smaller in stature friend pulled me into a hug, slapping my back twice. “I know how you feel about confrontation.”
He wasn’t wrong there. Hating conflict had led me to seek a job in more of a bar and grill environment years ago. At six foot five and two hundred and seventy pounds, trouble found me in bars as the patrons treated me like a bouncer rather than their friendly neighborhood bartender. Bobby and I separated and chatted with the other customers while I closed out and got ready to go home to the most important person in the world to me.
“Brrrrrr. Brrrrr. Here he comes, Jakey. Brrrrr. Watch out. He’s going to— Boom! Oh, noooo.”
My nephew’s sweet giggles filled the bathroom as I catapulted his red and yellow plastic tug boat off of the back of his pink rubber ducky, plunging the vessel into the bathwater right in front of his small body so that it caused a splash. “Aden. Aden, Kuncle Wogan. Aden.”
“Again? We already crashed your poor little boat like ten times.”
The precious toddler squealed with glee, clapping his hands, and my resistance fell as quickly as it did the last three times that he’d demanded that I drive the boat around and crash it into something. “Alright, buddy, last time, though. You’re going to look like a raisin if I don’t get you out of here soon.”
His pert nose wrinkled as he shook his head vigorously from side to side. I knew that would do it. The kid hated raisins. “Okay, Jakey, here we go.” And I made the expected couple of laps around the tub, brrrrr’ing the whole time, before running the boat into his purple octopus, and again sinking it with enough force to cause the splash he enjoyed so much. While he clapped his hands gleefully at his sides into the water, I plucked the toys out from around him and deposited them into the net that hung on the rim of the tub especially for his playthings.
“Okay, time for good little boys to dry off and get into bed.”
Jakey obediently lifted his arms for me to pull him out and wrap him in his gray whale towel. Flipping the hood down so that the teeth would show on his head, I stood up in front of the bathroom mirror, and gave him a minute to point and grin at himself, then carried him into my room to dry him off and wrestle him into the pull-up he wore at night, just in case, and pajamas.
As we finished his bedtime routine, I chatted away, watching his face carefully for signs of pleasure or disgruntlement. “Alrighty, all done. Would you like a story?”
Of course, I knew the answer would be yes, but this was part of our process. The child therapist Jakey and I had been seeing once a week for the last six months had impressed sticking as closely to a routine as possible. It didn’t just help him, though, it helped me, too. Losing his father—my cousin as well as best friend—and his mother in a motorcycle accident six months ago had devastated us both. If Jakey hadn’t needed me to be strong, I would’ve retreated into myself. But when J.J. had cradled his newborn in his strong arms the first time I’d seen him, and asked me to be the little guy’s guardian if something ever happened to him and Haley, I’d accepted the weight of that responsibility with a prayer that it was a request that I’d never have to fulfill. The minute I’d received the call that they had been run off the road and down an embankment, I’d gone to my parents’ house and pulled the two-year-old close, and vowed to my cousin—wherever he was—that I’d do right by his son.
“Read?” Jakey’s whispered words pulled me back from my thoughts of how we’d ended up here, just the two of us.
“Yeah, buddy. Sorry.” He scrambled up into the middle of my queen-sized bed and waited while I settled next to him. I pulled a book from the basket on my bedside table without even looking to see which one. It wouldn’t matter to Jakey. I kept all of his favorite stories about sea creatures and boats in there, so he’d be content no matter what. Jakey snuggled into my side, his little hand wrapped around my beard, as I read, and like most nights, his breathing deepened with sleep before I spoke the last word.
Picking him up, I cuddled