"I am not ready to raise a kid."
"No one's signing you up for a Father of the Year award."
The universe is made of stories. And Maeve Fluer-Reyes had her own.
With pictured misfits in her life, the twelve-year-old was up for anything as long as she...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
SEBASTIAN REYES
I thought kids were the easiest creatures to impress. I couldn't be more wrong.
The simplicity of entertaining children, I quickly realized, was a naive assumption that crumbled in the face of my daughter's vehement resistance to my brother. And truth be told, I couldn't entirely blame her. He was simply living up to his reputation.
Emmett was a painfully full-of-life person. At nineteen, he exuded an almost feral energy. It unsettled those around him, keeping them at a distance, which suited that idiot just fine. He had a habit of forgetting to 'man up,' as he called it, often urging others, including me, to live a little. To act like a happening bachelor. And not a grumpy widower.
Even then, Emmett had a presence that demanded attention, albeit in a more restless and impulsive manner than a normal sane person.
"Mr. Reyes?"
"Hmm?"
"He is so annoying," Maeve croaked out, struggling to free herself from a certain arm slung over her shoulders. "Can I get my taser back?" She pleaded, and I rolled my eyes, knowing they were up to no good.
Just as I was about to turn her down, Emmett spoke up, taking over the threat with a mischievous glint in his eyes. "I am afraid that won't work, Spider-Girl. How about we drop by to the wrestling ring?"
"You're impossible, Red-Head!"
"They're auburn!" Emmett insisted, running an unoccupied hand through his hair as if to emphasize the exact shade, a touch of defiance in his tone.
"Doesn't make them look any better."
Idiots.
Feeling like the only adult in the room, I shook my head as I watched a blindsided Maeve teetering on the edge of the couch. The said person, clearly enjoying his advantage in size, sat leaned back, his legs sprawled across the centre table in that moment of ease. I lingered in the kitchen, keeping an ear on the chaos while pretending to focus on making a cup of coffee.
The evening news droned on in the background, but I was only half-listening. I was not a coffee person on most days, but I didn't hate it either. Reese would have raised hell if she caught me sipping alcohol with a kid around, so I figured coffee was simply helping my case.
Ever since my sister learned about Maeve, she transformed into a one-stop guide on 'How to Raise a Kid,' bombarding me with advice, one lecture at a time.
Her son, Caleb, roughly the same age as Maeve, proved to be a handful—a bit too much, I'd say, who inexplicably was a problem magnet. Not that I cared. I didn't mind him as long as he kept his mother preoccupied.
As I poured myself a cup of coffee, my phone buzzed incessantly with messages from Reese, each one more frantic than the last. She had been texting non-stop from the minute I ranted to her about what went down with Kaiden. To say the least, she wasn't too happy to hear that Kaiden was still an asshole.
