Page 66 of Frog

“She loves you too much if you ask me,” Cy was grumbling as he got ready for bed that night.

“Howzat?” I asked, smiling at him as I watched him storm around the room from the safety of the bed.

“You haven’t noticed that she’s always touching you and hugging on you and leaning on you and staring at you… have you missed all that?”

I smiled at him. “C’mere, darlin’.”

“No, I’m serious,” he snipped at me. “I know she loves me, but I also think that if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, she wouldn’t be all that broken up.”

My laughter had to be stifled so I used my pillow.

“Web.”

I lay down and smothered myself. When he pulled the pillow away, the tears were rolling down my cheeks.

“Weber Yates!”

“You’re jealous of your own sister.”

He was glaring at me as I pulled him down on top of me.

“You know you’re the only one I see, idjit.”

“Nice,” he muttered, but disgruntlement gave way to passion when I kissed him. Four months after we had made things permanent, swore the forever to each other, three months after a civil union ceremony that we had at his parents’ place in Half Moon Bay that he invited everyone he knew to, and two months after Carolyn legally made me the guardian of her children that her ex had given her full custody of, still I made the man breathless. I had thought that domesticity would kill my allure, that seeing me entrenched in his life would make me less than hot. But that was not the case. Seeing me in the kitchen at the end of the day, finding me in the backyard watering the lawn, watching me throw the ball for the dog… all those things made the man wild for me. He loved it. And it was amazing.

We were a family, one that I had never hoped to have.

I knew Carolyn was still trying to put money into my checking account that I shared with Cy, but he had it blocked so she couldn’t. I didn’t need her money. I just needed her and her kids and all of them loving me.

I had reconciled the what-made-a-man-a-man part with who I was. Because I was the center of everything. Without me, Cy was different, not the man he was now, warm and loving and free. Without me, the boys didn’t feel protected and grounded and safe. Without me, Carolyn didn’t have a wall to lean on, someone who had her back no matter what. They were all a blessing, especially Cy, but I mattered too, and I wouldn’t give that up for anything.

“Oh dear God, what is that?” Cy whimpered beside me, bringing me back from my wildly roaming thoughts to the here and now of the Easter program.

“It’s a xylophone,” I informed him.

“A what?” Carolyn whispered from the other side of me.

I rolled my eyes. “Micah plays the xylophone and sings. Where have you people been?”

“Are you kidding me?” Carolyn poked me in the arm.

“It’s loud too,” Tristan informed his uncle from the other side of him, putting his hands over his ears. “That’s why Weber makes him practice in the garage.”

“That’s why he’s been in the garage?” Cy asked me.

I nodded as the first notes on the xylophone were struck. The microphone was right there, right where the resounding noise could travel all the way through the crowd and run straight up your spine to the center of your brain.

The lady in front of us said ohmygod, but not in a good way.

The man behind me jolted and kicked my chair. “Sorry,” he gasped, startled.

Carolyn started giggling, Pip climbed out of his seat and into my lap, and Cy turned to me like it was all my fault.

“What?”

“Are you kidding?” He was indignant. “This could damage my cerebral cortex.”

I shook my head. “Probably not.”