Our flight from Daytona to New York hadn’t even left the gate when my mother’s premonition about me hurting my foot came true.  You know that place in the plane where they say, “Watch your step…” about sixteen billion times when people are getting on the plane?  Well, despite watching my step, I still managed to place my foot in some odd position that hurt like a son of a bitch.  This led to me trying to quickly get out of said position which in turn sent me head first into the flight attendant who had warned me to watch my step. As I body checked the poor guy, I also managed to land on my foot the wrong way yet again and all sorts of drama ensued.  

Christian nearly pissed his pants with laughter because like me, he is unable to watch someone fall down without laughing, and seeing that he saw me fall from behind made it even more comical.  Of course he was also making sure that I was okay while he was laughing. And frankly I was laughing too, but I’m sure people thought he was a giant asshole for laughing so hard at my pain.  I did have to slap him at one point when tears were streaming down his cheeks while he was undoubtedly replaying the fall over and over in slow motion in his head, but I knew if the tables were turned I’d be doing the same thing.

Kevin meanwhile didn’t laugh and went into Crazy Overprotective Oh My God mode.  While I insisted that I was okay and just needed an ice pack and some vodka, he was sure that we needed to get off of the plane and go straight to the hospital.  As I affixed Hello Kitty band-aids to my scrapes however, I assured him that Manhattan had hospitals too and since I was already on the plane I wasn’t getting off.

Thankfully the flight attendant, who we quickly learned was named Andrew, wasn’t hurt in our happy full-contact body hug/tackle moment.  I’m sure he had some sore muscles later on, but he happened to be one of my readers and was too excited about meeting me and reading my new book to care that I’d nearly knocked him on his ass.  I had a copy of my yet-to-be-released book in my carry on and wrote a lovely dedication to the young man before I was too drunk on vodka to form complete sentences.  He in turn was very happy and promised that he would cherish any bruises I gave him and wouldn’t tell the world what a colossal klutz I was.

I spent the remainder of the flight drinking to numb the pain and had my rapidly swelling foot elevated and wrapped in ice packs.  I didn’t get one stitch of knitting done, nor did I care, and by the time we landed in New York, my foot and ankle were all sorts of lovely shades of black and blue.  It was so colorful, in fact, that everyone, including myself, agreed that a wheelchair was needed for the deplaning process.  Then thanks to my new flight attendant friend Andrew, we were whisked through JFK on one of those beeping golf cart things. Little did I know, JFK actually has a privately owned medical center that they use for passengers who need medical attention.  Once we had our luggage we found ourselves in a private shuttle with Andrew and a representative from the airline which took us to the medical center. 

The doctor I saw told me that I had a “bad sprain,” set me up with a new bottle of my good friend Vicodin and in addition to crutches I had a lovely contraption on my foot that I could eventually walk in once I  wasn’t in as much pain. Andrew, thankfully, checked out just fine and only had a bruise on his arm where I’d grabbed him in my fruitless pursuit to avoid falling down when we’d crashed.

It wasn’t exactly how I’d envisioned my trip to New York starting, but in retrospect it actually kind of helped matters because instead of obsessing over the fact that I was in New York where the ghost of my little brother would follow me everywhere, I was more concerned with being pain-free and getting a nap worked into my schedule as soon as possible. 

I’d forgotten in all of the chaos to turn my cell phone on until after we’d left the medical center and as soon as I turned it on Jules was calling me. I answered with a giggle, “Hey, Jules… we’re here, I’m sorry I forgot to turn my phone on and well… it’s been an event.”

“You’re going to give me a heart attack one of these days, I swear.  You were supposed to be here almost three hours ago. I’ve been calling your phone and no answer… so then I start checking the news and the airlines thinking ‘Oh God they’ve had a crash…’ but there’s nothing about that.  What the heck happened?”

“Sprained my ankle-foot,” I said and giggled at my new word.  I was so high on Vicodin and the lingering vodka in my system that everything was funny to me.  Something about saying ankle-foot was cracking me up, I kept saying it over and over before falling into giggle fits.

She laughed too, “Oh bloody hell…”

“I know… it was on the plane before we even took off from Florida.  And because it involved this utterly adorable flight attendant named Andrew it was like a work place incident that they had to do paperwork on and shit.  We had an airline representative with us and everything… big shit.  Did you know JFK has its own private medical center?  And those beepy cart things are really damn fast, no wonder they beep, I thought we were going to run someone over.  Chris said he felt like a rock star which made me laugh because Kevin really is a rock star. Wait…What was I saying?”

“What drugs are you on, honey?”

“Vicodinnn and vodkaaaaah…” I purred and she giggled in my ear.  She then told me to give my phone to someone who wasn’t doped up and proceeded to talk to Christian.  He, of course, relayed the whole story to her with lots of inappropriate giggling.

By the time we’d made it to Josef’s place my vodka was wearing off and the Vicodin wasn’t exactly running through my system as well as I needed it to be.  In other words I was a whole lot of miserable.

Kevin placed a fresh ice pack on my ankle carefully and also handed me a box of tissues with a smile. I’d taken to breaking out into spontaneous crying jags when my ankle-foot would have a spike of pain and I’d get bathed in a wave of self pity.  I snatched one of the tissues out of the box with a groan, and a slight smile, then wiped at my newest set of tears, “Fucking ankle-foot…”

When he sat down with me on the couch I leaned into him and rested my head on his shoulder while hugging his arm, “Can I get you anything else?”  I shook my head against his arm and smiled when he kissed the top of my head.  “Christian said dinner should be here soon.  I think real food should help a little…”

“What, the goldfish crackers on the plane and the granola bar at the medical center isn’t enough to work with the drugs in my body?” I teased.

He chuckled, “Um, no.”  I closed my eyes and was very happy in my snuggle with Kevin’s arm while his hand rested on my thigh, his fingers dangerously close to Inner Thigh Territory but not in a horribly dirty way.  Had I not been so miserable I would have totally been taking advantage of his hand placement but not even The Sex sounded good to me right then which was a damn shame.  “Did you get a hold of your mom?”

I chuckled, “Yeah.  She wasn’t surprised, of course, but she did feel bad that I was in so much pain.  I told her that she needs to figure out how to somehow alter her premonitions so that if they’re at an inconvenient time they can be rescheduled.  She said she’d work on it.”

The doorbell rang and Christian suddenly appeared singing, “Dinner time!”  Kevin and I giggled and resumed our conversation only to be interrupted once more by Christian, “Kel, close your eyes…”

“What?”

“Close. Your. Eyes.”

“Um, why?”

“Because I have something utterly delicious to give you but I want it to be a surprise now close your freaking eyes, woman!”

I rolled my eyes first and then closed them, “Okay… now gimmie.” We all giggled and then I felt something much bigger and heavier than I expected being put into my lap.  I opened my eyes in a flash and set my sights on the most beautiful, wonderful, Baby Man in the world.  “Miles!” I cooed as I wrapped my hands around his wonderfully chubby body and grinned from one ear to ear.  He smiled a drooly smile back at me and said something to me in his own Baby Man language.  I immediately teared up as I pulled him close and put a billion and two kisses on his cheeks which made him giggle.  “Oh my god, this is the best dinner ever!”  I nibbled on Miles’ cheeks which gained more giggles and as a few tears fell down my cheeks I forgot all about my stupid ankle-foot.  I couldn’t stop hugging and kissing the child and didn’t care that everyone was staring at me as I ignored the rest of the world, I had my Baby Man and that was all that mattered.

Jules chuckled as she stood next to Christian and watched me with her kid, “This is what happens when you have a child.  Suddenly it’s all about the baby and no one even cares about the mom.  I not only carried a tank of a child across the city but I bring food as well and I don’t even get a hello.”

I glanced momentarily at Jules as I worked on nibbling on Miles’ fingers, “Sup, Jules?”

She rolled her eyes and laughed, “Hi, gorgeous.”

“I’m not giving this child up and I can’t actually get up to hug you so if you want a hug, bring your ass over here…” I told her and then resumed my Miles Love Fest.  She plopped down next to me on the couch and I then hugged her tight while still hanging on to Miles. “Hi, honey…”

“Hello, my klutz.  How’s the foot?”

“Ankle-foot…” I corrected and she laughed.  “It hurts like a mofo actually.  But it doesn’t matter anymore because I have the best pain meds in the word sitting right here in my lap.” I looked at Miles and grinned, “Oh yes I do…”  Miles kept on smiling that awesomely gummy drool-filled smile and simply melted my freaking heart. I could see his newest tooth that had just finally popped through the gums the day before.  “I see that new tooth in there!”

“Oh I know, thank god!” Jules said with a sigh.  “He’s never a whiny baby, not even when he’s teething, but it just kills me to know he’s in pain.  He looks at me like ‘What the eff is going on, Mom?’ and I can’t do anything but put more gunk on it to numb it.  He’s so much happier today now that it’s through.”

“And soon, you’ll have two perfectly matched choppers sitting side by side,” I said to Miles with a grin then kissed him again.  “The better to bite Mommy with…”

“Don’t even…” Jules said.  “He already bites with the one tooth he has!  He drew blood the other day when he bit my finger!”

I chuckled and as Miles turned his attention to Kevin I watched as Miles reached out and took Kevin’s finger.  Once his chubby, and quite drooly, hand was wrapped around Kevin’s finger Miles grinned and began shaking Kevin’s hand like it was a toy.  “Pleased to meet you too, Miles,” Kevin said with a chuckle.  Miles tried to pull Kevin’s finger into his mouth but couldn’t quite reach and instead resumed his Shaking the Hand game.

“Isn’t he just scrumptious?” I asked Kevin.

He nodded and smiled, “He truly is…”

“Oh so Jules, Kev… Kev, Jules…” I said and they said hello to each other around Miles and me.  I looked at Kevin, “She wanted to marry you but I told her you’re taken.”

Kevin blushed and laughed while Jules groaned and slapped me in the back of my head.  “I hate you.”

“But I love you!” I giggled and Miles started babbling about something.  “Miles loves you too and he says to stop hitting his God Mama Aunt Kellie.”

Jules stood up, bent to kiss Miles on the head and then looked at me with an “evil” grin. “Only if God Mama Aunt Kellie behaves…”

“Oh come on, how often do I behave?”

“Not very…” Christian mumbled with a grin as he carried plates and utensils into the room and put them on the coffee table near my perched ankle-foot.  He began opening up take out containers that filled the room with amazing smells.  I hadn’t realized how crazy hungry I was until the smell of the food hit me. 

“Oh my god you brought us Gino’s didn’t you?” I said while practically beginning to drool like Miles.

“Sure did…” she said and began helping Christian with the serving of our food.

“I love you long time…”

She giggled and nodded, “I love you too, you crazy woman.  You’re going to have to put my child down if you want to eat, you know?”

I moved Miles so that he was sitting next to me on the couch with my protective arm around him, “Uh, no...” I said and she laughed.  “He’s all mine and no one is going to take him.  You can consider yourself off Mama Duty.”  I grabbed a toy out of the diaper bag that Jules had set down next to the couch and handed it to Miles.  It immediately went into his mouth and he chewed on it like it was a great big steak.  I looked from him to Jules and then smiled, “Okay, now feed me…”

A few hours later we were all stuffed with great Italian food and my drugs were finally starting to help.  I was kicked back on the couch leaning into Kevin with Miles was conked out on my chest sleeping.  It was pretty much a perfect moment.  Kevin grinned at me as he watched me in my Miles Mode, as everyone called it.  “You’re so happy right now, it’s kind of amazing to see.”

“I told you, this kid is the love of my life.  I can’t get enough of him.  I keep trying to get Jules to move to Florida so I can see him daily.”

Kevin ran his fingers gently over Miles’ head and then kissed my cheek, “He’s beautiful, and so are you.”    

I turned my face so he could kiss me and then smiled, “Thank you.”

Jules came back into the living room after having stepped out for a phone call.  “Aww… look at my sweet boy…” she cooed when she saw Miles happily passed out.  “It still pisses me off that he’ll snuggle you like that.”

The look on Kevin’s face made me giggle before I explained, “He’s never let anyone other than me hold him like this when he’s asleep.  Ever since he was just a tiny guy, he’s always preferred being put down to sleep.  But for some reason he loves to snuggle me.  I think it’s the boobs.”

“I’m rather fond of snuggling those boobs, myself…” Christian said and giggled.  “I can’t help myself, they’re so damn comfy.”

“Amen to that…” Kevin said with his own giggle.

Jules rolled her eyes but smiled, “So I’m lacking in the boob department… what the hell ever.  He’s my child, he should naturally want to snuggle with me until he’s old enough to think it’s not cool anymore.”

“I’m sorry, Julesie…” I said and gave her a pouty face.

“Oh you are not.  You bloody love it and you know it.”

I grinned, “Okay yeah, I do.”

We all laughed, “It’s okay… as long as he’s only eyeing your boobs, I’m okay with it.  Now if he starts fixating on other boobs, we’re going to have a problem.  I don’t want my kid being some creeper who is always checking out the tits on women.”

“Keep him away from Daytona Beach on Spring Break then.  It’s like Boob Beach all of a sudden,” Christian said and laughed.

“Ooh and Bike Week when all of the motorcycle people come to town… you’ll see a whole lot of leather and boobs that week,” I giggled.  “Boob is such a weird word isn’t it?  Boob.  Just say it… boob. Booooob.”

Kevin laughed, “The conversations I’ve experienced since meeting you guys crack me up.”

“We’re special people,” I said and chuckled.

“Very, very special…” Jules agreed.

Christian smiled, “Just don’t call us boobs.”