We hadn’t even made it downstairs by then.
I anchored her to me, her back to my front, kissing her temple, her cheek, her ear, her jaw.
“Every single day that I’ve waited for you,” I told her quietly, “and missed you, I regretted that I never got to buy you flowers. I plan to make up for that, every day for the rest of our lives.”
She started crying, and Cameron rushed to hug her legs, asking where her owie was.
“No owie, sweet pea,” she told him, patting his head. “Sometimes grown-ups cry when they’re very happy, when they get something really nice, that they never expected.”
We went down to the kitchen.
Iris started getting out the ingredients for French toast.
“Really, Iris, is that appropriate, in front of the boy?” I teased.
She giggled, and I loved it.
It was after breakfast, Cameron was coloring at the table, and I’d cornered Iris in the living room, then pulled her onto my lap, filling my hands with her.
She melted against me, but her eyes were serious. “On a scale of one to ten, how mad at me are you?”
Nothing had changed. I couldn’t hold onto my anger at her for long, couldn’t even summon any up if I’d tried, and that wasn’t only the lust talking. A big part of it was lust, but the rest was sheer, unadulterated relief.
I tried to explain this to her, but she wouldn’t believe me, so I told her she could make it up to me with a lot of raunchy sex.
“I think we might need to get a nanny,” she whispered in response. “I have two years’ worth of sexual frustration that I’m planning to take out on you, way more than I can keep relegated to nap and bedtime hours.”
That sounded like about the best thing I’d ever heard in my life.
We got married at a drive-thru chapel, exactly twenty minutes after we had our marriage license squared away, because we were in an inexplicable rush, and Iris claimed she’d always wanted a tacky, quickie Vegas wedding.
Cameron, who was sitting in the backseat, got a real kick out of it.
It was perfect. I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Iris and Cameron had come home, and they’d brought my home with them.
SOME HAPPY MONTHS LATER
My mother and father were shocked but thrilled when they found out they had a grandson. They had given up on that possibility years ago, which made it doubly joyful for them to be grandparents.
The circumstances that brought Cameron to them, however, they were not so thrilled about.
Any reminder of who the child’s mother was, or of her age, had them tight lipped and stiff, to say the least.
Iris seemed to enjoy getting a rise out of them, and playing it up, going into her most outrageous mood within a few minutes of being in their company. It positively tickled her.
Motherhood and marriage hadn’t tamed that wild thing inside of her.
Though in all fairness, my parents tended to walk right into it. Especially my mother.
“So you’re twenty-one now, Francis?” My mother asked her over the first course of dinner.
“Yes, and I go by Iris.”
“So young to be married and with a child,” my mother emphasized.
She was civil to Iris, but always in her tight expression, her pursed mouth, and her passive aggressive words, remained a silent but apparent disapproval.
I didn’t even have to ask, I knew why.
Not only did she think Iris was way too young for me, way too young for things to ever last, she also held my wife responsible for putting her oldest and closest friend behind bars.
It made for some interesting family dinners.
“Twenty-one? Oh that’s nothing. You’re forgetting that I was barely legal when Dair knocked me up.”
I had to cover my mouth to hide a laugh, then pat my dad roughly on the back when he nearly choked on his soup.
Iris beamed at him like he’d just made her day.
“Why would Daddy knock you, Mommy?” Cameron asked, looking back and forth between the adults, clearly confused.
“Daddies knock Mommies when they love each other very much, baby,” she told him without missing a beat.
“Is he going to knock you again?”
“Oh yeah. He knocked me just before dinner, sweetie.”
My dad was turning an interesting shade of red, and my mother’s gasps were filling the room, one after another.
Cameron’s face screwed up. “Does it hurt?”
“Naw, baby. Your daddy knows just what he’s doing. He’s a superb knocker.”
My mother stopped with the snide comments for quite some time after that round.
We got Cameron his first puppy for Christmas. His reaction when he found out was one of the happiest moments of my life, a moment of pure, perfect joy.
I was unspeakably grateful to Iris for saving that little slice of bliss for me.
We watched him frolicking in the backyard with his brand new golden retriever puppy.
“Did you know he’d be that happy to get a dog?” I asked Iris.
She was on my lap in an oversized rocking chair, head back on my shoulder, hands resting over mine on the armrests. “I had a hunch.”
“Well, thank you for waiting for me on that. It means a lot to me.”
“Oh just wait. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
I smiled and kissed her temple. “Are you going to explain that, or do I need to guess?”