With All My Heart - Emilia Finn Page 0,21
days, and eight till noon, Saturdays. I love to work with my hands. For a guy who didn’t really have a plan beyond ‘convince Nelly Robertson to marry me,’ I’m happy with the career I’ve fallen into.
It won’t always be so hard.
I won’t always have to work at the local grocer Wednesdays to Sundays, eight till midnight to prop up our pay. I won’t always have to mow lawns half of Saturday, all of Sunday, and sometimes on a Monday night if I’m hungry and the bread just won’t stretch.
Someday, I’ll be able to go to bed with my wife. Wake up with my wife. Eat strawberries from her belly button and fuck her until we whip cream…
But that day ain’t today.
Because right now, we’re broke, and the cost of strawberries have almost doubled in just the couple years we’ve been married.
Everything else at the grocery store has doubled, too.
I set my hat on the side table and grin at my wrecked living room.
My wife isn’t lazy. She’s not a slob, either. But my son is a fucking psycho, and she spends all her time chasing him.
She worked hard on a degree that she’s yet to use, because I wanted a son more than I wanted her to test out her shiny new credentials.
Condoms are expensive, and maybe I didn’t pull out as fast as she wanted. She might not have been quite as excited as I was at first, but it happened anyway.
Voila, my twenty-two-year-old wife was carrying my child.
Power surges in a man as he watches the woman he loves growing plump with his child. It’s not my fault the universe likes to test us with an eleven-pound first timer who came out with jumping beans up his ass.
As soon as he’s old enough, as in, next year, I’ll start working with him in the yard. A little training, a little kata oughtta wear him out.
Teach the kid some skills, teach him some discipline, and he’ll stop tackling his mom.
Silently, I sit my wallet down, and place my keys inside my hat to muffle the sound. Moving down the hall on my tiptoes the way a man of my size should never do, I creep with a crazy grin on my face and sweet anticipation for who I’m about to see.
I live my life waiting to see them.
All day, I work and look forward to dinner with my wife and son.
All night, I stack shelves and count the minutes until I can come home and crawl into bed beside the most beautiful woman in the world.
Bobby’s up before the birds, but that’s okay, because the earlier he wakes, the more time I spend with him before I’m off again and the clock resets.
If I was working just for myself, it wouldn’t be worth it.
But I’m working for them. Every single cent I earn is for them.
Totally worth it.
“Alright, baby.” Nelly’s sweet voice carries into the hall and has my smile turning up a few extra degrees. “That’s it. Now you can pee.”
“Boys have got a doodle, girls have a ‘gina.”
“Yes,” she groans. “I know.”
“Daddy’s got a doodle.”
She sighs. “Yes, he does.”
Yeah, I do.
“Catch me, Mommy.”
“One second, baby. Sit on your bottom and wait till Mommy finishes tidying up.”
I stop at the doorway and peek around the corner. Bobby stands on the rickety old change table I took off the pile of trash at the top end of our street.
It needed three new screws and a new mat for the top.
Saved ourselves twenty-bucks this way.
His chocolate eyes – exactly like mine – light up when I stick my tongue out. “Daddy!”
“Yeah, honey.” Distractedly, Nelly folds his clothes by the dresser. “Daddy’ll be home in a minute. We need clothes, first. It’s rude to eat naked.”
He’s not naked. He’s wearing a white cloth diaper with little pins that he’ll likely undo and stab me with in the night.
“Daddy!”
“I’m just getting your shirt. Hold on a sec, baby.”
“Catch me, Momma!”
“In a second, baby. Sit on your bottom before you fall.”
I step into the room and drop a fast kiss on my son’s lips as his body shakes with excitement.
Never in my life has anyone been so happy to see me until my son arrived. And I spend such little time with him, every time I’m here, he practically wets himself with giddiness.
I wink at Bobby, then leave him standing where he is and step up behind my wife. Fast as a flash, I take her hips in my hands and yank