Zayn stood in the middle of your son’s room surrounded by buckets and cans of paint. The walls were now bear with only sticky patches of glue left behind from the dinosaur stickers he had taken down. Jeremiah has now out grown his dinosaur theme room claiming ‘he is not a baby anymore’ and wants his room to resemble his ‘older self’. The boy developed an interest in dinosaurs at 8months old when you brought home some books for Remy after she had been begging for more books to read, since she was the top reader in her class. The 8 year old girl sat next to her baby brother with a “The Land Before Time” book and began thumbing the pages. To your surprise, you walked in to the living room to find Remy sitting with the open book in her lap sounding out the pages word for word in her own pace and Jeremiah giving her his complete attention. Since then, dinosaurs have been his favorite but now at the age of 8 he has developed a new interest, aside from superheroes. Growing up, the kids have always taken interest in Zayn’s artistic skills. They admire his ability to draw and let his mind express its feelings on the surface he chose. He often found himself drawing pictures at his kids request and later finding them taped to the back of their bedroom doors. So when Jeremiah came up with the idea of re-doing his room, he wanted superheroes on his walls but only with the artistic touch of his father’s hand. With a marker in hand, Zayn sketched out his ideas of how he would place the many favorite heroes from marvel. With the basic outline and labels on the walls, he picked up a can of black spray paint and began creating the world of superheroes in his son’s bedroom.
After a couple hours of spraying and coloring the walls, he heard the front door open and the sound of his two favorite girls’ voices filled the house. He walked out the room and down stairs wiping away sweat and paint from his face and arms to find you rummaging through grocery bags on the counter while Remy sat at the island nibbling on an orange. “Hi baby,” he placed a kiss on Remy’s head and went around to greet you with a simple soft kiss to the lips “Hi honey” he mumbled.
“Hello handsome, why do you have paint on your face, hmm?” You asked wiping at the green paint on his chin with your thumb. Remy only smiled at how funny her dad looked with colorfully stained clothes but turned her attention back down to her hands.
“I started on Jer’s room after taking him to school this morning. The Hulk is coming out pretty good.” You giggled and wrapped your arms around him.
“Just make sure you get most of the paint on the walls and not yourself.” Turning to look at Remy, you noticed she was deep in thought and figured she must be thinking about the conversation you both had on your way home. She was nervous about bringing up the topic with her dad. A topic she had become comfortable to speak about with you for the last couple of weeks but when you told her she also had to speak with her dad, she knew he would not be an easy listener to a topic having to so with ‘a boy’. You nudged Zayn to get his attention off the bag of chips he was now almost finished with and gestured over to Remy who was now picking at her orange peels. He took a look at his little girl, who was not so little anymore at the age of 16, and became concerned wondering why she looked like something was floating around in her head.
“Everything alright ladybug?” The nickname he used for Remy had become a name only HE was able to use since she was two years old. That is because she only responded when HE used it, to others it was just ‘Rems’ or ‘Remy’. She looked up at you biting her lip and then shifting her eyes to her dad giving him a small sided smile.
“Yeah, everything is fine dad. I just... um I was thinking about, something and I uh need to talk to you about it.” Zayn looked at you worried but you smiled and rubbed his back telling him ‘its ok’ with a warm smile.
“Ok, I’m listening.”
“I was wondering if I could go out Friday with my friends.”
Zayn shrugged, it wasn’t something she hadn’t done before. “I don’t see why not, where are you girls going? Do you want me to drop you off?”
