Still Waters

Chapter 42

                                         *** MATURE CONTENT AHEAD ***

The next morning was like the night before had never happened. I walked sleepily into the kitchen and stared groggily at Kenney's smiling face. Was I dreaming? Quite possible since, once again, I hadn't gone to sleep until right before the sun came up. And judging from the orange streak of light beaming right across the kitchen, the sun hadn't finished rising yet. It occurred to me that Kenney may have designed that house specifically so that the sun would angle through the kitchen window just like that every morning in time for breakfast.

Genius.

The guy was truly a genius at every one of his crafts and every single hobby, and I always admired that. I made a mental note to tell him sometime. Kenney made his way over to the table, frying pan in hand, and scooped out two platefuls of hash browns. He had also already laid out a plate of fresh fruit and another of bacon, his all-time favorite food ever.

He patted the seat next to him and I padded across the cold tile floor to join him.

"Good morning."

"Good morning," I answered sleepily.

He smiled at me, and instead of smiling back, I wondered what he was smiling at.

"Watch this." He jumped up and did a quick tick for me. Kenney never missed an opportunity to show off the fact that he could still breakdance.

I smiled and chuckled.

Sensing that we were cautiously back on good terms now, he went into the living room and cranked his house-wide surround sound up just in time for the first chorus of Bell Biv Devo's Poison. He danced back into the kitchen and stopped right in front of me, singing at the top of his lungs. Then he proceeded to do the entire BBD video by heart, as if he had never stopped doing it since elementary school.

When the song went off, he came and sat back down, not even a little out of breath from all that spinning and jumping around, then bowed his head to say grace. Almost halfway through my own plate, I bowed my head with him. When he was finished, I echoed "Amen," and went back to eating. He smiled down at his food, but didn't comment on how I had become more and more cooperative with all of his "church stuff" - as Collin liked to call it. I even bowed my head with him every now and then when he said his nightly prayers "over our home," "over Tashi and the baby" and "over our peeps." Before I just used to give him the side-eye. Not because I wasn't raised in church. It was just that by that time, Collin had me truly thinking...what's the point? Now, though, sometimes I even held Kenney's hand while he prayed over the house and our friends and family. Sometimes...

I guessed Kenney had finished the conversation that he'd started with God the night before, too, since he was in such a good mood now.

"You know I've always been a sucker for a man who can tick."

I don't know why I said that, and as soon as I did, I wanted to reel the words back in like a fish on a fishing rod. Kenney just made a little "Huh..." sound, like that was interesting, and then put his head down and kept eating. After breakfast, Kenney went to work and I started cleaning. I had become some kind of cleaning maniac in my third trimester and, truth be told, it was a little out of control. Kenney couldn't even put a glass down before I picked it up and put it in the dishwasher. Plastic cups were even worse. Because the smell of them was making me progressively more and more sick, I banned the use of them altogether.