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RIVER
“Dad, Dad, over here! Over here!”Nolan was jumping in the air, hands thrown high, his flop of dark brown curls bouncing around his adorable head. Skin pale with a dusting of freckles all over his chubby cheeks.
We were in the fenced-in backyard that was a huge expanse of green grass. Towering trees sprouted up throughout, their branches stretching wide to offer shade.
I’d put in a ton of shit for Nolan to play on, a fort, a jungle gym, and slides, but I’d left a wide section in the middle to ensure he had plenty of space to run.
I cocked back the small football, playing like I didn’t know whether to throw the pass to him or to Otto.
Otto was currently acting the fool, dancing around Nolan in a bogus bid to block him, jumping right in front of the kid and waving his meaty arms in the sky. “Pass it to me. Pass it to me.”
Nolan giggled like mad, and he gave Otto a big shove to get the brute out of his way. “No way, Uncle Otto! It’s my turn, and I’m way more faster than you! Tell him how really fast I am, Dad!”
“Hold up. Did you just have the audacityto callmeslow?” Otto rasped out the faked offense, pressing a tatted hand to his massive chest. “I’ll show you just how fast I am. You’d better watch out.”
A riot of giggles poured out of Nolan as he took off running, knowing Otto was about to give chase, and immediately my little dude was coming my way, tiny feet clad in his favorite blue cowboy boots eating up the lawn.
Mismatched tee and shorts since he’d been insisting on picking his own clothes for the last year.
Face pure, uncompromised bliss, a beaming fuckin’ light that struck me right smack in the chest.
“Dad, save me! Uncle Otto is a monster and is going to eat me!”
Still nearly dropped me to my knees every time he called me that. Every time I looked at him, I wondered how I’d managed to steal this little bit of joy.
A thief who’d been given a gift.
The second Nolan got within reach, I scooped him up and swung him onto my side as I tossed the ball to him with my other hand. He caught it like he was making the pass of the century, hugging it to his chest and kicking his feet.
“Run, Daddy-O, run!” he shouted. “Leave him in the dust!”
Otto was still coming for us, lumbering along, so I turned on my heel and went sailing for the line of metal toy tractors Nolan had set up to indicate the end zone.
The second we crossed it, Nolan tossed his hands high again, this time with the ball over his head. “Touchdown!”
“Oh, man,” Otto whined from five feet behind because I had, in fact, left his ass in the dust.
Nolan shook his head with a shrug of his shoulder, voice completely serious. “Guess you shoulda been faster, Uncle. Now you lose.”
In defeat, Otto dropped to his knees, moaning toward the endless expanse of blue sky, and a chuckle was rolling out of me as I shook my head at the theatrics always spilling from my closest friend.
“Yeah, sucker, guess you shoulda been faster,” I mimicked, laying it on thick.
“You wound me, River. Wound the hell outta me.” He acted like he was being stabbed in the chest.
Nolan was completely aghast. “We would never hurt you, Uncle, because we really love you. Right, Dad?”
The kid looked at me for affirmation. Making sure he got in my line of sight so he could read my eyes.
My chuckle turned soft, and I ruffled my fingers through his hair as I set him onto his feet. “That’s right.”
“We help rather than hurt,” Nolan stated, and he reached out a hand to Otto. “So, that means I gotta help you right up, Uncle.”
Otto played it up as he let Nolan struggle and grunt and dig in his heels to help him onto his feet, and when Nolan gave him a giant tug, he popped all the way up. He dragged the back of his hand over his forehead like it was the hardest thing the two of them had ever done.
“Whew. You are a strong one, aren’t you, young lad?”
“As strong as my dad,” Nolan said with an emphatic nod. “Check ’em out.”
