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When Jack goes with Kent to pick up Annie from school, they think this might be the end.
What if she hates them? What if she takes one look at them and turns up her nose, and that’s that—goodbye, Annie. Goodbye, Kent. Goodbye, Bitty, too, because Bitty absolutely adores that kid.
“She’ll like you,” Kent reassures them. “She loves Bitty.”
“Everyone loves Bitty,” Jack says helplessly.
Kent doesn’t disagree. He just keeps driving, his fingers a little too tight around the steering wheel.
Kent pulls into the school parking lot. Annie is waiting by the sidewalk, clutching her backpack straps like she is about to jump out of an airplane with a parachute. After Kent unlocks the door, she slides in and eyes Jack up and down. She does not look impressed.
“You have a mustache like my daddy,” she announces as Kent exits the parking lot.
“Er,” Jack says. “Not quite.”
Kent has a goatee, which reduced Bitty to hysterics when he started to grow it. Jack has what some might call a handlebar, but what Bitty prefers to call a menace.
Bitty is not fond of the mustache trend. He is, however, fond of asking with sweet passive aggression, “What next, sugar? Lamb chops?”
Annie nods once firmly.
“You’re right,” she says. “Daddy’s is much less ugly.”
A sound vaguely similar to choking comes from Kent’s direction. Jack glares at him.
So that’s how their week is going so far.
.
Jack may be going through a midlife crisis. It’s fine. They’re fine. Everything is fine.
It’s just—they have a boyfriend. And their boyfriend has a boyfriend. Said boyfriend is slowly, hesitantly becoming Jack’s boyfriend, too. And there’s a kid involved.
Crisse, Jack is getting old.
They have a mustache now. It’s whatever—they can always just shave it off if they stop liking it. It’s really not that big of a deal.
As far as midlife crises go, Jack thinks this is pretty tame. They haven’t bought a sports car yet, so Jack thinks they’re doing pretty well. Other than the fact that their boyfriend’s daughter thinks they’re hideous, life is good.
Kids can be cruel sometimes. What can you do?
.
Kent pushes the shopping cart around the store, taking careful note of the grocery list Bitty gave him. Annie follows closely behind, a somewhat sour expression on her face, the kind that every child has when their parent forces them to come grocery shopping and they are too old to ride around in the cart.
“So what do you think?” Kent asks.
“I don’t like bananas,” says Annie.
“They’re for Bitty, not you.”
Annie pouts. Kent ignores her. He is immune to pouting now, thanks to seven years of exposure.
“Besides, I was talking about Jack, not my choices in fruit,” says Kent.
Annie grabs a carton of strawberries and slips it into the cart. Kent pretends not to notice and begins planning an appropriately surprised expression for check out. He’s not completely heartless, after all.
“They’re okay,” Annie mutters with a mutinous expression.
Kent winces. He really doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing. The last time he dated someone, they took one look at Annie and ran out the door. Right now, he’s worried that Annie will be the one running out the door.
He’s pretty sure it’s the mustache. Maybe if he can convince Jack to shave it off—
“I don’t like the way they dress,” Annie says.
“What’s wrong with it?” Kent asks, his eyebrows raising.
He moves to the baking aisle, where he starts loading up on flour and sugar. An elderly woman gives him a weird look, but he ignores her—who is she to judge him for buying a ton of flour and sugar when her cart is full of canned beans?
Annie shrugs. Kent is this close to calling Bitty and Jack and saying, I’m so sorry, I can’t do this—my child is driving me insane, and then moving to a remote town in Canada to cry.
Jack would probably be able to find him. They’re annoying and Canadian like that.
“They’re really nice,” Kent says. “And you’re gonna see them a lot now that—” He swallows, his stomach jumping a little. “You’re gonna see them a lot now. Can’t you just . . . try to be friends?”
Annie is currently examining the bags of powdered sugar with a little too keen interest for Kent’s liking. Kent grabs her hand just as she reaches out to poke the sugar. Annie looks on the verge of a temper tantrum for two seconds before her face goes back to cheerful placidity.
“Can we have chicken nuggets for supper?” she asks.
“We’ll see,” Kent says.
They go through the check out line. The amount of sugar and flour doesn’t seem to phase the cashier, who has Chronic Pained Smile Disease, a sad affliction that many employees working in customer service suffer from. Her name tag reads, Dea. Happy to Serve.
But are you, Dea? Kent wonders. Are you really happy to serve?
He hopes she can go home and get smashed after work. She deserves it.
Annie is currently prattling on about her favorite TV show, something about rainbows and unicorns and cannibalistic bears. Kent begins to wonder if he should regulate the TV more carefully because cannibalistic bears? What the fuck, Disney?
Kent successfully completes paying for his items without having to exchange a single word with the cashier. God, he loves shopping with his daughter.
“She’s so cute,” Dea says, holding out the receipt. “You and her mom must be so proud.”
Kent feels his face twitch a little.
“She doesn’t have a mom,” he says.
Dea’s face falls a little. “Oh—”
Kent grabs the receipt and leaves the store before he says something embarrassing.
.
Annie doesn’t have a mom.
People always think Kent means her mom died or that he adopted her. But she just never had one.
He had her shortly after graduating college, when he had no idea what the fuck he was doing. They were both young and stupid, and the fucking condom broke at the worst moment. Next thing Kent knew, he was a single parent without a job and without a clue.
As the story often goes.
He can remember when he went on T, and his facial hair started to grow. Annie was still so small. She would rub her chubby palms up and down the rough scratch of his unshaved cheeks, fascination in her eyes, and Kent would cry a little.
He hadn’t asked to be a dad. But he loved her, and she needed him, and so he figured it out as he went along.
It’s not a story he likes to share with many people. There are so many messy strings trailing from it that lead to nothing, and Kent doesn’t know what he would do if someone grabbed hold of a string and pulled.
Jack and Bitty would be cool about it. He knows that. They know he’s trans; fuck, Jack is trans—they’re not going to freak out about his single parent sob story. He just doesn’t like to talk about things.
Things being anything involving real life that might lead to crying. Kent might be a little fucked up in the head when it comes to the whole vulnerability and crying in front of others field. But he has a really nice goatee now, so that cancels everything else out. At least, that’s what he tells himself when he glances at his reflection in the rearview mirror.
Annie’s singing along to her favorite song in the backseat when Kent eases into Bitty and Jack’s driveway. Last time he shut the car off in the middle of the song, she almost started crying, so Kent waits for her to finish. When she sings the last line, Kent pulls the key out of the ignition and gets out of the car to help her out.
“Did you like my song, Daddy?” Annie asks.
Kent kisses the top of her head. “I loved it,” he says, then walks with her up to the door.
.
Bitty is currently cutting the chicken into stars.
This is it. This is the sign he has gone beyond the point of no return. He’s cutting chicken into stars for chicken nuggets, per Annie’s eager request, and he thinks it might be the sign of the end.
“Do you think I’d make a good housewife?” Bitty asks.
Jack glances up from their documentary on their phone, something about seagulls and plastic, and snorts.
“I think you’re the breadwinner, and Kent and I are the trophy wives, actually,” they say.
Bitty laughs, rolling the chicken stars in batter. The doorbell rings, and Jack pauses their documentary, getting up from the couch to open the door. There’s a streak of purple, and then Annie’s arms are wrapped tightly around Bitty’s waist. Bitty stoops down to press a kiss to her hair.
“Hey, honey,” he says. “I hope you’re hungry.”
“So hungry,” Annie says eagerly. “Daddy didn’t let me snack.”
Bitty looks up to find Kent grinning at him.
“What can I say?” Kent asks. “I’m the evil father from Disney dreams.”
“Actually,” Jack says, “I would say that most fathers in Disney are decent, if a bit ineffectual.”
Kent sneers at Jack. Nerd, he mouths. Jack snaps him with a towel, and Kent dodges with a smirk.
“Hey, Bits,” Kent says, kissing Bitty on the cheek, right on the dimple.
Bitty can’t hold back a snort. Annie has started quizzing Jack on their knowledge of Disney, Kent’s arms are around Bitty’s waist, and Jack looks less stressed out than they have in days.
It’s going to be a good night. Bitty can just feel it.
.
It was, in fact, not a good night.
Annie started crying in the middle of dinner because Jack said they liked Cinderella better than The Little Mermaid. Apparently, she has a lot of feelings about The Little Mermaid. Then Kent tried to comfort her while Jack stood awkwardly in the living room because they didn’t want to be in Annie’s space but also felt too anxious to leave all together. Meanwhile, Bitty was holding an apple pie fresh from the oven, an expression of Dismayed Southern Smiling on his face. Eventually, Kent ended up carrying Annie out to the car, while she kicked and screamed and wailed.
Jack thinks they might end their life.
They’re lying face down on the carpet, contemplating the horrors of life.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Bitty says, sitting next to them.
“It was,” Jack says grimly. “Annie will hate me forever, and then Kent will hate me, and then you will hate me, and then I’ll be homeless and single without any friends.”
“You literally own this house, hon.”
“Shitty would take your side in the break-up. She would find a way to give you the house.”
Bitty snorts and cards his hand through Jack’s hair. It’s careless and easy, but Jack shivers a little on contact.
“Will she ever like me?” they ask.
They feel a bit mournful, like this is signifying the end of everything they have worked for. That being any and all attempts to ease gently into Annie’s life, without making her feel like they were an intruder or threat.
“Probably not for a while, baby,” Bitty says. He’s stroking Jack’s hair still, his fingernails scraping their scalp.
Jack sighs a little, their shoulders dipping with the exhale. They push themselves up from the floor, accepting Bitty’s hand upon it being offered.
“It’s gonna get better,” Bitty promises.
Jack knows. Good things are worth waiting for, after all.
They just wish they could wait less.
.
Kent thinks he’s going to tell them.
He doesn’t have to. He knows that. But he thinks—
A part of him wonders whether what happened to him was actually messed up or whether he was just overreacting. It would be nice for someone to tell him that, no, what happened was fucked up and that he is allowed to struggle a little because of it.
It occurs to Kent, as he tucks Annie in bed and turns off the light, that he should probably see a therapist.
As Kent shuts the door, he has to stifle the sudden urge to laugh hysterically. God, just thinking about sitting in an office and telling a doctor about all his issues makes him want to throw up a little.
(He wants there to be nothing wrong with him. He wants there to be everything wrong with him so he has a reason for all that he is.)
It’s only when Kent crawls under the covers in his bed that he realizes something he never previously considered:
If he needs therapy because of his ex-boyfriend, then so does Annie.
“Fuck,” Kent says out loud, staring at the ceiling.
Maybe Jack will pay for it all.
.
Fun fact: Jack would very much like to pay for everything. They would happily pay for Annie’s education and schooling and clothes, along with anything Kent so much as pointed to. This attitude extends to Bitty, who has the tendency to look at Jack with something akin to Southern Baptist Meemaw judgment if they try. They have stopped trying.
Still, the fact remains that Jack has the money—it’s just a question of whether their boyfriends let them use it on them.
Their phone buzzes.
Kent: hey sugar daddy wanna pay for a quack for me and annie 🤩🤩🤩🤩
Kent: jk ur not my sugar daddy
Kent: unless u WANT to be 👀
Jack stares at their phone for a few seconds.
“Who’s that?” Bitty asks, yawning.
“Kent wants to know if I’ll pay for therapy.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” Bitty says, then rolls over, tucking himself against Jack’s side and falling asleep almost immediately.
Jack: sure
Jack: abt the therapy. Not the sugar daddy part
Kent: has anyone told u tht u need a new sense of humor bc ur current one doesnt do its job
Jack: you do
Kent: ok whatever sugar daddy i’ll see u on tuesday
Jack hides a smile, even though no one can see. They set their phone on their nightstand, then curl up around Bitty’s sleeping form.
.
So Kent and Annie are going to therapy now. It works out pretty well—Kent has no idea what Annie talks about with her therapist, but she seems to be figuring shit out. Meanwhile, Kent is apparently “emotionally stunted” (an internet uquiz’s words, not his therapist’s) and never learned about basic ways of processing his feelings beyond stuffing them all down. Whatever. What does she know? Kent may have the basic emotional intelligence of a toddler, but at least he can tell the difference between anxiety and anger, which apparently some people struggle with.
Then Kent realizes that, no, he’s actually angry just as much as he’s anxious because they’re so closely intertwined that he cannot separate them. Apparently he also has attachment issues, so that’s great.
“I’m neurotic,” Kent says cheerfully over a glass of wine.
“Don’t talk that way about yourself,” Jack says, frowning.
“No, I mean I’m actually neurotic,” says Kent.
Bitty chokes a little over by the fireplace. Kent assumes this is a nonverbal way of agreeing with him like, Hear, hear! Kent’s got mental illness! Bet no one saw that coming.
Anyway. Kent and his therapist have been practicing “good and healthy communication,” which sounds fake, but Kent has decided to believe in it because his therapist showed him a fancy psychology book with that as the title.
Kent likes it when pretentious books have simple titles so that he gets blindsided when he opens it and starts to read.
Anyway, when they talked about “good and healthy communication,” his therapist pointed out that thinking about having a conversation is not the same as, well, actually having it. She’s annoying like that.
So Kent blurts out, “It’s not personal.”
Jack and Bitty stare at him blankly, and Kent remembers that neither is a mind reader. (Thank god.)
“Annie not liking you,” Kent says. “I mean, she doesn’t dislike you. She just—distrusts you?”
“Oh,” Jack says dryly, “that makes me feel great.”
Bitty is eyeing Kent warily, and Jack looks like a wet cloud has descended upon them, and fuck. This isn’t how Kent wanted the conversation to go. Why can’t conversations play out exactly like they do in his mind? He hates good and healthy communication.
“My ex-boyfriend,” Kent blurts out, then has to stop because he doesn’t know where he was going with this. “Um, I had a boyfriend? And the condom broke, and I didn’t know I was trans, and then I had a gender epiphany, like, six months in. And he, uh, didn’t know how to handle it? So he left, and it was too late to get an abortion, and it was fine, you know? It was whatever.”
Bitty is sitting next to him on the sofa, wrapping his fingers around Kent’s wine glass. Kent realizes his hand is shaking a little. He lets go, feeling as if he has lost something, and Bitty sets the wine glass on the coffee table.
“Breathe, Kenny,” Jack says, and they’re rubbing Kent’s back.
“He came back,” Kent says. “When Annie was about five. He wanted to try again, get to know his daughter. But he would—he kept leaving. And then coming back. And then leaving again. And it fucked us both up a little because every time—“
“I’m sorry, I love you, another chance, please, I promise, I love you, I’m sorry—“
Kent blinks rapidly.
“Anyway. We kind of have trust issues now? And it’s easier with Bitty because he eased his way in, and technically so did you—she just wasn’t around. But she likes you. I mean, she will like you, eventually. She just needs to work through some stuff.”
So do I.
Jack has Kent’s hand in theirs, the pad of their thumb stroking against Kent’s knuckles. They’re looking Kent in the eye, and Kent is drowning in blue.
“I’m sorry,” Jack says. “You deserved better. Both of you.” They swallow. “And I will wait for you both.”
Kent’s eyes are prickling, and he gulps in air quickly to hide the fact that he may cry.
Bitty leans against Kent, resting his head on Kent’s shoulder. He reaches out and squeezes Kent’s other hand.
“We both will,” Bitty promises.
And Kent thinks—
Well. He doesn’t know where he’s going from here. But it’s a start.