Chapter 24
Ben and I have been almost inseparable when time allows, given his busy single-daddying schedule.
Our routine has been spending time together at night when his girls are sleeping.
It’s usually an hour or two because we both have to get up early and be adults the next morning.
There have been a few late nights that have turned into mornings, but it's been important to him that the girls don’t wake up to me being there—especially Brooklyn.
She still remembers her mom vividly, and he doesn’t want to upset her by seeing us together without first explaining things.
It’s all still very new, so we are trying to be cautious.
I’m really just along for the ride and trying to support him in what he thinks is best. I also make sure that when I go for a run, I go past his house every time, so he doesn’t forget about me.
We have hung out quite a few times with him and the kids in a neighborhood setting.
Since it’s summer, everyone is out and about in the neighborhood, and that has led to a lot of impromptu driveway gatherings.
Linden—the cockblocker—has taken a real liking to me, surprisingly.
After being assaulted with the hose the first night we met, I didn’t think she was a fan, but apparently, it wasn’t a personal attack.
Last night, Grass Daddy was mowing the lawn and glistening.
I’m trying not to make fun of him being abnormally sweaty anymore.
Speaking of mowing, he recently started mowing Widow Jenkins lawn, too.
He found out that she had been paying for a lawn service and took it as a personal attack.
It’s just a matter of time before I wake up to the sound of a mower and the smell of fresh cut grass outside my bedroom window.
While he was mowing, the girls were in the driveway playing with sidewalk chalk.
I was outside talking with WJ, when Linden hollered at me to come over.
“Ah, your future stepdaughter is beckoning,” Widow Jenkins informed me with a bony-fingered jab to my ribs.
“Get a life, Jenkins,” I tell her.
“You know that part in The Lion King, when Nala and Simba are falling in love, but don’t realize it.
Timone explains it to Pumba. I can see what's happening, and they don’t have a clue, they’ll fall in love, and here’s the bottom line, our trio’s down to two,” she sings in a meerkat voice.
“For future reference, I do not accept being kicked out of the trio.”
“It’s possible you aren’t right about this,” I replied.
“Well, there’s a first time for everything. I don’t think I’m wrong about this, though. A woman’s intuition is seldom wrong.”
“What about my woman’s intuition?” I snapped back at her.
“Yours is either broken or hasn’t grown in yet.”
With a disgusted grunt, I turn back toward Linden, who is staring at me with her hands on her hips.
“I better get over there. It looks like I’m in trouble.”
I made my way over to their driveway. They had made an obstacle course with the chalk, and it was adorable. Lots of different ways to hop, skip, and dance with all of the colors of the rainbow. It was easy to see which girl had worked on which part.
I walked up to Linden and asked her, “What’s up?”
“I need help. I’m trying to make lily pads for Leapfrog, but they all look dumb. Brook won’t help me.”
“I’m busy working on my part!” Brooklyn hollers back.
I suppressed a giggle over their bickering and said, “I can help. Let’s pull up a picture you like on my phone, and we can copy it. Does that work?”
I pulled up images of cartoon lilypads on my phone and let her peruse the selection for one she thought would be manageable to draw. She picked a very simple design.
“What if we set this down where you want to draw, and you just try to copy it? If you still can’t get it, I'll help you. I think you should try doing it yourself first.You know what you want it to look like now. Can you do that?”
She replied with a huff and an “I’ll try.”
We sat down together with the image, and she started drawing while I gave a few verbal directions. It took her only a minute or two until she had an acceptable lilypad drawn.
“Thanks, Cassie. That made it a lot easier by having something to copy. I’m going to go get my tablet so I can look up other pictures if I need help,” she said, running to the house.
I scooted over to Taylen and said, “Hey, sweetie. What are you making?”
“Squiggles.”
“And what do you do when you get the squiggle part of the path?”
“You just squiggle. Like this,” she says as she starts wiggling her butt in her hunched-over position.
“Ooh, I don’t know if I can squiggle as good as you can.”
“Yes, you can! Just try it, Cassie!”
So, in my hunched-over position, I start wiggling my butt, just like she showed me.
We were giggling and squiggling until I heard a manly throat-clearing noise.
I paused mid squiggle and looked over my shoulder to see Ben staring at us.
He basically looked like a cartoon character with hearts popping out of his eyes.
“What’s going on over here, ladies?”
Taylen started shaking her butt and said, “I’m teaching Cassie how to squiggle her butt, Daddy.”
“You are? Wow, that’s so nice of you to show her. I could have sworn she already knew how, though,” he replied back with a dirty little smile on his face.
“Nope, definitely my first time squiggling,” I said back to him.
“Hmmm, I definitely thought I had seen you do something like that before, but I could be wrong.”
I know what he is alluding to, and quite frankly, I’m shocked he would so confidently bring up naked bouncing activities in front of his baby child.
Clearly, she doesn’t know what he is innuendo-ing, but I do, and it’s going to make me start sweating, so I just rolled my eyes at him and turned back to our drawing.
“Cassie, I promised the girls when we got done mowing, I would pull out the firepit so we could make s’mores. Do you want to join us?”
Taylen pulled on my shirt and said, “Yes, Cassie! Make s’mores with us! Linden isn’t even allowed to make them herself anymore since she started the big fire.”
This comment causes Ben to chuckle and then stop in a panic. He starts frantically looking around. “Oh, God. Where is Linden? She better not be trying to start a fire. I’ll end her.”
“Pause, Ben. She went inside to grab her tablet so she could look up chalk designs. She isn’t burning anything down.”
He let out a sigh of relief. “Thank God. I thought I was pretty clear that she is responsible for preventing forest fires, but you never know with that one. Anyway, come make s’mores with us. I’ll text Jenkins and see if she wants to join us as well.”
“No need to text me. Already on my way!” she hollered from her front porch.
Ben looked at me with alarm and whispered, “She has freakishly good hearing for someone of her age. We need to remember that.”
“You can’t break wind in your own bathroom without her hearing it; I swear.”
Ben gathered up his girls, the s’mores supplies, and the old maids, and got the driveway fire party started.
It’s wild how excited children get about burnt sugar sandwiches.
Also, if I thought the idea of roasting some marshmallows around the fire with the girls sounded relaxing, I was so, so wrong.
I may have lived a charmed life thus far based on this statement, but it was one of the most stressful evenings of my life.
“Linden, I swear if you start one more marshmallow on fire, on purpose, your bedtime is going to be 3 p.m. for the rest of the year. Wake up, go to school, come home, go back to bed.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose, Dad.”
“Right. I can tell if something was on purpose or an accident based on how evil a glimmer you have in your eye. This is your last warning,” Ben warned her.
I chimed in, trying to help. “Linden, do you want me to help you so they don’t get burnt? I'm a pretty good marshmallow roaster.”
She shrugged and replied, “I like them burnt.”
“Well, it seems like you might be stressing your dad out, so why don’t I show you how to roast a perfect golden brown marshmallow. Then we can do a blind taste test to see which one you like better. Deal?”
She shrugged and mumbled, “Sure.”
We set her charcoal marshmallow to the side, and I started roasting a new one for her.
As I was doing that, Brooklyn and WJ were chatting, and Ben was helping Taylen with her s’more.
If you didn’t know better, you would look and see two parents, three kids, and grandma hanging out together.
However, that’s not what we are—an amazing dad and his amazing kids and the two weird lady neighbors who crash their family time.
Oh God, I am going to end up just like WJ.
Old and alone and crotchety and nosy. I already have half of the characteristics.
Shaking my head to clear the image of that frightening future, I turned to Linden and said, “Go find something you can use as a blind fold, then I'll help you taste test these to see which one you like better.”
Linden ran off toward the garage and came back with a bucket. I’m not sure how her ten-year-old brain logic came up with that, but I instructed her to try again. She came back with a stocking hat, which was a better solution.
“Okay. Pull the hat down over your eyes, and I’ll feed you a chunk of marshmallow. You have to eat them both and then tell me which one you like more. No cheating, because this is a very important experiment that will determine how you prepare s’mores for the rest of your life. Got it?”
She nodded very seriously and said, “Got it.”
She pulled the hat down over her eyes, and I waved my hand in front of her face to test her field of vision, which gave Taylen the giggles. First, I ripped off a chunk of the piece of coal formerly known as a marshmallow. When I fed it to her, a poof of black soot flew out of her mouth.
“Okay, that was number one. Ready for the next one?” I asked.
“I’m ready,” she replied, still working on swallowing the charred marshmallow.