“Why?”
Mina’s three. Why is her favorite word in her vocabulary.
Genevieve frowns. “That’s a good question. I guess I like the way it feels to have smooth skin.” She absentmindedly runs her hand up and down her shin.
Mina notices. “Can I feel?” She doesn’t wait for permission before reaching out her tiny hand to smooth it over Genny’s skin. “Ooh. Soft.”
It’s only been an hour since our side-of-the-road sexcapade, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to touch her. “Can I feel, too? Please?”
I’m met with a stern look, but how can she resist me?
“Go ahead,” she says with chagrin.
I stroke up her calf, delighting at the path of goose bumps that arise at my touch. “You were right, Mina. Super soft.”
She twirls a lock of dark hair around her finger and thinks for a minute. “Does it hurt to take your hair off?”
Genevieve shakes her head. “Not usually.”
I study my niece as she tilts her head, her small features furrowed. “You’ve given her a lot to think about,” I tell my date.
“I hope it’s not anything that gets me in trouble with her parents.”
Like me, I’m sure Genny’s imagining Mina sneaking into her mother’s bathroom and taking a razor to her own legs because a second later she says, “Taking your hair off your legs is only for grown-ups, though.”
I lean toward Genny and whisper, “I’m pretty sure Laynie’s had hers lasered off. No razor for the kids to get into.”
“How did you know what I was thinking?”
I shrug, watching as Mina returns to her coloring. “I guessed based on my own experience. I borrowed my father’s razor one morning when I was about six or seven. Wanted to be all manly like my dad.”
“What on earth did you shave? Do I want to know?”
“One side of my head.”
Genny lets out a boisterous laugh. “Oh, god. I bet you were adorable. And I bet you were also in a decent amount of trouble.”
“My father didn’t think it was a big deal, but my mother was furious. She didn’t let me go to school until she could get me into a salon to get it all buzzed off.”
“Then you got a holiday.”
“I think she meant to take me in later, but she got a little hammered at lunch and we ended up going to the movies instead while she sobered up.” I stretch my leg out under the table—a relief after having both my knees up to my chest—and turn my purple crayon in for a blue one.
Genevieve grabs the yellow and leans over to help me color. “Your mother likes to—” She mimes throwing back a drink.
I respect both how she’s brave enough to inquire and how she isn’t making a big deal about it. “She used to. Been clean for over five years now.” We’d actually had an intervention for her, but it was my sister, Mirabelle, who’d been the driving force behind my mother’s decision to go to rehab. Mirabelle had been pregnant with the first grandchild, and she’d declared that my mother wouldn’t be allowed around her baby if she didn’t sober up.
“Oh. That’s fabulous.”
“Well, except we’d all always assumed that my mother was mean because she was an alcoholic. Turns out she’s just kind of mean normally.”
“Who’s mean, Uncle Chandler?”
Whoops. I somehow forgot there were small ears listening. Now I’m the one who’s going to get in trouble with her parents, but it doesn’t stop me from saying, “I was just saying some not very nice things about Grandma Sophia.”
Mina’s eyes widen in understanding. “Oh. Grandma Sophia is mean.”
“See? Even Mina thinks so.”
“You’re terrible.” Genny swats my thigh playfully, and I have to concentrate to keep my dick in line.
Arin, Mirabelle’s daughter, picks up on our conversation and adds it to her song. “She’s so mean,” she sings. “So mean. So mean, mean, mean.”
I chuckle to myself. Arin lives her life in a musical. It’s freaking awesome.
Kira, another one of the kids, sets a child’s teacup and saucer down in front of me. “Here’s your tea, my good man,” she says in a dialect that I suspect is supposed to be British. She sets another in front of Genny. “Here’s your tea, my lady.”
Genny grins in delight. “You’re ever so thoughtful. Do we have biscuits to go with it?”
“It’s pretend.” The seven-year-old’s tone says she doesn’t think Genevieve is very smart. “There’s not really tea in there. It’s just imaginary.”
Genny takes a pretend sip. “And it’s very delicious. I’m imagining there are biscuits to dunk in mine.” She mimes dipping something in her cup before bringing it to her mouth.
“Genevieve is from England, Kira,” I explain. “That’s a real compliment she just gave you. She has real tea and biscuits all the time, so she’d know delicious or not.”
Kira beams. “Is that why you talk so funny?”
“It is. I live way across the ocean in an area of London called Brixton.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” Kira says, half curious, half skeptical that the place exists. “Do you miss it?”
“I do sometimes. But I’ll probably go back there pretty soon.”
“You will?” I try to sound nonchalant. It’s just a question. I don’t really care about the answer.
Though my pulse seems to slow when she says, “If the merger doesn’t go through with Pierce Industries, yes. I will. I’d love to stay here, but I kind of need a job.”