Chapter Twelve
Hatch
What the fuck have I gotten myself into? “Daddy, sit between Maysen and me.” Ralynn says pointing to a chair that I fear I’ll get stuck in if I sit in it.
“I think Daddy is too big for that chair,” I say to her, secretly pleading to myself that she buys that load of bullshit I just fed her.
“Sir, you sit here,” the tech says, pointing to another one that, thank God, looks adult-sized. “We move children down.” Axe is looking at me like he’s ready to fly the coop. I swear if he makes a dash for those doors, I’ll be right behind his ass.
“You want color?” the tech who is apparently working on my feet asks. Color? What the ever-loving-fuck?
“No,” I growl out. Axe’s laughter has me wanting to peg him with my middle finger but...the girls. Dammit. I’ll get him back. “But he does,” I say, pointing toward Axe, who has leaned down to say something to Lily. He pops his head up at my statement and glares at me, not phasing me a bit, I continue to tell her, “Bright pink. With sparkles.” The tech says something in her language to the girl who is working on Axe and they both start laughing.
“Fucker! I’ll get you back for this shit!” Axe growls out at me causing all the girls to start their own rounds of giggles.
“Daddy, you said a bad word,” Lily scolds.
“Yeah, I did. Your Uncle Hatch made me.”
Wait, what did I do? “Really? You’re going with that as your excuse?” I question as I place my feet in the warm, bubbling water. Okay. Maybe this shit’s not gonna be so bad after all. It feels good anyhow. I was good until I look at the tech and see what is the equivalent to a cheese grater pulled out, then I about lose my shit. “The fuck you going to do with that?” I growl out at this chick...the fuck is she gonna do, grate my damn feet? I’m not a block of colby-jack for fuck’s sake! Oh hell no!
“You have callus...this help us take them off.”
“Maybe I like my calluses.”
“Not healthy for you,” the tech insists.
“If I see blood, you’re dead.” Fuck, I know we’re not a one-percent club, but we’ve gotta know someone who can take care of this bitch if she cuts me. I see Axe’s tech pull out the same torture device, but he doesn’t say anything to her. Instead, he hops up out of his seat and grabs his boots. “Fuck that shit! I’m outta here, have fun, Hatch. You can bring Lily home, I’ll catch ya later.”
I pull out my phone while he’s putting his socks and boots on and say, “Hey, Cara! How’s it going with y’all? Yeah? Well...it was going okay but your man is a wuss.”
“Give me that fucking phone!” He stomps over and snatches my phone from me. I listen to half the conversation and then have to work to hide my smirk when he hands it back to me and goes back over to the chair and sits back down. I was all smiles until the woman at my feet lifts one up and starts to grate my feet. Fuck me that shit hurts! “Stop that!” I yell out, “I told you not to touch me with that!”
Once again, she talks to the other techs around her who are working on the girls and they all laugh. Jeez, they’re not whining about any of this stuff and they better not even think of pulling a cheese grater on my daughters or I’ll kill them myself. I wonder if DJ would visit me in prison? The tech puts the grater to the side and pulls out something else. Ah, I can deal with this! DJ has one of them and she uses it on her feet.
I hear Axe growl out, “No, I don’t want any damn color on my toes, put that shit back,” and I lose it in a deep, gut-wrenching, hold my stomach laugh. I have tears rolling down my face and I can’t seem to stop. That’s some funny shit right there, I only wish I’d had my phone out recording that shit so I could show the brothers. I sit back and put my head back closing my eyes. I’m not sure how long I sit here with my eyes closed before I feel something hot get wrapped around my feet. “Son of a bitch that shit’s hot, what the fuck is it?”
“Hot wax, makes feet and lower legs smooth and soft,” the tech advises.
“The fuck do I need smooth feet for?” I ask her. “The only one who feels my feet is my old lady, and she likes me tough.”
“Daddy! Stops complaining and let her takes care of your feet. They’s nasty.”
“Yeah, Hatch, your feet are nasty let her make them nice and silky smooth,” Axe tells me.
“You’re one to talk asshole, you’re next,” I remind him.
“I don’t want that shit,” he tells his tech.
“Yes, he does,” I say. “Give him the top of the line treatment, I’ll pay for it if you do.”
“We’re sorry for our daddies,” Ray says to the lady, giving me a nasty look.
“What?” I ask her, I honestly don’t think I’ve done anything wrong.
“You’re being mean, if you doesn’t stops I’m telling Momma,” oh shit, she’s pulling the mom card out on me.
“Sorry,” I mumble under my breath not meaning a damn word of it. Now that I’ve been properly scolded by a six-year-old, I sit back and anxiously await my escape from this house of horrors.
As we finally make our hurried escape from this place, Axe tells me, “Never again. Next time give your woman lots of orgasms so she doesn’t force us to do this bullshit again, I won’t do it.”
“Pussy,” I whisper so the girls can’t hear me. “It wasn’t that bad once they stopped using the grater thingy. Even that wax shit was kinda neat when it cooled off and they peeled it off.”
“Whatever. You wanna do that shit, you can cheerfully take my daughter and I’ll pay for it but I’m not going.”
Once we’re in the car and everyone is buckled in, we go to pull out when Maysen innocently asks me, “Daddy what’s an organisms?” Axe slams on the brakes causing us to be sitting in the middle of a busy parking lot.
“Man, move your ass,” I tell him, seeing cars swerving around us while he sits there. Moving us back into our parking space, he turns and looks at me giving me the ultimate death stare.
“Fuck. Sorry, girls.”
“Well, Daddy? What is it?”
“Ummm... you wanna take this one, Axe?”
“Why me? She’s your daughter.”
“Yep, but you’re the one who said it out loud where she could hear.”
“Fuck my life,” he says pulling out his phone. “Cara, I need help.” I can’t hear the other side of the conversation, but once he explains himself I sure do hear a lot of cursing from sweet innocent Cara’s mouth. Guess he’s stepped in some hot water with this one, which causes me to smile thinking of how she’s going to rip him a new one in her Suzy homemaker kind of way. With the phone call, the women decide they need to meet us for lunch before we permanently screw up our daughters any worse than we already have. Case in point, orgasms.
We meet up with the women for lunch and immediately, the girls launch into what happened at the nail salon. DJ and Cara have laughed so hard, they’ve got tears rolling down their faces and even Trinity has joined in on the hysterics. Even though Cara continues to give Axe the occasional death glare, I think the visual given through the girls’ eyes is what gets her going.
“Momma?” Maysen says.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“We can’t take our daddies anymore,” she says. “The people said that we can come again if we bring our mommies but never again our daddies. They said lots of bad words, Momma!”
“Do we need to go by there and give them extra hazard duty pay?” DJ asks.
“No. I even tipped the wicked witches.” I would have said bitches but I’ve probably used my allowance of curse words around the girls today. And obviously, the nail place isn’t like Vegas because that shit did not stay there! Is nothing sacred anymore?
“I can’t believe you two! You’ve both been in the military and served overseas. How can you not handle a little callus scraping and paraffin wax?” DJ asks.
“And you,” Cara says, looking at Axe, “really? I am not up for explaining to three little girls what you meant, mister!”
“Now we just need to think of proper punishments for you two,” DJ says causing me to get excited at the word punishment. I have a few preferred ways to be punished personally. Seeing the look on my face, she says, “Nuh-uh, lover. Not happening the way you think.” Fuck. This whole day has gone downhill suddenly.
“Momma? Why do you call Daddy ‘lover’ when his name is Hatch?” Ray asks DJ. Ha! See, we’re not the only ones who say stupid shit. Wait a minute, stupid, I like it when she calls me lover.
“It’s a nickname, sweetie. Kinda like when I call you sweet pea or punkin.”
“What does it mean?” Maysen asks her.
DJ shoots me a look when I snicker that lets me know that somehow, this is my fault too. “It means I love him, sweetie. So I call him lover to remind him, even when he’s not being very lovable.”
“I love Luca, maybe I should call him lover too.” Ray tells us, causing my hackles to rise.
“It’s a grown-up nickname, Ray,” I tell her. I hope my tone is sufficient for her to understand that she needs to drop it. Needing to change the discussion, I go for a distraction. “Boys?” I ask, looking at the three boys who have been busy playing some game that’s sitting on the table and thankfully, paying us no attention. “Did you get everything you needed or wanted?”
“Yes, sir, we did.”
“Good. Tomorrow morning, we’ll get you squared away in your new school, okay? Miss Trinity brought over the paperwork we needed this morning. Now, do you kids know what you want to order?”
Once we’ve placed their orders, the kids all move to the booth right next to us and are soon engrossed in their own little world. As soon as she sees they’re not paying attention, Cara turns to us both and lets loose. “I can’t believe that two grown-ass men can’t behave around three little girls! Really? Pitching a fit because they want to scrape your feet? Talking about orgasms?”
“Hey,” Axe picks up, “DJ said lover and I don’t see you getting onto her.”
“Because that’s a nickname that can easily be explained. Orgasms? Not so much, at least not at their ages,” she hisses between clenched teeth. “I can’t believe that our five and six-year-old daughters have to get onto you and tell you to behave yourselves. Who’s the adult in this situation anyways?” Well, now I feel like a piece of shit. Could we have acted better? Sure, but I mean hell, all those tools that were pulled out reminded me of torture devices. Pull a gun or knife on me and I know how to handle the situation, pull out those things and I want to run and duck for cover.
“Sorry, beautiful,” Axe says, buttering Cara up, “we’ll be better next time.” What are we five? Getting into trouble from the mommies. I want to puff out my chest and remind myself that I am a man still.
“We can’t go back there again, Axe,” I remind him. “We’ve been banned.”
“And I don’t think our daughters want you to go with them again,” Cara states.
“Thank fuck,” he says in a whisper.
“What was that?” Cara asks him with her eyebrows raised. Damn she’s scary when she’s pregnant.
“So much for you two bonding further with your daughters, huh?” DJ asks. Now? Now I feel like a loser. This was supposed to be fun for the girls and we probably ruined it. I’m about to go over, toss the man card totally out the window, and beg their forgiveness when I hear giggles.
“And then...then Daddy said a really bad word before he said they couldn’t paint his nails!” Maysen states. The other two are giggling and the boys have horrified looks on their faces. Think we just lost our cool factor with them.
Then my sweet Ray says, “Don’t looks like that, Luca, that’s what daddies who love their little girls do! Someday you might have a little girl and you will do it, I bet.”
Axe and I look at each other and begin to laugh at the thought of poor Luca being dragged through it. What happened to tea parties and playing with dolls in secret? Where our humiliation is unknown from prying eyes? Guess this is the new generation where everything goes, but from now on? The women go to the nail place.
I can’t help but feel like a challenge has been issued by our women. ‘Game on’ ladies, Axe and I will show them that we’re all in when it comes to not only our daughters, but all of our children.