Page 1 of The Wedding Planner's Manny
1
R H Y S
“…Eight, nine, ten. I'm coming!” I shouted out as warning to my three-year-old nephew, who had insisted we play hide-and-seek in the backyard—even though there really weren't a lot of places you could hide in the backyard of my brother's house. There was an oak tree and a small sandbox, and not much else. As soon as I opened my eyes and turned around, I heard a giggle from the direction of the tree.
Bastian was not a quiet child.
Not that I minded. I loved how much energy the little boy had. Sometimes I even envied him a little for it.
Of course, his mass amounts of energy didn't always go unpunished.
Once I neared the tree, my nephew shot out from behind it at a sprint. “Catch me!” he shouted, looking at me instead of where he was going. Two seconds later, he lay flat on the ground, having stumbled over the handle of a rake. Someone must have forgotten to put it away after using it to rid the grass of the fallen leaves from the trees. Since I was the only one who took care of the yard at all, that someone was probably me.Shit.I wasn't usually this sloppy.
“Are you okay?” I knelt next to the child. He looked at me with wide brown eyes, as if not sure whether he was supposed to cry or not. “C'mon.” I took his hand and helped him up to his feet. He didn't look hurt, thank God. Dean and Griff trusted me to look after their boys while they were out and considering how kind they were being to me, letting me stay here for free, I didn't want to do anything to abuse that trust in any way. Idly, I glanced at the baby monitor I'd placed next to the back door, but no sounds were coming from it. Boy number two was still napping, it seemed.
“Hurts,” Bastian said, pointing at his right wrist.
“Let me see.” He'd scraped his skin a little bit, breaking his fall. Nothing dramatic. Picking up the baby monitor on my way, I took Bastian back inside to the sink in the guest bathroom. “We'll clean you up and then you get a nice Band-Aid,” I told him.
“I want dinosaurs,” he demanded as I cleaned his wrist with a wet washcloth.
“Dinosaurs are great. But you know what else is great?”
He looked at me curiously through the unruly brown bangs falling into his face.
“Butterflies are great.”
“Butterflies?” He tried the word on his tongue.
“They're pretty and colorful and they can fly! They can also taste with their feet. Most people don’t know that, but it’s pretty cool.” At least I thought it was cool, anyway. While I spoke, I opened the medicine cabinet and took out a pack of Band-Aids I'd stashed there for cases like this. I unpacked an individual strip and showed it to my nephew. He'd seen butterflies before, of course, and now he connected the word to the insect. And then he made grabby hands. I chuckled. My nephew knew what was good.
I leaned down to put the Band-Aid with the colorful butterfly-print on his wrist. “There, all better.”
He grinned, studying it. Then he looked up at me again. “I want cookies!”
Cookies? “We just had lunch a few minutes ago, remember?”
“Cookies!” He pulled his lower lip between his teeth. He had such puppy eyes when he wanted something. I was pretty sure he got those from Griffin, because I'd never seen that look on my big brother's face.
Well, maybe he could haveone.But before Bastian managed to completely melt my heart, I heard a knock on the door. And then it opened before I could respond—which let me know who our visitor was. Stepping into the hallway, I greeted my twin with a smile. “Hey, Nick.”
“Hey.” He gave me a lazy wave.
“Hi, Uncle,” Bastian piped up beside me. “I have butterflies.” Proudly, he presented his wrist for inspection.
“That's very nice.” Nick eyed the child's Band-Aid, and then me. “You still carry those around?”
I shrugged. “Would you like coffee or tea? I was about to give Bastian a cookie.”
“Cookie!” Bastian raced to the kitchen ahead of us.
“Sounds great,” Nick said, following the child. I smiled to myself, glad that my attempt at distraction had been successful. I didn't want to talk about the butterfly Band-Aids or why I kept buying them. I loved my brother, but he didn't always understand my 'quirks', as he called them. Few people did.
They had been a point of contention between me and my husband too. Me and my ex-husband, I should say. The divorce papers weren't signed yet, but my lawyer was on it and there was no hope of us getting back together.
Once I caught up to my brother and my nephew in the kitchen, I reached for the cookie tin. It sat on one of the upper shelves where Bastian couldn't get to it. The boy got too many treats anyway—my big brother was excellent at baking, and his spouse ensured that he practiced that skill regularly.
“Cookie!” Bastian demanded again.
