“Uh, hi?”
“Mommy!” Callie shrieked. “Brett and Jewmy played princess tea party with me today!”
“Good deal, honey pot. Where’s your brother?”
“Bathroom,” Jeremy answered as he dabbed the corners of his mouth with a napkin like he was some member of high society. I guessed the man really liked his tea parties.
I heard commotion coming from the bathroom as I walked down the hall, and what I saw froze me on site. Brett was crouched down with both hands in the toilet bowl while Trevor had a hold of one of my son’s legs and Luke was pulling him from under his arms. And was that…? Why was my butter in the bathroom?
“On the count of three. One, two—”
“What’s going on?” At the sound of my voice, three pairs of grownup eyes swung to me, all with different levels of oh, shit, so busted reflected back at me.
“Mommy!” Cameron let out a delighted shout. “I twied to flush myself again!”
I couldn’t hold back my laugh at Brett’s exclamation of, “Again!”
Oh, this was just too damn funny. “Brett, did you try to butter up my son?”
“Technically,” Trevor answered, “it’s margarine, so there’s that…”
“Beauty, this isn’t what it looks like,” Brett flustered.
“Really? Because it looks like you got my kid stuck in the toilet, then tried to baste him,” I managed to get out between hysterical giggles.
“So it’s exactly what it looks like,” Luke laughed.
Finally taking pity on the poor guy, I walked over to Cameron. “All right, bub. Turn your foot so your toes are at the front.” He did as told and his little foot popped right out. When I turned back to the hulking men crowding in my cramped bathroom, Trevor and Luke looked like they were trying their damnedest to keep from laughing while Brett looked like he was about to have an aneurysm.
“Not our first rodeo,” I told him with a laugh. “Or our third.”
“Mommy, guess what!” Cameron asked excitedly as he hopped up and down on the bathroom floor, flushing incident long forgotten.
“What, pumpkin?”
“Brett’s da best babysitter ever! He gave us pizza and watched movies with us and we haves a buddy code dats like a secret where we don’t tell you when he says bad words by accident! But I can’t tell you cuz its buddy code! OH! And I frowed up…like a whoooooole bunches.”
I heard Brett grumble, “Kinda defeating the purpose of buddy code there, little man,” before Cameron took off into the living room to go play with his sister.
Luke slapped Brett on the shoulder, telling him, “We’re out, man. Don’t need to be witness to whatever she’s about to do to you.” Then he was gone.
Trevor did the sign of the cross on Brett before bailing out and seconds later, I heard the front door open and close.
“Kenz, I’m so damn sorry…” Brett started, but I held my hand up to stop him.
“I’m gonna go in order here, so try and keep up. First, no more buddy code, okay? I didn’t expect your first foray into babysitting to be a perfect ten, especially with those two, but you can’t teach them to keep secrets from me. Not even if it’s obvious they can’t keep their mouths shut to save their lives.” He gave me an ashamed nod. “Second, if something happens like, oh say, my son trying to flush himself down the toilet and getting stuck, all you have to do is call me. Odds are I’ll know how to get him out of whatever he got himself into, so there won’t be a need to butter him up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Also, I get you were trying to win cool points, but heads up, any dairy after a stomach virus is a definite no no. But I’m pretty certain you learned that lesson the hard way.”
“That’s the friggin’ understatement of the century. You must hate me right now,” he mumbled with his head hung, but I pushed forward, ignoring his statement.
“And you have to watch your language. I know it’s hard, trust me, but they’re like little sponges. Those damn kids soak up everything.”
“Ain’t that the damn truth.”
“And last…thank you.”
His head shot up as he stared back at me with his wide brown eyes. “Thank you? For what? I’m the worst babysitter in the history of babysitting.”
I couldn’t help myself; he was just so damn cute standing there all down on himself. I stepped up to him and cupped his cheek. “Thank you for liking my kids so much that you wanted to spoil them with pizza, even though it wasn’t the best idea since they’ve been sick to their stomachs. Thank you for playing princess tea party with my little girl. I promise you, that made her entire week. Thank you for sitting through God knows how many kids movies just because it’s what they wanted.”