“I think I just got slapped,” he says.
“If I wanted to slap you, I’d slap you, Jake. I just wanted to slow you down.” I kiss his upper arm again. “I’m not ready for all that, and neither are you.” I stare at the wall in front of me.
But then, an unfamiliar noise reaches my ears. There’s stomping. Hard shoe strikes against the hardwood floor. The door suddenly flies open.
“Whoops,” a man’s voice says from the doorway.
I lay a hand on my chest. It’s Adam. “Oh, my God, you scared me.”
“Who’s in bed with you?” Adam asks.
I sit up and smooth my hair back. “It’s just Jake,” I say. Jake sits up behind me and drops his feet over the side of the bed.
Adam hitches his shoulder in the doorway and crosses his arms. He grins. “Morning, Jake.”
“Adam,” Jake grunts. He bends over and pulls his shoes on. He slept in his clothes, and so did I. “So good to see you at…” Jake tips his wrist to look at his watch. “…zero-dark-thirty.”
“I wasn’t aware that my daughter would have company so early in the morning. My apologies.”
“Jake’s not company. He’s just…” I look at him and shrug. “He’s just Jake.”
A minute ago, he was a warm body wrapped around me. Now he’s an offended man who’s sitting on the edge of my bed.
“Just Jake?” Jake asks quietly. He arches a brow at me.
“Hey, Katie,” Adam sings out, breaking the tension between me and the man who was in my bed mere seconds ago.
“Hey, Adam,” I sing back. Adam and I have always done this, right before he teases me.
“So, just to be clear, why is there a boy in your bed?”
I laugh. “There isn’t a boy in my bed.”
Adam steps to the side and then my dad fills the doorway. Great. Now there are two of them. “Sure looks like there’s a boy in your bed,” Dad says.
“Hi, Dad,” I chirp.
He doesn’t walk into the room. “After you get the boy out of your bed, you two come to the kitchen so we can have a talk.”
“Dad… Seriously?”
“Seriously,” he says. “Your kids are up.”
“Thanks,” I mutter. I swipe a hand down my face. “I’ll be right there.”
They close the door. “Sorry about that,” I say to Jake. “I didn’t know they were coming.”
“It’s fine. It’s not like we did anything wrong. Except sleep in the same bed. Cuddle. Et cetera.”
I look at him from over my shoulder as I pull my hair into a ponytail. “I don’t remember any et cetera. Surely if there was any et cetera, I’d remember it, right?”
“Oh, you’d remember it.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“I’ll hold myself to that,” he mutters.
I use the bathroom and brush my teeth, and then I find my kids all sitting around the table while Adam whips up special pancakes for each of them. For Trixie, it’s peanut butter and banana. Alex likes chocolate chip. And Gabby has always preferred blueberry.
I kiss both my dads on the cheek and sit down next to the kids. The bedroom door opens and Jake quietly goes to the bathroom.
I get up and open the refrigerator to get a glass of milk for Trixie. “So, why was Jake in your bed?” Adam asks right next to my ear.
After I nearly jump sky high, I stop, take a breath, and roll my eyes. “He was babysitting last night for a little while.” I rub my forehead, where a headache is already building. “When I got home it was late, and he was asleep on top of my covers.”
My dad joins the conversation behind the refrigerator door. “So you just crawled in bed with him.” Both of them are being really quiet so the kids won’t hear them.
“Well, sort of. It’s hard to explain.”
Dad kisses my forehead. “I’m glad Jake was here. I don’t like for you to be alone.”
“I haven’t been alone in sixteen years, Dad.” I grab the milk, close the refrigerator door, and drop into a chair.
“What does Jake think about all this?” Dad asks. He motions around the room and to my belly, like his action will encompass the entire crap that my life has turned into.
Jake walks into the room and sits down next to me at the small table. “Jake doesn’t know anything about all this.” He gestures around the room just like Dad did, and then to my belly. “But he sure as hell hopes someone will explain it to him really soon.”
Adam’s mouth falls open. “You didn’t tell him? Seriously, Katie?”
Jake steals a bite of Gabby’s pancake and she playfully tries to stab him with a fork. He laughs and Adam sets a stack of pancakes in the center of the table. Jake gets one for himself. He slathers it with butter and syrup, and then puts another on top.
“I love a man who likes to eat,” Adam says as he lays a hand upon his chest and sighs dramatically.
Dad grumbles and grabs a fork, taking a few pancakes for himself.
“I didn’t think you guys were coming yet,” I say. I get up and fill a dog bowl for Sally, who has been drooling next to Trixie’s plate since the pancakes started moving around. He turns his nose up at it and continues to watch Trixie’s fork go back and forth.