Page 2 of Lost in Love

The door to the pantry opens and Finley, our one-year-old, takes a drink of her milk and then spits it in my face. It’s her new thing. She thinks it’s hilarious. We’re working on it, but let’s face it, babies are assholes.

I fight the urge to grab her bottle and spit milk right back at her, and if you have kids, you know exactly what I’m talking about here. They can’t all be sweet all the time, and if anyone tells you their kid is perfect, they’re lying to you.

Wiping milk from my face with my hand, I glare at the baby. “You need to stop doing that.”

Like she’s going to listen to me. Pretty sure this kid came out thinking I was a nobody. With the nipple of her bottle now dangling from her lips, she smiles, as if she didn’t hear me. That’s another thing about babies. They have selective hearing. Don’t believe me? Say cookie and watch their face. Now, say no and look at the blank expression they give you.

Exactly my point, friends.

With the front of me soaked in milk, I drag myself from the floor and into the kitchen. And then I stare with wide eyes at the scene before me. Have you ever been in a kitchen right before kids leave for school? It’s like a prison yard and everyone is fighting over the last box of smokes. Only in this case, it happens to be the last of the Pop-Tarts. Don’t judge us. Yes, we let our kids eat Pop-Tarts on occasion.

Hazel, our five-year-old princess with horns—you’ll understand soon enough—she’s staring at me, disgusted as she eats peanut butter from the jar with her fingers. The neighbor’s cat is also on the counter licking the jar. “She spit on you again, didn’t she?”

Don’t let the brown curls down to her waist and bright blue eyes fool you. Hazel is to be feared. It’s always the cute ones that will kill you in your sleep. Last week, she put a pillow over my face at 4:00 a.m. and asked if I could breathe. And then later that day, she made me a piece of toast with jelly. Naturally, I made Kelly eat it because I thought for sure she was going to poison me. I’m kidding, I ate it. But it’s bizarre shit Hazel does that scares the shit out of me most days.

Reaching for a hand towel, I wipe the remainder of the milk from my face and move past the kids at the island. “Pretty much. Hazel, get that cat outside. He doesn’t belong on the counter.”

This does nothing to deter her. “He likes me better than his owner.”

“Doesn’t matter. He’s not ours,” I point out, glaring at the cat. “You can’t just steal him.”

She pets the orange tabby cat lovingly, with peanut butter hands. “I can if he likes me.”

There’s no sense in arguing with her. She gets the last word every time. Disgusted, I stare at my daughter who is now staring at her hands with orange cat hair stuck to the peanut butter. I swear to God, if she licks her fingers, I’ll throw up.

I wait, giving her that fatherly look that screams “don’t you dare.” Her eyes lift to mine, testing out the waters. I narrow mine.

Shrugging, she wipes them on her pants.

“Uh,” Oliver, my oldest son, stares at me. “Where’s your shirt?”

Oliver, he’s our secret keeper. You never know what this kid is thinking. And honestly, we probably don’t want to know. He’s a ten-year-old boy. More than likely it involves Fortnite and the Battle Royale. Or how funny farting on his sister’s head is to him.

I don’t give Oliver an answer as to where my shirt is, because it’s still in the pantry where I took it off earlier, and if I tell him that, it will only lead to more questions. He might be a secret keeper, but the kid asks too many questions as it is, and if you wait about two minutes, he’ll forget he asked one and move on.

Kelly walks back into the kitchen with Finley, the spitting baby on her hip, and rolls her eyes when she notices the milk on my chest. “Why do you let her do that to you? And put a shirt on.”

Look at the baby. Doesn’t she look all sweet and innocent on her mama’s hip drinking a bottle? Fuck that. Ever since that kid slid out of the vagina I rarely see anymore, she’s had it out for me, and it’s been my fear that this might have had something to do with Kelly and I having sex while she was pregnant with her. Did she know it was me who was ramming her in the head? Is that why she spits at me?

“Let her?” I stare at my wife like she put my dick in a blender. I love Kelly. I just don’t like her sometimes. Usually when she’s accusing me of being a pussy, like now. “It’s not like I say, hey, Fin, fucking spit on me.”

“Daddy!” Hazel scolds, slapping her hand on my bare back with her peanut butter hands. “Bad word!”

My shoulders tense thinking about the peanut butter and cat hair on my back.

Kelly sighs, her mood written all over her face. I don’t know why she’s pissed off. It’s not like she has a constant hard-on she has to hide. Or peanut butter hair on her back. “Can you go change or whatever it is you’re going to do and take Oliver to school?”

Whatever it is I’m going to do? Ha. Fucking. Ha.

God, I’m kind of a dick today.

I want to say something sarcastic, but I don’t. I give up. I let it go. It’s what someone who fears confrontation does. More on that later, but I hate fighting. Goes back to my childhood you probably don’t want to know about.

Nodding, I step past my wife, who obviously hates my guts today.

Tripping over Sevi, our youngest boy on the floor, I make sure he’s okay. “Why are you on the floor eating?”

With his hand in a box of cereal, he stares up at me like I’m speaking some other kind of language to him. I probably am. Instead of answering me, he barks and shoves a handful in his mouth. Our three-year-old son thinks he’s a dog. I don’t mean, oh, cute, he’s going through a phase. I mean, fuck this shit, he thinks he’s a goddamn dog.

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