He stopped for a second, grabbed the chair in his mitts and looked down at me.He stopped for a second, grabbed the chair in his mitts and looked down at me. His eyes closed for a second, opened, and then he said, "I talked to Mom about this, and she said I should ask either you or Va." I smiled at the distinction. He used Anglic for me, Quen for Aaden. "I've never... slept with a mel before, but I think I want to." "Most people try entalie' sex at some time in their lives." "I know that," Alexi sighed softly. "I... well... " "You want advice on how to?" I asked, feeling at least a little authoritative in that particular arena. "No," he said, his voice cracking softly. It registered instantly what he was going to say next. "I want you to do it." Then he stunned me with his follow up. "Both of you." My brain had frozen; it was like I could feel the gears holding completely still inside my skull. He took my silence as a prompt to keep talking. "I talked to Ember and Mom and you and Va both know what you're doing and for some reason I can't imagine trying this with a total stranger and when I thought about asking someone in the house who I knew well plenty of people came up but I kept thinking you would be the best and I decided to ask you but not before talking to Mom first about asking you." The gears started turning again. "That's got to be the WORST run-on sentence I've ever heard come out of your mouth, Alexi." He stared hard at me, his throat working as he swallowed his fear hard. The stare held for a few more seconds, and then we both cracked up laughing. Alexi has always been inordinately fond of conjunctions, and I've been trying to get him to shorten his sentences, at least in text, since he was six. "Come here," I said through my laughter. He smiled and sat down in my lap with a heavy "Ooof!" "You're getting big, Alexi." "You're always saying that, Dad," he replied. "You're not mad at me, are you? You will do it, right?" I sighed, my feeling in a bit of a turmoil. "I'd like to talk to Aaden first, if that's okay. Maybe in a few days I'll give you my answer. Can you wait that long? How long have you been thinking about this?" "A few weeks," he said, looking dejected. "I guess I can wait a few more days." "Hey, brighten up," I said, smiling and lifting his chin. "I'm not going to lie to you, Alexi. |