by Bijou Hunter
The real fun happens at the Boogie Bowl for the reception. The Slater girls love their 1980s crap music, and Bonn’s a fan too. They joyfully dance to bands long irrelevant. Harmony insists for me to join Keanu and her on the dance floor.
“I love this song,” Harmony says, bouncing around while holding a jumping Keanu’s hands.
I shuffle my feet to the sugary sweet pop song. “Is a girl singing?”
“No, it’s Depeche Mode,” she laughs and gives Ruby an amused smile.
“You’ve never heard Just Can't Get Enough before?” Ruby asks me.
“I listen to good music, Ruby. I’m sorry if that poops on your wedding bliss, but I can not lie.”
Harmony and Ruby laugh at me, but I’m too busy enjoying how high Keanu’s jumps go. The kid has some serious spring in his step. Maybe his dad was part cat.
Both of my parents eventually get into the dancing mood, though not with each other. Mom and Erik slow dance to an overwrought song while Dad feels up some broad he met at the DMV.
Camden tries to talk to me a dozen times, but I don’t want to discuss the upcoming super-duper important club meeting. We both know what’s going to happen. Everyone knows. No one is even pretending it’s a secret. Hell, Howler’s been crying in his beer for over a week like a guy about to be laid off.
Avoiding Camden, I enjoy a beaming Harmony in her pink outfit and Keanu in his dinosaur shirt. Every time someone points out what he’s wearing, he roars.
“I taught him that,” I tell Harmony. “Nothing scares the peasants like a roaring beast.”
Holding my gaze, she gives me a sly smile. “Don’t I know it.”
This woman drives me fucking crazy with those knowing looks of hers. I’d take her somewhere private if not for the kid and how her sisters expect Harmony to stick around for a few karaoke numbers.
By the time the Slater girls drunkenly sing Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, Keanu is zonked out on my lap, and Elle looks ready to do the same in Bonn’s.
Earlier in the evening, my cousin thanked me for the help. That’s all we’ll say in the matter of JJ. He knows I have his back, so we avoid the sappy sentiments.
“Look at us whipped family men,” Camden says, holding Daisy’s purse.
“Pink is a good color on you,” I tell him.
We share a smile before maneuvering our drunken women to the SUVs outside. Elle gets a ride home with Harmony and me so her parents can start a mini-honeymoon.
Even sloppy drunk, Harmony manages to tuck in the kids, ride me into submission, and still get up by six for work. That’s my woman. She’ll work a Saturday shift to help Millie get to her doctor’s appointments. I used to think her job was a problem. Now I get how it makes her feel like a badass in the same way my club does for me.
With Harmony at work, I’m in charge of Keanu and Elle for the morning. Daisy offers to help, but I don’t want Camden thinking I can’t handle two small people under my care. The man already gets to be top dog in our club. No way am I giving him anything more to brag about.
I end up taking the kids out to breakfast, thinking it’ll be easier than cooking for them. Except children can’t eat without dumping half of their meal on their clothes.
“I made a mess,” Keanu says, looking down at where the syrup covered pancake attached itself to his shirt.
“Shit happens.”
“Shit happens,” he tells Carl.
“Don’t say shit,” Elle tells Keanu.
“Shit,” Keanu immediately says.
I pick the food off his clothes and then lean down to make eye contact with the little man.
“Shit is a grown-up word. Is Carl grown up?”
Keanu looks at his toy and shakes his head.
“Well, then he can’t say shit.”
Keanu nods and reaches for his milk, knocking it over. Fortunately, the thing has a lid on the top.
“Are you this messy at home?” I ask.
Giving me one of his double shoulder shrugs, the kid makes another attempt with his pancakes. He drops more food and knocks over his drink three more times before I notice how a lady nearby has one of them booster seats for her kid.
“I blame you,” I tell Elle once Keanu sits up higher and stops dropping everything. “You should have told me he needed one.”
“I’m not his mom.”
“Neither am I.”
“You’re his dad,” she says, chewing her sausage link. “You should know.”
Keanu doesn’t react to her dad comment. He’s too busy working a fork with one hand and keeping Carl snugly in the other.
By the time they’re done making a mess, I know where I want to take them next. We stop by a pet store near the condo.
“Kittens,” Elle coos.
“Fish!” Keanu announces, seeing the pictures on the front window.
“I want to get an aquarium for the condo,” I tell Keanu while unbuckling him from his car seat. “That way, you can look at fish at home.”
Keanu doesn’t get what I’m saying. He just wants to see the fish. I try to get him to help me pick out ones he wants, but he only wants to name all of them.
“Fish are ugly,” Elle whispers to me while Keanu stares at them in awe. “They have ugly eyes.”
“You Slater women always want cats, but men like Keanu and me want something less high maintenance.”
Elle stares at me the way Keanu does when I say something he doesn’t understand.
“Can I look at the kittens?”
Agreeing, I end up standing halfway between both kids so I can keep an eye on them. I also manage to talk to a woman about what I’d need for a good-sized aquarium in my house.
Keanu cries whenever he thinks he can’t go back to his trailer. I hope an aquarium at the condo will finally convince him to let go of the tiny home he’s known for the first few years of his life.
Despite what Harmony thinks, sometimes I can buy my way out of a problem. Wooing a kid with a big purchase is what my mom would do, and I’m nothing if not a mama’s boy.
Epilogue - Harmony
Dayton and I make a deal regarding a second child. We won’t consider another kid until my IUD needs replacing. That gives us two solid years of enjoying life as a threesome.
We spend the time eating out a lot. Dayton takes Keanu to the zoo a few times a month, and we drive down to Florida to visit LEGOLAND. We enjoy a relaxed lifestyle for a few years.
I love my job at the group home especially watching my clients leave adolescence and become women. They’re like a second family to me. I care for them during the day and then focus on my guys in the evening and weekends.
Once Mojo and Howler go into retirement, Camden and Dayton step into the leadership roles. Even with more responsibilities, Dayton still picks up Keanu every day from daycare. The club is his second family, but Keanu and I always come first.
Though a baby isn’t on our to-do list, my sisters have other plans. Ruby has her baby boy, Adric, less than a year after getting married and she moves out of the condo building. Daisy and Camden start their family with Lincoln, and soon they’re looking for a bigger place. Dayton claims we ought to stay at the condo, just to spite them.
Until he hears someone talk about how lucky Camden’s kids are to have a yard. Oh, yeah, now we need a house too.
I convince Dayton to stay in the condo as long as possible. I’m not a fan of suburbia and figure we won’t fit in with our neighbors. I’m trailer trash, Keanu doesn’t look like everyone else, and Dayton is a jerk who refuses to edit himself. We don’t need to live next to judgmental people when we have a perfectly nice home.
Dayton bends to my will for nearly a year after our baby comes along.
Calypso “Soso” Anita Rutgers is a chill baby. She sleeps a lot, rarely cries, and eventually laughs whenever she burps and farts. She’s Dayton with a bow in her blonde hair.
Blame my reasoning on pregnancy hormones, but I choose the name Calypso to annoy my mom and Dayton’s.
My mom s
ays more than once, “It’s a name for a hippy’s child. I thought you weren’t a hippy.”
“My daughter, Calypso, won’t judge me for being a hippy,” I announce.
Clara doesn’t argue with me, but she gets that frozen smile expression whenever I use it. Feeling stubborn, I refuse to back down.
Dayton is no help. He’s so mad once he learns we’re expecting a girl that he refuses to participate with naming her. I get my way, put Calypso on her birth certificate, and then instantly decide I don’t like the name and won’t use it.
In the end, Calypso gets shortened to Soso, which is a Native American name for “Tree Squirrel Dining on Pine Nuts.” Talk about embracing my inner hippy.
Dayton gets over his resentment about having a girl as soon as he holds Soso. He stares in awe at her, telling anyone who will listen how she’s the best-looking baby in history. He’s so crazy about her that I have to throw a fit a few times, so he’ll share her.
I take a year off from the group home to stay with Soso, only picking up occasional weekend shifts to give me time out of the house. I’m happy to be able to take Keanu to school every day for his first year. He is so excited about school even if it means leaving behind Carl and Soso.
By Halloween, he hates school and cries every morning when we get ready.
“Homeschool him,” Clara says one day. “Hudson didn’t do well at school. Some kids just don’t fit into the school mold.”
“I planned to go back to work, and I don’t know how to teach Keanu.”
“I’ll hire someone to organize his studies. I promise we’ll figure it out, so Keanu learns in a better environment.”
Ruby tells me Hayes’s kids are home schooled, and Elle wants to be too. The idea doesn’t seem so wild, and I hate how miserable Keanu is on school days.
“Fuck school,” is Dayton’s response when we talk about the situation. “Half of the crap he’ll learn he won’t need, and the other half isn’t that damn complicated. Let him learn at home if that’s what makes him happy.”
“I worry I’ll make the wrong decision and he’ll resent me for not making him go. Like he’ll miss out on stuff.”
A baby-wearing Dayton wraps an arm around my shoulders. “Keanu is my son. That makes him special, and he deserves special treatment. I hated school, but I had Camden with me, so I didn’t have to hate it alone. Keanu is alone there, and he’s not a kid who enjoys alone time. He needs his family, and this way he’ll spend more time with Soso and me and you and the cool people in town rather than the losers eating their boogers in his class.”
“Can’t argue with that logic.”
“No, you really can’t.”
This is the Dayton I didn’t know existed all those years when I crushed on him. The fiercely protective man who refuses to see his loved ones suffer. He’ll never wear a “#1 Dad” shirt, but he’s the kind of father I could only dream of growing up and then for Keanu.
I was wrong about Dayton. He is complicated. My husband is good and bad all rolled into a perfect package. He’s both an insider with wealth and power, and an outsider never quite on the same page as those in his family and club. As complex as he can be, I’ve never once regretted loving him and I never will.
Epilogue - Dayton
People always claim Camden took to fatherhood easily. I let that crap go most days, but occasionally, I point out how I’m the natural fucking father between the two of us. Sure, Camden digs his kids who look like him and have his blood running through his veins. It’s natural to love what you’ve created. Camden is doing what’s easy.
I’m the father of a child who doesn’t look like me, but I love him like he’s my own. That’s not natural. Like JJ said, in the animal kingdom, males don’t normally take non-biological offspring under their wings.
I did it, though, because I’m such a natural father. Like Camden, I’d kill and die for my kids. No one messes with Keanu without suffering my wrath. He’s my boy, and he knows it too despite spending his first three years without me in his life. I’m even learning Korean – which is no easy feat – so I’ll be ready for our trip to meet Hwan’s family once the kids are old enough to handle the flight.
The only area I’ll admit Camden beats me is with my nephews and niece’s names. Harmony truly has no taste with kids’ names, but it’s her only flaw, so I don’t obsess over it.
Our daughter looks just like Harmony. Soso’s big brown eyes are the only physical feature she gets from me. She’s a gorgeous little person who smells and cries and excels at the usual baby horrors, but I don’t mind any of it. She’s mine, and perfect, and I want to hold her as much as possible before she grows up and finds a man to steal her away.
I’d been pissed when I found out we were having a girl. Not because I wanted a son as much as I didn’t want a daughter. Pink, dolls, more pink, these are not things I can find common ground with like Keanu, and I did with fish and LEGOs. I had no sisters, no chick friends, and I’m not built to be a father to a daughter.
Except Soso is as irresistible as her mother. Completely in awe of her, I don’t care if my daughter spends her life talking about unicorns and tampons, I won’t be able to deny her a damn thing.
Funny how having a wife and kids makes a man focus on the future. Harmony and I get married on the way to Florida’s LEGOLAND. We sign the papers, say I do in some office, and then move on with our trip. Nothing fancy is necessary. She’s been mine for as long as I can remember. The paperwork is just a formality.
Camden has big plans for moving the club toward Nashville. He wants more chapters, more territory, more everything. Sounds great but once his kids come along, his plans slow down. I’m glad for a lazier pace. Hickory Creek is my town, and I want to remain here. It’s where my woman works, and my kids play, and my parents live. I don’t crave one-upping my father’s legacy like Camden does. I just want to pay the bills and keep my club brothers happy. Anything more feels greedy.
Or maybe fatherhood steals my balls. I’d rather spend my afternoons with Keanu, talking about fish and Harleys and Carl’s scarred up face than beating down some dealer or pimp in a town that doesn’t mean shit to me.
The kid gets me, and I get him. As a twin, I shared everything in life. Even becoming VP of the Serrated Brotherhood Motorcycle Club has more to do with my being Camden’s constant second.
With Harmony, Keanu, and eventually, Soso, I’m number one. I don’t need to share, and they never view me as a second choice. I’ve always seen myself as the better twin, and now I’m surrounded by people cool enough to see me the same way.
Nearly losing out on having them in my life still pisses me off. One night, I bailed on Harmony and nearly pissed away my future. Regret nearly ate me alive, and booze was my only escape. Until I finally stopped obsessing over what I didn’t do and start focusing on what I needed to do to win over my woman and her little man.
About Bijou
Living in Indiana with my three sweet sons, three wacky cats, one super mom (and her ugly dog), I love cats, Denny's, 1970s rock, Beanie Boos, and sitcoms canceled before their time.
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