Hold On

“We’ll test that when we got time in my bed where we don’t have to be quiet ’cause your boy is on my couch.”


Shit.

My eyes shot to the closed door.

“I should check on him,” I muttered.

“He didn’t hear.”

I looked back to Merry. “You sure?”

“I can’t see through walls and don’t got a dog’s hearing, but I’ve been a ten-year-old boy. It’s not even six in the morning. He’s out of it. He didn’t hear a thing.”

“He’s in unfamiliar surroundings.”

“He’s with his mom and a guy he trusts. He’s fine.”

That was true.

“I should still check on him.”

One side of Merry’s lips tipped up. “Can I slide my dick outta you before you do that?”

I gave him a look.

Then I said, “Yeah.”

He gave me a very different look before he dropped his head and kissed me as he slid out of me.

When he was done, he pulled my ass off the vanity and put me on my feet. Merry went to the toilet. I went to my discarded panties and pajamas.

I tugged them on and moved out of Merry’s bathroom and bedroom, closing the door behind me.

Slowly, quietly, I walked down the hall.

I barely reached the living room when I saw my kid, arm flung over his head, blanket tangled in his legs, pajama top having ridden up his belly, totally out.

I smiled.

Then I slowly, quietly made my way back down the hall and into Merry’s room to find him naked and in his walk-in closet.

I hit the door and leaned against the jamb.

“He’s out,” I shared.

“Told you,” he muttered to a suit on a hanger he was jerking across the rung.

“Shower time,” I said.

Merry looked to me.

I pushed away from the jamb and walked to the bathroom, discarding my pajamas and panties as I did it.

I made it to the bathroom first.

But it was Merry who turned on the shower.

*

I was at the sink in Merry’s kitchen.

“Is this your culinary brilliance?”

Merry asked that question and I turned in order to answer him.

But when I turned, I didn’t even open my mouth.

I stopped dead.

Because on one side of the kitchen was Merry, leaning against the counter in suit pants, a nice shirt, bare feet crossed at the ankles, a plate held up in front of him holding the eggs, bacon, hash browns, and toast I’d made him and my kid. And on the other side, my boy was leaning against the counter in jeans, a long-sleeved tee, bare feet crossed at the ankles, hair wet, his own plate held up in front of him.

“No, her culinary brilliance is her egg crackers,” Ethan answered for me.

“Egg crackers?” Merry asked my kid.

“She’ll make it for you tomorrow,” Ethan offered my breakfast services on a mutter, shoving hash browns in his face. Still chewing, he finished, “It’s her specialty.”

I pulled myself together and announced, “It’s gross.”

My kid looked at me. “You’d think that way. You’re a chick. It’s dude food.”

Dude food.

My son was funny.

I grinned at his funny.

But I said, “Whatever.”

Ethan looked to Merry. “Since Mom’s on lates, so she can go back to bed and crash, can you take me to school?”

Oh shit.

Even if it was his choice (or more aptly, demand), we were up in Merry’s space and in his face.

We didn’t need to be crashing in on his life too.

“Yeah,” Merry answered unhesitatingly, and looked at me. “Days off tomorrow and Sunday?”

I nodded.

Merry nodded back and turned his attention to his food.

“We gonna have my birthday party here, or we gonna move it to Gram’s?” Ethan asked.

Shit. His birthday was next week. And the party invites had gone to school with Ethan three weeks ago. They stated the party was at my pad.

But we weren’t at my pad.

Fuck.

“You can have it here,” Merry said.

“We’ll talk to your gram,” I said at the same time.

Merry looked at me. “When is it?”

“Next Saturday.”

Merry looked at Ethan. “Thought your birthday was Wednesday, bud.”

Ethan beamed at Merry because he remembered his birthday.