“HEY! COME ON in.” Big Mike’s smiling face greeted me as the wooden door opened. He was holding Maura in his right arm, facing out, as I stepped inside. As soon as I stepped through the door, she grinned up at me, her arms flapping wildly as drool hung off her chin.
I caught the spit with my finger and wiped it on Mike’s face as I walked by. “Kind of like having a puppy, huh?”
He laughed, wiping his cheek with his sleeve. “Asshole.”
I walked toward the back of his large, comfortable house and into the kitchen. Matthew was sitting at the counter eating a bowl of macaroni and cheese.
“Hi!” He waved at me, grinning just as big as his sister had.
“Hey, buddy!” I walked over and high-fived him. “How’s it shaking?”
He scrunched his little eyebrows together and looked up at me. “How’s what shaking?”
“Never mind, bud.” I laughed and he went back to his noodles.
“Matthew, never take anything Uncle Viper says literally. It’s a very important lesson we all need to learn at one point or another,” Mike teased as he set Maura down in some weird-looking baby contraption.
“You two aren’t going to corrupt my son, are you?” Michelle breezed into the kitchen.
“That’s the plan,” I answered.
Mike tilted his head to the side, smiling slightly as he watched her frantically open drawer after drawer. “What are you looking for?”
“My credit card. I can’t find— Here it is!” She grinned, holding her gold card up in the air.
“Where are you going anyway?” I asked.
She shoved the card into her purse. “Book club.”
I frowned at her. “Why do you need a credit card for book club?”
Mike looked at me and rolled his eyes. “Why do they have book club at a pub?”
“Correction,”—she held her finger up in the air—“it’s at a martini bar. Way classier than a pub.”
“Mmhmm, if you say so.” She walked over and stood up high on her tippy toes to give Mike a kiss. He smacked her ass as she walked away. Her perfume tickled my nose and I realized I’d never really seen her dress up before. Not like this. She actually looked… hot.
“Okay, baby…” She threw her purse over her shoulder and walked over to Matthew, then knelt down next to him and kissed his cheek. “I love you. Have fun tonight.”
“Love you too, Momma.”
She wiped her lipstick off his cheek with her hand and whispered something in his ear, making him giggle. Then she left. Again with the damn perfume.
Perfume on a woman is like a secret weapon against men. It flies up our noses and heads straight for our brains, making us completely pussy drunk. We suddenly turn into bees that need to stick our little bee dicks into a woman’s flower for a taste of that sweet, sweet nectar. Intoxicating.
“What did Mom say to you?” Big Mike asked Matthew.
“She said you and Uncle Viper are crazy, so I’m in charge tonight.” He giggled again and shoved a huge bite of noodles into his mouth.
“Oh, really? Then what are we doing tonight, boss?” Mike walked over and picked up Maura, who had started fussing in her swing. She was six months old already but still so tiny in Mike’s huge paw.
“We’re gonna…” His little face twisted and contorted as he thought about what he wanted to do. “Let’s eat lots of cookies and watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!”
I shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”
AN HOUR LATER, Maura had eaten, puked weird white shit all over Mike’s shirt, and passed out in another baby apparatus in the corner of the family room while Big Mike, Matthew, and I each lay on a different part of the sectional, watching the Minnesota Twins beat the crap out of the White Sox.
“So this is what you do with your Friday nights, huh?” I asked Mike as I glanced around the room, fascinated by the simplicity of the evening.
“Pretty much.” He smiled proudly. “Awesome, huh?”
“Sure.” I shrugged. “If you don’t like women with tits.”
“Really?” Mike glared at me before looking over at Matthew, who was too busy watching TV to pay attention to us. “Come on, Finkle, you know one day you’ll be an old married man like me with a wife and house full of little kids.” He picked up the remote and changed the channel from the baseball game to some obnoxious cartoon with a singing yellow sponge.
I stared in disgust as the porous little bastard danced around the screen and poked his big pink friend in the gut. “Not if it means having to watch this shit.”
Matthew gasped, his mouth hanging open as his head twisted quickly toward me and then over to his dad.
Big Mike tried to hold in his laugh. “Try not to swear, okay?”
Jesus, it would be easier not to eat for a week than it would be not to swear.
“Sorry. But no, you and Brody live in a different universe than me.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“He’s like you now. Busy with the family all the time and preoccupied.”
“He’s not preoccupied, he just has different priorities now. Unfortunately, being your wingman at the bar has taken a backseat to his wife and kids.”
“I know, and trust me, the last thing I need is a wingman. It’s just weird. I hardly see him anymore.”
“It hasn’t been so bad, though. You and I have been hanging out a lot more.” He smiled a big, goofy grin at me.
“Easy there, big guy. Reel your vagina back in.” I glanced over at him and shot him a small, playful smile. “It has been nice, though, hanging out I mean. I’ve been over here so often lately your couch is starting to take on the imprint of my a—” I cleared my throat. “—butt.”
We sat in awkward silence for a minute, trying to figure out how to make our conversation manly again.
“It’s not so bad, you know? Wife, kids, the whole thing. It’s actually pretty awesome.” He nodded toward Matthew. “That one looks at me like I’m a superhero for something simple like throwing frozen waffles in the toaster, and that sleepy little girl smiles all the time, even in the middle of the night.”
“Sorry, you lost me at ‘middle of the night.’”
“Oh, bull. Half the time you don’t crawl home until the middle of the night. Stop acting like you couldn’t handle a 2 a.m. feeding.”
“I need my beauty sleep.”
“That I’ll agree with, ugly.”
I picked a bottle cap up off of the coffee table and launched it across the couch at him, fist-pumping when it bounced off the top of his head. “And why the fu—” I caught myself and looked at Matthew, who was staring right at me, listening to every word we were saying. “—heck are you feeding her at two in the morning anyway? Isn’t that the woman’s job?”
Big Mike’s eyes grew wide and a heavy laugh escaped him. “Viper, my boy, you have a lot to learn. First, never say anything is her job or you’ll be parking it on the couch for a long time with a serious ‘dry spell,’ if you know what I mean,” he said, making air quotes with his fingers.
“I wasn’t being a pig. I was being serious,” I defended. “I thought they had the… equipment to take care of that.”
“They do, but sometimes that equipment gets clogged or doesn’t produce enough milk or she’s just plain tired and you have to step it up.”
Clogged?
I held my hand up to stop him from going any further. “Okay, okay. I get it. No more.”
Mike smirked at me without saying a word.
“What? Stop it.” I was uncomfortable with him staring at me like he was.
“I can see it.”
“See what?”
“You.” He grinned. “With a kid.”
“No fu—” I caught myself again—barely. “No way.”
“I’m not kidding. You’re all rough and tough, but I can totally picture you schlepping some mini-Viper around with you to games and practices, showing him off.”
“Absolutely not.” I shook my head firmly. “The last thing this world needs is another Viper.”
“Well, I agree with that too, but I think it would soften that cement heart of yours.”
“I like my cement heart.” I sighed.
Before he continued his quest to talk me into becoming a father, we heard the front door close. Mike sat up and peeked over the edge of the couch toward the kitchen.
“Hi,” Michelle sighed as she tossed her purse onto the island.
“Hey.” Mike sat up further. “What are you doing back so soon?”
“A couple of the girls couldn’t make it because their kids were sick, so we had a small group tonight. We pretty much just had dinner and called it a night.” She walked over and checked on Maura briefly before kissing Matthew on the forehead and sitting down on the couch next to Mike with another heavy sigh.
“I’m sorry. You sound bummed.” Big Mike lifted his arm and tucked it behind her head, pulling her in tight.
“I am a little, but now I get to hang with my favorite people instead.” She lifted her head and smiled at him.
“Mom?” Matthew asked.
“Yes, baby?”
He twisted his little face, thinking hard about whatever it was he was going to say next. “You’re kind of a woman, right?”
Michelle giggled and tilted her head to the side. “Yes, honey, I am. Why?”
“I was just wondering…” He paused and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “What are tits?”
Michelle sat up straight and gasped as Big Mike cringed, shutting his eyes tight.
“That’s my cue!” I hopped up and slapped Mike on the shoulder on my way out of the room. “See ya tomorrow, buddy. Nice seeing you again, Michelle!”