26. You’re Practically Jon Snow
YOU’RE PRACTICALLY JON SNOW
brAXTON
It doesn’t take forty-eight hours or seventy-two, which I know is a worst-case scenario. It takes less than twenty-four until Harriet Browning calls to say, in essence, “It’s a boy.” She tells me all the things, more things than I can remember and more than I can write down.
I finally call my best friend since college, who’s handled legal matters and contracts for me for years, and ask him to make a house call.
His poker face is better than mine, but the man sees and deals with all kinds of shit for a living—stuff he can’t reveal emotion around, stuff that requires him to keep a straight face.
Since he’s my lawyer, he shoots me straight.
Since he’s my friend, he also asks me the hard question. “Do you want custody?”
“Fuck, Finchley, I don’t know. I don’t even know what I should know.”
He calls CPS back and notes his involvement, not as my friend, but in this instance, as my attorney. He spends an hour talking with Browning, all the while taking copious notes. He has two legal pads going, along with his tablet. But my brain is fried, and I don’t hear what she says or his replies.
I’m a father.
Fuck, I’m someone’s father.
A baby’s father.
I apparently have had less than a day to come to grips with the concept. Not the tiny human, the concept. I don’t even know where to begin. What happened to nine months advance notice? Do I not deserve that?
“You said that out loud, fuckface. I’ll pretend you didn’t.”
I jerk my head up to Elias, whose face registers anger.
“Finch—”
“Don’t Finch me. You’re a father. Congratulations, by the way. But you weren’t wronged in this situation. And I’m just the asshole to tell you that.”
“Now wait just one fucking minute.”
“No, Brax, you wait just a fucking minute. That baby didn’t ask to be born.
He didn’t ask to have an absentee father who wants to whine and pull ‘Oh, woe is me’ bullshit when things are inconvenient.
He didn’t ask to lose his mother tragically and never be able to remember her.
“Your son”—he emphasizes the word as he shoves the center of my chest hard—“shouldn’t have to be uprooted, move a few hundred miles away, lose his maternal family, and start all over in a whole new place.
But he will. Your son will. You just lost the right to bitch and moan about your poor victimized life. ”
The slow clap we hear pulls us both from our nose-to-nose position.
“Elias Finchley, I always knew I liked you. Couldn’t have said it better myself.” Turning to me, Pop adds, “Son, take that to heart. Your world just changed. You are now second. Learn that lesson quickly.”
“Mr. Ranger.” Eli extends a hand that my dad accepts, returning his grip.
“Told you once, won’t tell you again. Call me Kimp.”
“Kimp.” Eli nods, but adds, “Can’t say I won’t slip up, but thanks, Kimp.”
My dad moves to me and unceremoniously hugs me, slapping my back as he pulls back to look at me. I’m five inches taller than him, but he looms large in this house, on this ranch, out in the world.
“Congratulations, Braxton. When do I meet my grandbaby?”
“Tomorrow morning.” That comes from Elias. As if in slow motion, we both turn to stare at him. Pop is smiling. I’m slack-jawed.
“What?”
“He arrives tomorrow. Your house will be inspected. You will need to be ready to accept before eleven. Ms. Browning will bring him from Highland Park then. Timing depends on traffic leaving the metroplex and, of course, traffic around Austin.”
My dad and I stare at each other and then return our eyes to Elias.
“You’ll need to be ready, so I suggest you grab your laptop or cell phone and fire up . I’d also suggest you call Brighton to help. Looks like the four of us are doing your baby shower, bro.”
Pop throws his head back and barks a laugh. His grin is quickly replaced with a somber look that falls over his face. “Miss your mama more than you know. She’d have been thrilled. Well… pissed, then thrilled.”
“She’d have beat my ass.”
“Yes, she would’ve. And then she’d have celebrated.”
I sling an arm over his shoulder, staring around my home, wondering what it means that CPS will inspect my house and what it will take to be ready.
His grin is mischievous as he asks, “Want to call Bright or want me to?”
“You do it, Pop. She’ll get here quicker if you ask.”
Thirty minutes later, my front door flies open, and my sister barges in, leaving clumps of dirt from her work boots on my tile floors.
How she can be so loud and so much in that pint-sized frame is beyond me.
She can go toe to toe with me or my brothers and hold her own.
I love it, except when the full force of it is aimed at me.
“Elias,” she greets, then turns to our dad, her dark ponytail flying out behind her.
“Pop, what in the world could be so urgent that you’d ask me to leave the stables in the middle of monthly rounds?
There’s more to do than hands to do it, and you know it.
You may be my primary client, but you’re not my boss.
We discussed boundaries when I finished school.
I can’t just drop everything because you say so. ”
Ballbuster.
I wink at Finchley because this is going to be fun to watch. His answering grin says he knows it too.
“Well, darlin’, we’ve had a bit of a family emergency and need your help.”
She rushes to him and reaches out, as if she could feel whatever is bothering him. Boundaries and business talk are gone, the daughter has taken her place. She searches Pop’s face as if examining him to see if he isn’t well.
“Pop? You okay? Your heart?” He glances to Elias and grimaces a bit, obviously unhappy that she’s laying out his health issues outside our immediate family.
“My heart is fine, precious girl.” He puts a meaty, calloused hand to her cheek and, with a twinkle in his eyes, drops the bomb. “I’m going to be a Pop-Pop, and we need to get ready.”
Brighton’s eyebrows pull together, and she tilts her head like the Sony dog.
“I know you want grandkids, Pop, but this is not the time to tell me… Again.” She throws one arm wide and looks from me to Elias, and then her gaze lands on mine. And in that moment, she must just know.
“Braxton?” she asks.
“Brighton,” I reply, trying to avoid a smirk, since this is too much fun.
“Is there something you want to tell me?”
“Need you, Bright. He arrives tomorrow. He’s six months old. And I know nothing.”
She looks from me, to Pop, and seeing his grin and my panic, she understands.
“Brax, you’re practically Jon Snow. You never know anything. Lucky for you, I know almost everything.” She flounces a little before adding, “What do you need?”
Three hours later, I owe a kidney to and our local Target. My house will soon be overrun by an eighteen-pound baby and the several thousand dollars’ worth of stuff it takes to kit us out for that adventure.
Brighton plops down on the sofa near where I sit in my old-man recliner and curls her legs underneath her. “Now that Elias and Pop are gone, tell me everything.”
She rubs her hands together as if I have juicy gossip to share. And I guess I do. It’s just not much, since I don’t know much, and I’m sure as shit not sharing my sexual exploits with my sister.