Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

“ P oppy!” Dallas came running out of the school, tears on his cheeks. “I want to go home. Now. Right now.”

“Okay, okay, buddy. What’s wrong?” Dallas hadn’t been this upset in eons.

“Paige yelled at me, and said I was a sissy. Am I a sissy because I’m scared to try skiing?”

He bit back all sorts of things that tried to come out of his mouth. Most of them were anti-Paige, so he kept them to himself, because that was knee-jerk. He took a deep breath. Took Dallas’s hand because his shoe was untied.

Then he spoke. “Of course not, buddy. And it’s not nice to call someone a sissy. Or try to bully them into doing something.”

“She says we’re not friends no more. I want to go home. I don’t want to go to trampoline tomorrow. I want to stay home.”

“Hey, let’s get home and have a little sit and maybe a cookie, and we’ll talk about it, huh?” His job was to find out what had actually happened while having his kid’s back. But he wouldn’t let Dal make snap decisions.

After he got Dal in his seat, he texted Kyler. Kids had a fight. Fair warning

Crap. I’ll come get her. She’s supposed to be helping in the library, but I know she’ll be a mess. Dal ok?

Crying hard. Says he dsnt want to go trampoline 2morrow. Call later?

Sounds good

He and Kyler talked quite a bit once the kids were asleep, so they could work out what was going on later. He felt like he had a little parental support there.

Austin sat for a while and gave Dallas time to calm down. Then he made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Strawberry jelly, crust cut off. Sliced into four triangles.

He poured a glass of milk and then headed in to see Dallas and have a talk.

Dallas was sitting in the middle of his bed, his Goosebumps comforter wrapped tight around him. Glaring.

“I brought us a snack to share. Can I sit?”

“You’re the dad. You can do anything you want to.”

“Dude, wouldn’t that be cool? If I could do anything I wanted to? We could time travel together, you and me. I could snap my fingers, and we would be anywhere.”

That almost got a smile, and Dallas, took a piece of the sandwich. “Anywhere. Like where?”

“I think we’d start in the Old West. We could be gunslingers together. And then when we were done doing that, we could go back to medieval times and see if there were dragons. I don’t think I’d really be a knight, though. I think that that armor stuff had to get stinky and who wants to walk around clanking like an old rusty tin can.”

He let himself wrinkle his nose. “Anyway, can you imagine the tetanus? ”

Dallas’s eyes went wide. “Tetanus. That’s the lockjaw stuff. I wonder if knights got lockjaw.”

Austin shrugged. “Right? Because there weren’t any vaccinations. But, but we’re going to visit, and we’re looking for dragons.”

Dallas nodded. “Okay. Also I want to go see a mermaid. What time were mermaids?”

He pondered that. “I’m pretty sure mermaids were medieval too, don’t you think? Or maybe ancient Greek.”

“Vikings. Were Vikings medieval?” Dallas asked.

“Well, Vikings are a people, so they kind of went like the whole time.”

Dallas rolled his eyes. “No, that was cavemans. Neanderthals. Neanderthals were before Vikings.”

“Fair enough, fair enough. Were Vikings before Egyptians?” He loved having these sort of talks with his son, not only because they were fascinating, but because if Dallas was talking to him, Dallas wasn’t crying. He hated when his little boy cried.

“I think the Egyptians came first.” Dallas frowned. “Can we look it up?”

“Sure we can. Can we talk a little bit about what happened at school first?”

His phone buzzed, but he didn’t glance at it right now. This was about Dallas.

Dallas sighed. “I knew you would do that.”

“Sorry, kiddo. You know how I feel about having all the information.”

“I know.” Dallas drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. “We were talking about what activities we wanted to do, and this winter they’ll do a ski field trip as soon as there’s snow.”

“Wow. That’ s pretty cool.”

Dallas’s lower lip pooched out. “Snow is cold.”

“It is that. But you liked sledding when we did it last year, right?”

“Yes. But that wasn’t standing up on snow.”

“Well, you don’t have to learn all by yourself. I could help you. I mean if you’re scared about falling down.”

“I just don’t wanna. I don’t want everybody to be mad at me because I can’t do it.”

“But you can do things, dude.” Austin hated this because he was afraid he was a part of this whole I-can’t-do-things’ movement on the Dallas front, and that wasn’t right.

But then he didn’t know what to do.

It was very frustrating.

He did want to yell because it wasn’t Dal’s fault, but he kind of wanted to yell because it was frustrating and… “You do gymnastics, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but gymnastics are easy.”

“Some people don’t think so. I think gymnastics is hard. I can’t even do a…” He waved his hand. “…walk over. And you can do flips and stuff on the trampoline.”

“Nobody watches when I do that, though.”

“I watch. Miss Michelle watches. All the different people at the gym watch.” He gave Dallas a grin. “Why, you even have a little bit of a crowd that watches you on Saturday.”

“Well…” Dallas chewed his lip.

“You don’t have to, though. You don’t want to ski, you don’t have to ski. But it seems kind of silly to decide you don’t want to if you don’t know how to do it yet, because you might want to learn. Did that make sense?”

“No, Poppy, but it’s you. Sometimes you don’t make sense.”

“Ask my editor; I don’t make sense a lot.” He winked at Dallas. “We could learn together. ”

“You already know how,” Dallas shot back.

“I already knew how,” he corrected. “It’s been many years. Since before you were born. I’m pretty sure that my body has forgotten how. And I’m old.”

Dallas pursed his lips. “What if I fall down?”

“You fall down all the time. I fall down too. It’s part of skiing. Everybody is going to fall down. You have to be super fancy and to learn to do that swoosh thing that you see on the TV.”

Dallas blinked at him. “Could you do the swoosh thing before you had a baby?”

“Yeah. But I really didn’t have you have you, you know. Like I didn’t lay an egg.”

Dallas threw his hands up. “Ew! Daddy, that’s gross. Don’t talk about eggs. Dragons lay eggs. Chickens lay eggs. Platypi lay eggs.”

“Platypuses,” he corrected automatically. His brain, he was going, is there something wrong with my child that he went to dragons before chickens ? He supposed it was better than going to snakes before chickens, but nobody ever said what came first, the dragon or the egg.

“Oh, Poppy.” Dallas sighed. “I just want Paige to like me again.”

“Hey, friends sometimes have words, kiddo. Tomorrow, though, I bet you’re friends again.”

His phone buzzed one more time, and he patted Dallas’s knee. “Want to finish up your snack and then come down and play some Sorry?”

“Okay.” Dallas grinned. “Go talk to Mr. Kyler.”

He chuckled. “I’ll see you downstairs.”

Sometimes his kid was too smart for his own good. When he got downstairs, he heard his phone beep again. So he finally glanced at it and all it said was, chat?

So Austin went with it. He grabbed his earbuds off the table and popped one in. He called Kyler as he dug around in the hutch for the Sorry game. He really needed to reorganize. This was insane.

Kyler answered quick as a bunny. “Hey, man. This sucks.”

“Yeah, no shit on that. Did you figure out what happened?” He guessed they needed to get it from both sides of the fight. Austin was worried that this is going to end up being more about Paige finding new friends now that she was settling. As much as he hated to admit it, Dallas was not the traditional cool child.

“They got into it over frigging skiing of all things. Paige is desperate for him to come to this skiing thing that she’s talking about. She doesn’t want him to go only because she likes the idea, but she wants to go really bad. So she got her feelings hurt when he said he wouldn’t try. She just doesn’t understand that not all people like the same things.”

Austin started putting the game out as he nodded. “True that. I told Dallas that we could do some practicing together if he’d like. That way he can see how he does. He’s terrified of yet another set of kids figuring out that he’s not good at something and of them making fun of him.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.” Kyler sighed. “So I’m going to start taking her up to the pool for swimming lessons. I really think that she needs to know how, and I think she’d be good at it.” Then Kyler chuckled. “Lord help me, she wants to do 4-H, she wants to go to gymnastics, she wants to do this skiing thing. It’s just a lot, man.”

Austin wasn’t sure what to say, because Kyler sounded kinda grim. He didn’t want to suggest that it was a money thing, but what if it was a money thing? It could be a money thing.

Seriously, Kyler was the one posing for photos for Austin’s covers. Maybe he should get more covers made. That would give him the incentive to write a new series about Maverick.

Although, could he write more books about Mav? He had no idea, but regardless he could get more covers. Maybe use them as posters or original art or something for his readers. It was a thing. And the books were selling well right now. “Well, there’s no reason that she can’t do all of them, I guess. Is there? Do you need her to have a ride?”

“Yeah, that’s the biggest part. I mean, if she does trampolining on Saturdays, she does swimming on Wednesdays, and you said gymnastics is Mondays and Thursdays, 4-H is on Tuesdays I mean, and then there’s Girl Scouts, there’s skiing lessons there’s?—”

“Dude, dude. It’s okay. They don’t have to be busy every second of every day. That’s what I tell myself. And let me tell you, I work at home too. So I get it. Everybody thinks that you have nothing but time and you can drag the kids around to everything. So do what you need to do, in my opinion, of course. And you know, I’ve been a dad so much longer than you have, ha ha ha.”

Austin rolled his eyes at himself.

“Yeah.” Kyler blew out a breath, but his tone was more upbeat when he went on. “Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense.”

“Cool. So sit down with her and make decisions. There can be one social club and two athletic things, or two social things and one athletic thing. That’s what I did with Dallas. He has trampolining, he has gymnastics. That’s three days. He’s not interested in Boy Scouts.”

“Does that mean you’re not going to let him come to swimming with Paige?”

“I tell you what. I’ll drive them to gymnastics. You drive them to swimming. We’ll meet on Saturdays for trampolining. And then? You and Paige have to work out 4-H and or Girl Scouts. What do you think? Dallas is not ready to commit to the ski camp, but I’ll go ahead and get the deposit put down in case he decides he wants to do it. But don’t tell Paige because he might change his mind. He’s little. Boys are younger than little girls, you know that.”

“God, don’t I know that. I think that my little girl is more mature than I am.” Kyler laughed at that one.

“Well, we won’t get involved in their little spat. They’ll figure it out. They’re good kids. Are we still meeting at the trampoline park tomorrow morning though, do you think?”

“I think Paige would be in hysterics if we didn’t. She’s got her routine. Horseback riding. Trampoline. Pizza, movie, and crashing out at your house is really her jam on Saturday. That’s when she misses her mom the most.”

And bang. Right there, again, was this graphic illustration of how Kyler was not queer. And was not Maverick. And of how he could not look upon his son’s best friend’s father with lust. That was bad.

He got all wrapped up in what felt almost like co-parenting recently and let his fantasies run wild.

Cowboy wanted, and all that…

He took a deep breath. “Well, if we can keep to the routine, it will be good for her, and for Dallas. He really doesn’t want to be at odds with her. So I’ll massage him into coming tomorrow, and we’ll maybe get a big cookie with our pizza.”

“Damn, now that’s near and dear to my heart. Cookies.” Kyler’s chuckle made the hair rise on the back of his neck. It was almost sexual. “Okay. That’s the plan then. If anything changes, I’ll text.”

“And vice versa.” He grinned a little. “See you tomorrow.”

“Yep. Thanks, man. You talked me down out of the tree.”

“I live to serve. Bye.”

“Bye. ”

They hung up, and he checked to make sure Dallas wasn’t lurking on the stairs listening. Which he wasn’t. His kid was pretty polite about waiting for adult conversations to be over before coming into the room…

Not to mention it took him forever to eat a sandwich.