Page 35 of Everywhere You Look

“Miss Kira said we can come over after ballet today, Uncle Lukey! Can we go? Please please please? All our best friends will be there. Cami, Taylor, Ethan, Henry…”

I can’t help the over zealous grin that spreads across my face as Lem and Mel recite the names of all their friends.

“That sounds like a fun time—” I start to say, just as the back door swings open and Cami comes bursting into the kitchen. Kira strolls in a few seconds later, rubbing a hand over her stomach.

“Did you ask? What did he say? Do you get to come to the slumber party tonight?” Kira—not Cami—asks Lem and Mel as she practically vibrates with energy. The girls turn to me and clasp their hands together while they pout.

“Please please please please please,” they chant, and I hold up a hand while I laugh.

“Of course you can go. And for the record, you didn’t have to wait to ask me for permission. Dean is your grown-up, too. You can ask him things when I’m not around. And when I am around. He’s just as much in charge as I am,” I say, looking at Dean as I do.

Dean’s gaze is soft and gooey as he smiles shyly, looking back and forth between the girls and me. His bright, grey eyes sparkle with flecks of green, shining with a rare kind of light that only comes out when he’s really happy. I’ve only seen it a handful of times in our friendship. The night he won his first Big Game, the day he met baby Cami for the first time, and…

Our wedding day. Dean’s eyes began to shine like the brightest of fireworks right as the judge pronounced us married. The moment right before we crossed every invisible boundary of friendship we’ve built over the years, and?—

“Oh for fuck’s sake, just kiss already,” Kira says,breaking through my thoughts and making me feel like a teenager caught making googly eyes at his crush in class.

“Swear jar!” Mellie, Lemmie, and Cami all call up at Kira, who smoothly reaches into the pocket of her overalls and pulls out three twenty dollar bills, distributing them to the kids without taking her eyes off Dean and me.

My eyes go wide and my throat dries up. The girls start to chant again, this time repeating “kiss, kiss, kiss,” over and over again. Even Ollie has joined in, smacking her little hands on the highchair tray and giggling.

I look over at Dean, who appears to be quite chuffed by this turn of events. He simply smirks, raising an eyebrow at me. I take it as a question, and even though my better judgement tells me that this is probably a terrible idea, I nod in response.

Dean leans forward and I meet him halfway. He reaches up to cup my cheek and I tilt my head, leaning in to him. Our lips brush, a barely there touch that I could have blinked and missed, and a jolt of electricity rushes through me, sparking at every nerve like my body is a live wire. When he presses his mouth into mine for real, I melt like ice cream underneath his touch. Dean’s lips are soft and warm, pillowy in all the right places and surrounded by theperfect amount of scruff that scratches at my face to remind me just how masculine and virile he is. I almost whimper when he pulls away.

The kiss is quick. A chaste enough peck that is over before it begins, which is a good thing, since we’ve got an audience of littles and my mind and body were veering into the inappropriate lane faster than I had the good sense to stop them. The girls cheer as we break apart. I pick up my mug and sip just to have something else to do with my lips and hands. But it doesn’t stop my body from vibrating with the need to be close to him, so much so that I have to makeup an excuse about an early meeting that I need to get on the road for. I kiss each of my girls on the head before running downstairs to the garage so fast, I’d be surprised if my feet didn’t leave tread marks in their wake.

Once I’m behind the wheel of my Rivian, I finally take what feels like my first full breath of the morning.

This feeling in my chest…I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. Is it nerves? Is it confusion? I could call it puppy love, but I think it might be something much worse.

Only a few weeks of marriage, just two kisses, and I fear I have been irrevocably and forever ruined by my husband.

14

TOUGH LOVE

Dean

The shrill of children screaming and playing echoes through the open courtyard in front of Happy Days Early Learning Academy. It will never not amaze me just how…awake and full of life the tiny humans seem to be before nine in the morning. Lemmie and Mellie barely said goodbye to me before running off, hand in hand with Cami to join the other kids in an intense game of tag on the grass.

After breakfast, Luke had to get ready to go into the station for a podcast recording while Kira and I wrangled the kids and their backpacks and walked them to preschool.

“Should you even be walking around in your condition?” I ask my sister, who has one hand onOllie’s stroller and is propping a lemon-yellow water bottle on her belly with the other.

“Oh I just love when men try to explain the female body to me,” Kira sighs sarcastically.

“I’m not trying to explain anything, I’m just wondering. I don’t know what the proper protocol is but I feel like you should be lying in a manger or something.”

“Dios mio. You sound just like my husband. I’m fine. I taught a ninety minute endurance run this morning before you were even out of bed. And need I remind you, when I was pregnant with Cami, I worked literally until my water broke on the bike.”

I grimace at that image. I was in that class. Finding out the puddle of sweat under my sister’s bike wasn’t actually sweat, but baby juice is something a brother can never get over.

“You’re right. You’re a badass, and I’m an idiot for inquiring as to your capabilities,” I concede, throwing my hands up in surrender. Miss Stephanie, the girls’ classroom leader, claps her hands three times in the doorway, signaling that it’s time for school to begin. The kids follow suit, clapping three times while lining up in a single file fashion in front of her.

If the amount of energy these preschoolers have before nine is amazing, Miss Stephanie’s ability towrangle them without a single word is downright miraculous.

Kira and I wait until the kids are safely inside the school, and once the door has been shut behind them, she takes Ollie’s stroller from me and we head back in the direction of our houses.

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