed toilet, I assumed. Damn, but I did love that hair of his…
“Hey, what’s up?” Baskoro asked and took a sip of steaming coffee. How the man slept at night, I had no damn clue. “Are Kyleen and Zada okay?”
“They’re fine. I just wanted to hear your voice.”
He gave me the dopiest smile. “Aww, you are too goofy.”
“I know, ah-yup.” I chortled in my best cartoon dog imitation. Goofy was a dog, right? Didn’t matter really. There were bigger things to contemplate. “So, since I’m being goofy, I thought I’d float something by you.”
“Go for it. Did you see that we won?”
“I saw. The Blues had no response for your defense,” I said while wiggling my toes under the blanket. They’d gotten chilled while I’d dozed. “Also, your goalie did a decent job.”
“Asshole.” He laughed, his eyes glowing with emotion. Such a pretty man. And all mine. Which led me back to what I wanted to talk about. “Next week Ooni is having a little holiday dinner, all Finnish foods, which I’m not wholly sure about but hey, I once ate haggis.”
“Dude, haggis is good!”
I shuddered and got a snicker. “Yeah, not, anyway…I was wondering if you’d like to be my date for the dinner.”
All the humor fell from his face. “What?”
“Don’t get freaked out,” I said, regretting it as his expression hardened.
