Especially after what happened last night.
He was always at his best when something was going wrong. Like when Corinne hurt her face or when Shaw broke his arm or when Mamie had that competition and she had a cold so she got second place, and she was devastated.
That was why Mom always said he was in the only job he could ever do.
He was at his best when he had people he could take care of.
And Greta had been all awkward at first when he’d touch her or pull her close or kiss her on the forehead in front of them, but then she’d settled in.
But Dad was always settled in, like she’d been there for years, not just that day.
And the way she sometimes looked at him.
Like he was . . .
Like she couldn’t believe he was real.
“It’s cool you were cool with her, Cor,” Shaw told his sister.
“Whatever. She’s got great hair,” Corinne muttered. And great a lot of things, she didn’t say.
“Yeah, she does,” Shaw muttered back.
Mamie giggled.
Corinne rolled her eyes.
“It’s all gonna get better,” Shaw assured them. “Next weekend, Dad and me and Toast and Tommy and Larry and Donna and Herb are gonna move us into that place on Lavender Lane and then you guys will be back with me and Dad, and we’re finally gonna settle into a new normal.”
And Shaw couldn’t wait because he got the basement room and it had a bathroom down there so he didn’t have to see to stuff with girl crap all around, as well as a family room just outside the bedroom so it was like he had his own apartment.
Mamie also loved that house on Lavender Lane. It was sweet! And the family room downstairs was huge and Dad said he’d install a barre down there.
Corinne didn’t want a new normal. She wanted the old one back.
But she still liked that house and not just because it was better than that apartment (because anything was better than that apartment). But because, it sucked to admit it, it was pretty awesome.
And as mad as she was at her dad, she knew he needed a decent place to live, and this was absolutely not that and it hurt a little more every time she saw him there.
Shaw picked up the remote and turned the volume down a little on the TV.
None of them complained.
Greta had been through a lot.
She needed her sleep.
Journey of Discovery
Hixon
HIX OPENED HIS eyes to a dark room and laid still.
Then he felt his lips curving up in a smile.
Christ, he totally wrapped himself around Greta.
Then again, she hadn’t shared she wrapped herself around him too, front to front, arms around each other, legs tangled, her face tucked in his throat, his face in her hair.
He drew her in with a deep breath.
After that, he gave her a gentle squeeze and called, “Greta.”
She shifted a little, pressed close, her arm over him flexed, and she murmured, “Mm?”
“Gotta get up and get the kids going. You can sleep but it’s pandemonium and bathroom space is at a premium. For the next hour and a half, you won’t have your shot if you don’t take it now.”
“Thans, bubby, bu’ ’m goo’,” she mumbled, ran her hand up his back but it dropped, and he knew she had slipped back to sleep.
Still smiling, he kissed her hair, carefully extricated his limbs from hers and slid out from under the covers, making sure they were over her before he moved out of the room.
She was in his bed again because last night, when it became obvious to all of them the pain wasn’t being overcome by Tylenol, he’d urged her to take a pain pill and she’d passed out on the couch with her head on his thigh.
The kids hadn’t blinked when he’d carried her to his bed, and Greta hadn’t moved when he’d joined her in it hours later.
Even if that hadn’t happened, she’d be there not only because that was where he wanted her but that was where she needed to be until they could both go to her house and he could see where she was at being back in a place that was her place but it had been violated in the way it had.
She seemed okay but she was also with him and his kids after they’d gotten back together at the same time she was those right after she got attacked in her kitchen. She had a lot going on.
Today might be a different story.
Hix did his thing in the bathroom, and on the way to the kitchen, he bent over his older girl and shook her gently awake.
“Up, honey. Time to get ready for school.”
“Guh,” she replied, turning her head away from him.
“Up, Cor, hit the shower so I can get everyone moving,” he pressed, giving her shoulder a squeeze.
“All right, Daddy,” she muttered, turning her head again then pushing up on a forearm and shoving aside the bedclothes.
Corinne was always up first because she took more time getting ready.
She was also always the one who rarely fought it.
The other two, the battle would soon commence. So even when he was with Hope, seeing as she worked for her dad and made her own hours, and he did not, he let her sleep in and it was him who got the kids moving in the morning.
Therefore, even in the days before Corinne’s makeup and hair regime added forty-five minutes to her get-ready time, he always started with the easy one first.
Hix went to the kitchen to start coffee to fortify his upcoming efforts.
Then he began the process by informing both Shaw and Mamie in two different ways they had to get up soon so they could hit the Dad Snooze and mostly ignore him until he had to threaten them to get them to move their asses.
As usual, pandemonium struck when Mamie got up because she pushed it to the final moments, and then had to act like a crazy kid while getting ready to go to school. It didn’t help matters that Hix had to take orders for what his girls wanted to wear that day so he could get it from his room, and Mamie changed her mind three times.
After she made her final decision, or more accurately Hix declared it was that, with Shaw horking down Cream of Wheat at the table and Corinne eating it between doing shit to her eyelids with some applicator, her makeup bag having exploded all over the dining room table, Corinne asked her mirror, “Is Greta coming to my volleyball game on Tuesday?”
Hix stood in the kitchen with his coffee mug held up, his bowl of hot cereal on the counter beside him and looked at his girl who did not look at him. He glanced to his son who was staring at him. When Shaw got Hix’s attention, his son gave a slight shrug.
Hix looked back to Corinne. “You okay with that?”
She didn’t look from her mirror when she replied unfathomably, “It’s whatever.”
Hix and Shaw exchanged glances again before he told his girl, “I think for Greta, and your mom, honey, that maybe we’ll wait on that.”
“Yeah, like I said. Whatever,” Corinne returned, dropped her mirror in her makeup bag and started gathering her makeup and shoving it in.
When she got up to return it to the bathroom, he called her name.
She looked to him.
“I really appreciate you being cool with Greta this weekend.”