12
Happy Family, Happy Meal
Darius sat with a smile on his face, watching his son consume a Happy Meal. For the life of him he couldn’t figure how a little toy inside a colorful box could make chicken nuggets and fries such a hit, but his son had turned down Bo’s slap-your-mama spaghetti in favor of the popular children’s fast food meal. D1.J. walked the action figure across the granite island top as he munched on a fry, his legs swinging freely beneath the bar stool. Darius continued to watch him, amazed that doing what mothers around the world did every day all day—taking care of their children—could bring one such joy.
DJ took a break from the imaginary war happening on the table and turned to find his dad watching him intently. “What is it, Daddy?”
“Nothing. Just watching you eat.”
DJ scrunched up his face. “Why?”
Darius laughed. “No reason.”
DJ pondered that comment a moment, then reached for another fry and aimed it toward his father. “Do you want one?”
“No, he does not,” Bo answered, turning from the stove with two plates of sausage spaghetti. “Nobody in this house eats that fake food but you.”
“It not fake!” DJ protested.
“It isn’t as good as my spaghetti,” Bo countered.
“It’s better than your spaghetti!” DJ said, as his voice rose an octave.
Bo leaned against the island, coming face to face with the little boy he loved like his own, which, in a way, DJ was. “Do you like how tall your father is?” DJ nodded. “What about his face; do you think he’s handsome?”
DJ looked at Darius. Another nod. “Yes.”
“Well, you know how he got so tall and so fine?” Bo’s voice became an almost-whisper. “By eating real food like my spaghetti!” Without waiting for a reply, he flounced over to pull the parmesan-garlic toast from the oven.
DJ laughed. “Uh-uh. That’s not true, Daddy . . . is it?”
“No, son, that’s not true. You are going to be way more handsome than me.” This, Darius believed was true. When it came to his son, he felt that he and Stacy had given him the best of themselves. DJ’s facial features were almost carbon copies of Darius, but his lean body, keen mind, and sparkling personality were courtesy of Stacy Gray-Johnson. Yes, he’d been given awards, charted platinum albums, and toured the world, but the five-year-old wunderkind sitting across from him was by far the best product he’d ever created.
Bo placed the toast on the island and then joined them. Once he sat down, Darius reached for his fork. “No,” Bo said, eyeing DJ as he took a piece of toast and tore it in half. “You’re going to grow up looking like either a chicken nugget, hamburger, or French fry because that’s all you eat.” After finishing a forkful of spaghetti, he added, “But don’t worry. You’ll be the finest chicken nugget the world has ever seen. In fact, that’s my new name for you: Nugget. You okay with that?”
DJ was crazy about Bo, but in this instance adopted an appropriate look of chagrin before forcing out a begrudging, “Not really. I like DJ.”
“What if I tell you that the next time you come over we’re going to create a special cookie and call it a Nugget, named after you. Would you be okay with that?”
“Yes!” A pause and then, “To go with my Happy Meal, right?”
They laughed and the conversation meandered from DJ’s lengthy dissection of the movie they’d seen the day before to Darius’s upcoming tour that kicked off with the musical benefit in New York’s Central Park. They made quick work of devouring the vittles and while Bo tidied the kitchen, Darius and DJ went to pack for DJ’s return to Stacy. As father and son chatted, Darius offered up a prayer of thanks that he and Stacy had been able to finally come to terms about custody. Because of Darius’s hectic schedule, DJ stayed mostly with his mother, but when he was available, Stacy never turned down a request from Darius to spend time with his son. Last year, DJ had even traveled to New York with Darius and Bo when they went to visit the extensive family Bo had there. Yeah, buddy, he thought as he watched his son zip up his Transformer-decorated carry-on, your life can’t get much better than this.
“You ready, little man?”
“Do I have to go home, Daddy?”
Darius’s brows creased. This was an unexpected comment. He sat on the bed. “Don’t you want to go home and see Mommy?”
“I want to see Mommy, but Tony’s acting funny.”
Darius tensed. “What do you mean by funny?”
DJ shrugged. “He just acts mad all the time and hardly plays with me anymore.”
Darius relaxed. A little. “Aw, little man, don’t worry about that. Tony likes to play football, remember?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He’s not playing right now and is probably a little upset about that. So just hang out with Mommy and give him his space, okay?”
“Okay.”
They walked from DJ’s bedroom back into the living room. Darius grabbed his keys from the fireplace mantel. “All right, Bo. I’ll be right back.”
Bo looked up from the TV show he was watching. “Okay. You got a hug for me, Nugget?” DJ walked over and hugged him. “Okay, baby, hurry back.”
As they walked out the front door to the Infiniti SUV waiting in the driveway, Bo went into the kitchen for a soda. Seeing a cell phone on the counter, he snatched it up, ran toward the front door, and opened it in time to see the brand new sporty BMW turn onto the road. “Darius!”
But it was too late. Darius hadn’t heard him and, knowing how loud his husband played the car stereo, Bo knew why. He also knew that Darius hated going anywhere without his phone. He often even took it with him when he used the john. Oh, well. He’s just dropping off DJ. I guess he’ll live without it till then. Bo watched the car until it turned the corner and then walked back into the house. He was just about to set the phone down on the one-of-a-kind, stainless steel coffee table in front of him when it chirped in his hand. Someone had sent Darius a message.
“Bo,” he said to the empty room, in a voice laced with warning, “you go looking for shit, you’re going to find shit.”
But it was a temptation he couldn’t resist. He tapped the message indicator envelope. His jaws tightened when he saw the sender’s name. “Muthafucka, you are just like herpes. You won’t go away!” With anger mounting, he tapped the screen to open the message, and read it:
Hey, Handsome: Heard the commercial where you’re going to be in NY on the 4th. Me too. Leave Bo at home and let’s do the town . . . and then each other. Let me know.
“Oh, you’ve got this shit real twisted, nucka.” Bo scrolled to the beginning of the message thread and saw that there had been several. While most had come from Paz, there were some that had been answered. “What? An independent project with my baby providing the sound track? Oh, H-E-double-L to the muthafuckin’ no! You think it’s that easy? You think you’re going to dangle some money and take my man?” Bo’s ire now had him walking the floor, boxing with an imaginary adversary. “You mess with him, Paz, and that will be your ass. You don’t want none of this Brooklyn-born playa. You don’t want none. Of. This.”
As soon as Bo sat down to plot out his husband-saving strategy, an angel landed on one shoulder and a devil made himself at home on the other.
Angel: He didn’t respond to the flirtatious e-mails, only the business ones.
Devil: But that don’t mean he hasn’t called him, or met him somewhere.
Angel: Except for Stacy, in all these years, he’s never given you a reason to doubt him.
Devil: He’s never given you a reason that you know of.
Angel: Don’t make a mountain from a molehill, Bo.
Devil: Today’s Mr. Cool, tomorrow’s fool.
Bo jumped from the couch. “Both of y’all shut the hell up!” Walking to the back of the house to the great room where the bar was located, Bo made quick work of pouring a shot of Courvoisier and slamming it down. It felt so nice, he did it twice. “Think, Bo.” And he did, back to the days and months following DJ’s birth, and Darius’s dilemma about who the person was with whom he should spend the rest of his life. His heart had said Bo while his head had screamed Stacy and their newborn son. It had been one heck of a tug-of-war, but eventually soul mate love and Stacy’s histrionics had pushed Darius right into Bo’s waiting arms. Now they coexisted amicably—Darius, Bo, Stacy, and DJ. Tony, not so much. The gay couple was tolerated because Darius was DJ’s father, but Tony had let there be no mistake made when, during a visit shortly after he and Stacy married, he informed Darius and Bo that “he didn’t get down with anybody who got down like that.”
Bo had retorted, “Then I guess since your wife’s baby daddy is gay, you’re not getting down with her?”
Stacy’s intervention had prevented an episode of Fisticuffs, Beat-downs, and Curse-Your-Ass-Outs, but since that confrontation, Tony had refused interaction except when absolutely necessary for the sake of the child. Meaning that if he were home when Darius dropped off DJ, he’d eke out a “how you doing” and then promptly leave the room.
No, Bo. Don’t be a bitch about this. Don’t make waves until you know for sure there’s another boat in your harbor. Plan of action decided, he picked up his phone, stored Paz’s number, and cleared the screen just as he heard Darius’s keys jingling in the door. Bo poured another Courvoisier, this time on the rocks, fixed Darius’s favorite drink, and walked toward the living room to meet him. Halfway there he changed course and took the drinks into the bedroom. He was too happy and life was too good for anybody to think for a minute that he’d give any part of it up. Couldn’t nobody love Darius the way that he did and when it came to this fact, Bo believed that he could show him better than he could tell him.