Mind Games

“Oh God, Bray. We’ve got another hour before we have to get up. Go back to sleep.”

Ty reached around, flipped Bray onto the bed, tucked him. “You can sleep here, but go back to sleep.”

“I’m hungry! You said I could have bacon like Thea makes and Eggos.”

“It’s still dark.”

“But I’m really, really hungry.” He patted Ty’s cheek. “Really hungry, and I have to brush my teeth and I have to get dressed and you have to tie my new shoes ’cause I still can’t do it. And you have to take pictures, you said.”

“You’re killing me, Bray. Killing me.”

Unconcerned by that, Bray wiggled, and babbled on while Ty clung to the illusion of sleep.

As he’d clung to it at two in the morning when he’d stared at the ceiling imagining the school bus as a toothy yellow shark and Bray as the clown fish—thanks, Nemo—it swallowed.

Or at three in the morning, when he nearly drifted off before he imagined Bray in a dark, empty school, crying for his daddy.

Had he really thought it would get easier as Bray grew? When he’d rocked and walked and tried to soothe a wailing, teething toddler, he’d convinced himself it would get easier.

When he’d struggled through the frustrations and complexities and general insanity of potty training, he’d sworn it had to get easier.

When he’d fought not to panic when Bray spiked a fever of 102.3, he’d promised them both it would get easier.

Mostly, it had. But there were times. Good God, there were times.

“Go down and make me coffee.”

“Daddy!” Giggling, Bray patted Ty’s cheek again.

“The minute you’re tall enough, your primary job’s going to be making my coffee.”

“Okay.”

Ty opened his eyes, looked at the face nose to nose with his, the utter sweetness of it surrounded by wild bed hair.

“I love you, Bray. You monster.”

“Grr, grr, chomp! I love you, Daddy. I’m really, really, really hungry!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Eat this!” And tickled the boy into delirium.

But he got up, lumbered his way downstairs. He gulped down coffee while Bray raced around the house like a maniac on speed.

He lined a cookie sheet with parchment paper—a product he hadn’t known existed before he’d googled “bacon in the oven.”

He shoved bacon in the oven, then, because the coffee hadn’t finished the job, had to google “bacon in the oven” again for the next steps.

“Twenty minutes, pal. Let’s go brush the green off your teeth.”

“Not green!”

“They would be if I didn’t make you brush them.”

In twenty minutes, Ty had his second cup of coffee with bacon and Eggos. He decided Bray had meant the hungry, as he ate four pieces of bacon and two Eggos.

Which made Ty worry he’d puke up breakfast on the bus and start his school career in humiliation.

He helped his boy dress, added another shoe-tying lesson. Getting closer there. He packed the prized Endon lunch box that went into the prized Endon backpack.