3
Rachel
Margaritas with Laura and Trixie were exactly what I needed. It was nice to sit down someplace and let another human bring me a drink for a change. I didn’t mind waiting tables but relaxing with my friends on a rare night out was a huge treat. Laura and Trixie appreciated it because, with their little ones at home, they hardly ever got out except to go to work. Otherwise, it was the grocery run with a toddler sitting in the cart kicking their shoes off or fussing because it was past naptime. Still, here they sat, showing pics of their kids to me, flipping through jam-packed camera rolls full of cute, chubby babies who chewed on silly things or sat in a chair upside down or put shoes on their hands.
“This morning, Brenna cried because I gave her Fruit Loops. Which she wants for breakfast every single day and will have a massive tantrum if I try to feed her anything else. But today, the damn toucan failed me. She screamed for toast, and then I cut it the wrong way. My mom makes it in squares, and I did it in triangles. I mean, this was a nuclear fallout level meltdown. The last time it got this bad was when we had to leave the park,” Laura said, shaking her head. The woman had faced down—and gunned down—a serial killer. She shuddered at the thought of her two-year-old angel-faced daughter’s tantrum.
“You bring that baby to me. I’ll cut that toast however she wants. She doesn’t have to see a Fruit Loop ever again,” I said, “No wonder she cried when she could be having Aunt Rachel’s blueberry pie for breakfast instead of some rainbow-colored crap in a bowl.”
“Yeah, I give her crap all the time,” Laura snarked. “Way to show solidarity.”
“I don’t have kids. I don’t even have time for a cat. What solidarity? I work all the time,” I countered.
“Ashton’s getting another tooth. It’s brutal. I swear he’s been teething since he was seven months old. Like one after another, and it’s miserable. I just hate to see him suffer,” Trixie added.
“Teething’s a bitch. We gave Brenna a frozen strawberry in one of those mesh fruit feeder things to gnaw on and it helped the pain. Looks like she’s dribbling blood down her chin, but whatever helps, right?” Laura said.
“So, do they just keep getting teeth over and over? It’s not a thing where they get the first four and then the next four and then boom, you’re done? It’s ongoing?” I asked.
“It’s a never-ending hell of screaming, crying, and snot,” Laura supplied.
“Ashton doesn’t cry. He whimpers and it breaks my heart. Damon was leaving for work and kissed him, and Ashton whined a little and Damon goes, ‘I fucking hate teeth. Who can we pay to make all the teeth come in at once with no pain?’ and I’m like… God? I don’t know. That’s not really a thing.”
“Dads can’t take it,” Laura agreed. “Brody damn near cried when Brenna had an ear infection the first time. We didn’t know how to make her feel better and she just cried and clung to me. I didn’t want to put her down for the doctor to examine her. I made them do it while I held her, and I thought he was going to lose it and have to be escorted from the building.”
“And men go to war,” I shook my head. “How do they handle a battlefield scenario when a pediatrician’s office can undo them?”
“It’s the helplessness,” Trixie said. “On a battlefield, they have a goal, and they can shoot at stuff. In a doctor’s office they’re useless, and it’s a nightmare. I would not have been surprised if Damon had tried to bribe someone to give Ashton a pain shot when he was cutting his first tooth. It’s horrible wishing you could soothe them, and it’s way worse than if you were hurting. But I think sometimes moms have the built-in practicality thing. Where we know it’s awful, but we know they’ll get through it unharmed.”
“If it had been anyone but Brenna, I would’ve been openly drinking during the screaming fit. For example, if it was your kid, I’d be ‘bottoms up, bitches’,” Laura laughed.
We raised our glasses in a toast. “To finally getting out of the house alone,” Laura said.
“To the three of us, kicking ass and taking names.”
“To your beautiful babies, and my eventual diner,” I said.
“Are you still planning to revamp the menu?”
“That’s what I want to do. But the truth is, I’m not sure the town will go for it. The diner’s such an institution that if I so much as take the tuna melt off the menu, I’m pretty sure they’d come at me with pitchforks and torches.”
“Maybe a gradual change is better,” Trixie offered. “Try and get Hugh to adopt a few changes now, and next year when you buy in, you can do more. Kind of let the town get their feet wet with a couple new items and phase out a few old ones.”