“Goddammit,” I groan. “That’s not—I need to go up there.”
“Just give it a minute, okay? You know Tyson’s good with her. He’ll make it okay.”
“He’s probably mad at us too, huh?”
There’s a little smile on Dom’s face. “You know how he gets.”
“Do I ever,” I mutter. “I’m probably going to get chewed out.”
“Eh. Probably. Better you than me, I guess.”
“Rude.” I turn toward the kitchen, suddenly needing to do something with my hands.
“Where did Otter go?” Dom asks, trailing after me.
The dishwasher is still open, partially unloaded. I start grabbing plates and stacking them on the counter. “Don’t know. And right now, I don’t care.”
“Sure you don’t.”
“You’re not funny.”
“Not trying to be.”
“You know, I think I liked it better when you didn’t talk as much.” I wince as soon as the words come out. “I didn’t mean that like it sounded.”
“That’s good,” he says easily. “Because if you did, you sounded like a jerk.”
“And we all know I’m not a jerk at all.”
“Mostly. You are going to break those plates, slamming them on the counter like that.”
“It’s fine. Besides, isn’t breaking dishes supposed to be cathartic? It always is in the movies.”
“Yeah, but then you’d have to clean it up. They don’t show you that part in the movies.”
I grip the edges of the counter. “He said—he said it’s too much sometimes. Having her here. With the twins on the way.”
“That—doesn’t sound like him.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
“He’s usually the calm one.”
“Yeah.”
“But that doesn’t mean he always has to be.”
“Great. So both of us will be messes. Fantastic.”
“There was this girl.”
“Apropos of what now?”
He clears his throat, and I turn to face him. He’s sitting down at the table. He’s so big, it looks almost comical, like he’s at a child’s tea party. “A few months back, I got called out to a house. Neighbors had called. Said there’d been screaming at the house next door. They heard it every now and then, but it sounded like it’d been escalating and they were worried. There was a little girl that lived in the house, and they wanted to make sure she was safe.”
“I don’t know how you do it,” I admit.
“What?”