There was a brief moment of quiet before Josh let out a groan. “I used Jace’s hoodie last week.”
Son of a bitch. How many times since then had we all spent time on the couch together or had I hugged one of them, pressing our heads together? Louie had slept with me and shared my pillow twice the week before. I knew for sure he had slept with Josh one night also.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted out.
“It’s okay, J. It happens.” I hoped it never happened again, but it wasn’t like he’d gone out of his way to get infected, or whatever it was considered.
“I was at sea once when a lot of people got lice,” Dallas piped up not two seconds after I finished talking. “I’ve never seen so many adults cry in my life, Josh. We’ll get it all sorted out, don’t worry.”
Why did he have to be so nice? Why?
“You were in the army?” Josh asked.
“Navy.”
The eleven-year-old scoffed. “What? Why didn’t I know that?”
I could see Dallas’s mouth form a grin even as he kept his attention forward. “I don’t know.”
“For how long?”
“Twenty-one years,” the man answered easily.
The noises that came out Josh’s mouth belonged to a kid who couldn’t begin to comprehend twenty years. Of course he couldn’t. He still had at least seven more years before life started bowling right by him. “How old are you?”
“Jesus, Josh!” I laughed.
So did Dallas. “How old do you think I am?”
“Tia Di, how old are you? Thirty-five?” he asked.
I choked. “Twenty-nine, jerk face.”
Josh must have been joking to begin with because he started cracking up in the backseat. Without turning around, I was pretty sure Louie was cracking up too.
“Traitor,” I called out to the little one. “I’m going to remember that when you want something.”
“Mr. Dallas, are you… fifty?” Louie blurted out.
Oh my God. I couldn’t help but slap my hand over my face. These kids were so embarrassing.
“Thanks for that, Lou. No, I’m not fifty.” Dallas chuckled.
“Forty-five?”
The man behind the steering wheel made a noise. “No.”
“Forty?”
“Forty-one.”
I’d known it!
“How old is Grandpa?” Louie asked.
By the time I confirmed that Grandpa Larsen was seventy-one, Dallas had turned the car into my driveway. We hadn’t even made it into the house before our neighbor said, “You three shower, and I’ll take care of the sheets.” He already had the container of bleach in his hands.
“You’re sure?” If I was him, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about being in a house full of people with lice.
Dallas blinked those beautiful hazel eyes as he waved me toward the house. “Yes. Go. I need to grab something from my house, and I’ll be right back.”
As I unlocked the door and led the boys toward their bathroom, I didn’t even think about Dallas going into my bedroom and how I’d left a bra hanging off the doorknob.
I shut the door, with the three of us crammed into their tiny bathroom, and clapped my hands. “I have to put this stuff on you and wait ten minutes before you can shower. So get naked, you dirty monkeys.”
Louie groaned, “But I took a bath yesterday.”
While the other one—God help me—yelled, “You’re a pervert!”
*
It was three in the morning by the time we were done with the showers… and the picking… and the combing.
Since the boys had been born and especially since they’d come into my life full-time without my brother, I’d been thrown up on, I’d cleaned poop and cleaned up pee off the floor and on underwear more times than I could count. I’d been mentally preparing myself for the day that Josh started balling up his sheets, socks, and underwear. I’d even started taking down notes for what I’d have to say to him the day we had to have the talk about a boy’s bodily functions. Somehow, some way, I would survive saying the word “penis” in front of him.
But combing eggs out of a child’s hair was almost my breaking point. What kept me from complaining was, when I’d brought the boys into the living room after fighting with them the entire time it had taken me to massage the treatment into their hair and help them rinse it out, how Dallas had come out of the laundry room and asked, “Ready?”
And I’d asked, “For what?”
“To comb the nits out.”
I started to open my mouth and tell him he didn’t have to do that, but he frowned and gave me an exasperated expression. “I know you can do it by yourself, but I’m here. Let’s do it.”
So we did it. I shoved Josh, who had shorter hair, to him, and I took Louie to the dining room, the only room in the house that still had seats. Dallas had stripped the cushions off the couch, and I could only assume he was washing those too. I was never going to look at fine-toothed combs the same way again. As I sat in the dining room chair, I saw Dallas reach toward his chest and bring something up to his face.
It was glasses.
He was putting glasses on. Narrow, black, thick-framed glasses. Shit.
He must have sensed me staring because he gave me a goofy face. “Reading glasses. I’m farsighted.”
Reading glasses? More like sexy glasses. God help me. I forced myself to look forward as I let out a breath through my mouth.
We were all quiet as we combed and combed and combed, and I snuck a couple more peeks at the man in the chair next to mine.
Eggs. Goddammit. I would take vomit any day.
One blown-up air mattress later, because the sheets hadn’t dried and I didn’t have extras, the boys were on the bed, and I was falling asleep standing up. My head had started itching even worse over the last couple of hours, but I was pretty sure that was only because of what I saw on the boys’ heads. With both of them tucked in, I headed back into the living room to find Dallas shaking out washed, twin-sized sheets in the kitchen.
I couldn’t help but let out a big yawn right in front of him, my eyes stinging. “Thank you so much for your help. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you tonight,” I said the second I was able to.
He looked so tired, too. There were bags under his eyes. He took his glasses off and rubbed his forearm across his eyes as he said, “Hurry up and shower so I can do your hair.”
Oh God. My face must have said what I was thinking because he gave me a yawn, just as big as the one I’d given him, and a head shake.
“Shower, Diana. You’re not gonna get any sleep with bugs crawling all over your head.”
When he put it like that, how could I not do the treatment? As I washed out the medication and soaped up, I thought, I could pay him later. I really didn’t know what I could or would have done without him. I’d probably be in tears right now.
By the time I got out, I could barely keep my eyes open. I was yawning every five seconds. Tears were coming into my eyes each time I did it.