Coffee, Grit, and my Dad's Best Shoes 5.?

And this is a scene from chapter 5 that I really liked, and it's adorable and relatively not-angsty, and KOBY. You don't really need any summary from before or after :P Just that Parker's trying to put himself together again.

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I hadn't eaten supper that night, and come the next morning, I was already feeling the effects of it. My willingness to eat breakfast decreased tenfold, and in the end, all I could manage was a hard-boiled egg and a couple bites of plain toast. Plus coffee, but that hardly counted.

I'd shoved the plate as far away from me as the dining room table would allow, and was bent over a memo-pad with little floral designs around the edges. Koby was sitting next to me, half eating and half playing with his eggs and a half a piece of bacon. Honestly, even with the loud explosion sound effects he was making, plus the mess that he'd made of the floor and his chair, his presence was probably the only thing reminding me that I needed to stay on-task.

It'd been a partial lie when I told Chad that I was a receptionist at a salon. I'd applied, they'd wanted an interview, I'd done that yesterday before Braz and Nicky picked me up, and they hadn't gotten back to me. Wouldn't for another week. So I'd drawn one box in the top corner of the paper that contained a list of other possible job opportunities, and under that, a reminder that Peyton's was both the most popular independently owned hair salon in town, and that they were the only ones offering a scholarship program.

The rest of the page was a bigger list. A broader one that I was still adding to, because the harder I thought, the more I realized how much there was to do. I'd just finished adding 'email Mai and Nicky and Michael requesting a list of Braz's favourite foods and music' - I knew what his old ones were, but those sorts of things were subject to change as more was put out and discovered- when Koby decided to lean over and inquire as to what I was doing.

I glanced at him, tapping the bottom of my pen against the pad, and sighed. "Making a list. How's breakfast going?"

He totally ignored the question, countering with one of his own. "What kind of list is it?"

"A life list." I traced over Braz's name a few times, because it was soothing to write, and my handwriting was... loopy. Distracting.

"What's a life list?"

Another glance at him, and I put my pen down. "It's a list of things that I have to do." Deep breath. "Because when you grow up, life gets complicated like that."

"Oh." He licked his lips and finally, finally shoved the last of his bacon into his mouth. And then wiped his hands on his shirt. And ignored me when I scolded him for it. "What kinds of things are on it?" He jabbed a still-greasy finger at number five. "What's this one?"

I sighed again, gently brushing his hand away with mine, and rubbed my forehead with my palms. "That one says that I need to try get back in touch with my dad."

"Oh." He wiggled a little and cradled his jaw in his hands. "You wanna talk to our dad?"

I watched him for a second, trying to figure out how to answer that question. It wasn't like we'd never tried to explain this to him, but it was always difficult. Dad was a raw spot with me, and Mom was a raw spot with me, and we didn't want the fact that he was the result of her whoring herself out for drug money to be a raw spot with him. "No. We have different daddies, remember?"

I felt like we'd just had this conversation a month ago, tops.

"Oh yeah." He licked his lips. "That's why I have brown skin and dark hair, and why you have white skin and blonde hair."

I smiled. "Exactly."

And out tumbled the inevitable question. The one that, somehow, he hadn't asked directly yet. "If we have the same mommy, how can we have different daddies?"

I stared at him, and he just kept staring at the paper, and, eventually, I'd formulated enough of a rough sketch of what I was going to tell him to feel safe continuing. "Well, because a baby's... made from two different things. And one thing is found in-" I paused, because I knew trans people, and something about saying 'boy' felt a little off. It would've been the easy way out, but if I was going to date an activist, I'd have to be willing to explain things to my brother in more detail than that. "It's found in someone who has a penis. It's called sperm." I prayed that that would suffice. "The other thing is called an egg, and eggs come from different people. With vaginas."

"Daddies have sperm, right?"

I smiled, offering a hesitant, "Most of the time, yeah. But a person with sperm has to share that sperm with a person who has an egg in them. And when a sperm and an egg get together, they make a baby." I could feel my cheeks burning, and I hoped against hope that he couldn't see how bad I was blushing. "So. Our mom had the eggs in her, but she got my sperm from a different dad than she got your sperm. Make sense?"

It took him a few seconds, but he nodded. Slowly. "Yeah. Do all mommies get sperm from different daddies?"

Ouch. There was the kicker. I smiled as gently as I could and shook my head. "No. But that doesn't matter, okay?" He knew that 'no' meant we weren't exactly a normal family, and I really, really didn't want him to feel bad about that. The kid had other things to occupy his mental space with.

"Okay." There was another pause, and then a, "Do you have sperm or an egg?"

I choked on my spit, covering my mouth with one hand. "Um. Sperm."

"Do all boys have sperm?"

Oh God above help me. "Not all of them."

"Does that mean they have an egg?"

I paused a couple beats. "Some of them."

It was his turn to pause, and his little nose scrunched up like it did when he was thinking about something a little too hard. "Then do some girls have sperm and some have eggs?"

I just nodded.

"Do I have sperm or an egg?" He looked up at me, and I don't think I'd ever felt so uncomfortable meeting his gaze before.

"Sperm." Anything more than one-worded answers had me wanting to bail and call Leanne from her room. But if I was going to be this kid's father figure, I'd have to handle the nitty-gritty sex and body stuff myself. I managed to choke out a, "You have a penis, remember?"

"People with eggs get pregnant, right? The mommies?"

I nodded again, and this one was hesitant. "Usually they're mommies, yeah."

His shoulders drooped, his hands fell away, and his lip jutted. "Does that mean I can't get pregmint?"

A laugh started in my chest and sputtered out before I could stop it, and I covered my mouth with one hand. Wow the kid looked disappointed. "Pregnant," I corrected, "and no, you can't. But if you get married to a girl one day, she can probably get pregnant."

His eyes got wide, and his smile came back full-force. "Because I'll give her my sperm?"

I choked on the next round of laughter, hand moving from my mouth to my eyes. My fingertips were pressed against my cheeks. I could feel how hot they were getting, but my smile wouldn't budge. "Yes, Koby, with your sperm."

There was another, more prolonged pause, before he asked the Question of Doom. "How do I give her my sperm?"

"Oookay." I parted two fingers so I could peek out at him. "That's a conversation for when you're a little older, okay? You don't need to worry about it quite yet."

His shoulders slumped, and the disappointment was back. He didn't say anything for a while, so I decided that it was safe to go back to dreading my list. More importantly, dreading the task he'd brought so much attention to.

5.) At least try to fix things with Dad. ... which means finding dad's contact information. which means forgiving dad.

and the follow-up:

6.) take care of internalized bitterness towards parents.

and the follow-up to that:

7.) get involved in mom's life again. if taylor can do it, so can i. and speaking of which, forming some semblance of a relationship with the older brother unit is probably a good idea.

I was halfway to having a total mental breakdown over it when Koby belatedly posed his next question.

"Does Brazil have an egg in him?"

I looked up so sharply that it send spikes of pain through my neck. I winced and rubbed at the spot. "Wait, what?"

"Does Brazil have an egg in him?" He was looking at me like I was totally incompetent, and I couldn't say that I blamed him. I felt a little like he'd rendered me unable to form coherent, logical thought patterns.

"Um. No." I cleared my throat. "Braz has sperm, too."

"Oh." Jeez, that was becoming his response to everything. "Then you can't give him your sperm and make a baby with it when you get married?"

My eyes widened a little bit, in part because I hadn't actually been aware that he knew about Braz, and in part because- well, sex questions. He'd caught me totally unprepared to answer those.

"Who says we're getting married?"

He shrugged and climbed off of his chair, retrieving a toy car from the corner of the table. "I asked Aunty how come you held his hand when I saw him, and she said it's 'cause you're in love with him." His nose wrinkled. "I didn't know boys and boys could do that. I saw it on her show once, but that was just TV." He sighed, and I couldn't quite decipher the emotion behind it. I was too busy being mortified and a tad bit scared. Of my four-year-old brother, of all people.

I cleared my throat, deciding that making a swift recovery was probably a better idea than letting myself flounder. "Oh. Well... yeah, I guess Braz and I are in love." I was still kind of scared that it was too early to use that massive a term for it, but nothing else... fit. "But no, we can't... make babies." Oh good Lord. "We'd have to adopt them. Plus, we'll have you. You'd be like our son, if we do get married one day." I frowned. "But that's a long time away, okay? Don't... start making plans for it just yet."

He wandered to the doorway to the kitchen, stopping inside of it to look up at me. "So me and my baby brothers and sisters will have two daddies?"

Shit. I swallowed and nodded. "Yeah. Is that... is that okay?"

He grinned at me. "Yeah. I like Brazil." He spun around on his heel and disappeared, calling a, "He'd be a good other-daddy!"

I exhaled slowly, thunking my forehead against the tabletop. Well, that officially took care of number three, which read:

3.) somehow explain to Koby that I like boys and that he's guaranteed to have two daddies one day instead of a dad and a mom and pray to God and all the angels or whatever else is up there that he's okay with that

I lifted my head and put a big, triumphant- if not a bit shaky- check-mark over the number three. Which left me with numbers one and two, which I decided would take priority for the day. Drop off my resumes at all the places listed in the corner, and start extensive planning for Saturday And then it would be Saturday. Show time. I just... wasn't ready to tackle the family stuff yet. It could wait. Not long- I kept trying to drill that in so I wouldn't start procrastinating- but for a few days. At least until I made sure that I could take care of Braz. If last night had been any indicator, he'd need the TLC for a while.