Page 60 of The Dating Charade

Now they were eating macaroni in Tupperware.

Jett whispered tersely, pointing to the thrown items. “Drew. Pick. Up. Your. Macaroni.”

Drew looked up at him while shoveling another handful—literally, as in hand without the spoon—of macaroni into his mouth. “Can’t. I’m a dinosaur. Dinosaurs don’t have hands.”

Jett’s uncle stifled a smile.

Jett himself stifled a look that would’ve slid that smile right off his uncle’s face. He set the fork down and stood. “Young man . . .”

Working with Drew at an agonizing pace to place thirty-three pieces of macaroni back into the Tupperware, Jett resettled in his chair just in time for coffee.

Aunt Neena, still attempting to hold TJ, settled a quaking cup and saucer before Jett.

“Honey, let me have him for a minute. I’ve hardly gotten a chance to see him.” Jett’s uncle reached up for TJ, but his wife turned away.

“You’ll get your chance, too, Ron. This is my time with my great nephew.” She put a protective hand around TJ, whose wide, blue eyes stared at Jett as she settled back into her high-backed, button-tufted chair. Unsteadily, she picked up her cup. “These children have the sweetest smiles.”

That was false. When Dakota and TJ smiled, it was sweet. When Drew smiled, you got the feeling it was because he’d discovered your weakness.

“So, Jett, tell us about this new situation of yours.”

“Sure, I, uh—” Jett pinched his forefinger and thumb together as he picked up the exceedingly small, ornately curved handle of a porcelain Turkish coffee cup with roughly a third the capacity of TJ’s bottle. “Trina showed up at my apartment last week when—” He raised his voice, interrupting himself. “Guys, get off the couch. Stop. Do not throw the pillows.”

Drew and Dakota paused, both arms loaded with one of the half dozen throw pillows arranged on the white canvas couch. When had his aunt and uncle become so civilized? In his childhood, visits to their home meant watching baseball games while eating corn dogs on a green plaid couch. Everything back then was striped wallpaper and wood paneling.

Now the place was covered in white: white walls, white couches, white dining room tables with white candlesticks lighting white china over a white rug. As a conscientious temporary parent in the dead of winter, all he wanted to do was round up all the interior designers and shoot them with paintball guns. With brown paint, for all the mud the kids inevitably carried in the house. With red, for all the juice spills and blood. And with every other color of the rainbow so no stone was left unturned.

Jett took a sip of his coffee—thereby draining it—and prepared to start again. Before he could do so, he was interrupted by the squeaking of springs. He stood quickly. “Drew, what did I just tell you? Get off of the couch. No, stop jumping—Drew—”

* * *

An aching fifty-two minutes later he clicked the last of the children into their car seats, feeling like he’d just barely survived a tornado. He turned for a hug, then handed his aunt the doorknob Drew had managed to pull off. “Thank you for letting us come.”

Aunt Neena, a stain on the shoulder of her white blouse and necklace turned backward, hugged him in return. “I loved every minute of it.” She squeezed him tighter, then gave him a peck on his cheek. “Truly. And don’t you worry about the coffee spill on the couch. I’ll have the stain out before you hit the interstate.”

His smile tightened, remembering well the second Dakota, in an unwatched moment, had picked up a cup of coffee, brought it over to the couch, and, naturally, immediately dropped it.

“Just focus on bringing those babies back down for Christmas, okay?” she continued. “I’m going to have so many presents under that tree they won’t know what to do with themselves.”

He nodded and smiled through the rest of the partings, but he felt he wasn’t actually breathing until he hit the highway. Dakota was crying over the Better Homes and Gardens magazine Aunt Neena had given her that had fallen to the floor mat, out of reach. His seat was being kicked at sporadic moments by his nephew, who was also singing the ABC song loudly. Despite it all, this was the first time all night Jett felt himself relaxing. He rolled his head to one side, neck and shoulders tense enough to beg for an Advil. Never had a visit been so stressful.

This was how it was going to be forever. He knew it.

For the next seventy years, every time he went out in public he would be hauling these three little goldilocks-headed minions around, catching glass objects and scooping them up before they plunged off stairs. Eventually he’d become so terrified of going out he’d become a hermit, and together the four of them would inhale the same stale air while he watched them destroy the furniture and crayon on the walls. Forever.

And from the way things had gone tonight, his options, really, had plummeted to none. None. The one measly hope he’d had in his aunt and uncle had been held out, tenuous as a snowflake. Yet tonight that dream had been sufficiently thrown to the ground, crushed underfoot, picked up, lighted on fire, and taken flight, and the ashes were now scattered somewhere over the Pacific. In other words, he couldn’t ask them to take on the kids.

The way they’d enjoyed being casual onlookers while he struggled to get the kids under control. The way they’d carried TJ as though he was a football. It wasn’t that they didn’t want the kids. It was just that the idea was so impossible that it hadn’t even entered their radar.

They had presented empathetic expressions and listening ears as he shared the situation. Aunt Neena squeezed his hand as she watched him struggle to explain the difficulty of the past two weeks. But there had been a line there, unseen but no less impenetrable, that said that was as far as it would go. Throw in a boatload of Christmas presents on the holidays. Invite them to birthday parties. Come visit sometime for a Little League baseball game. But as far as taking over parental responsibility, he was on his own.

He hadn’t even bothered to voice the actual possibility to them.

Drew kicked the back of Jett’s seat again. Dakota’s wailing finally reached a breaking point, and Jett blindly reached into the backseat for the magazine. He passed it to Dakota, who stopped crying instantly.

“Drew, look out the window.” Jett’s voice tipped up. “Do you see that? What is that big thing right next to us?”

The kicking stopped. “A truck.”