"He was in my room when I got dressed earlier and he asked me what they were. I thought I should be honest with him and now I realize it was a big mistake. He spent the whole way here singing "All I want for Christmas are my two front nipples." I almost opened the door and shoved him out into oncoming traffic," Claire said with a laugh.

“Mommy stopped the car and unlocked the doors and told me to get out and walk,” Gavin informed me.

“Okay, almost isn’t exactly accurate,” she told me with a shrug. “In my defense, I did tell him if he said the word “nipples” one more time I was going to stop the car and make him walk. According to his pediatrician, it’s important to always follow through with your threats.”

I helped Claire take her coat off and scooped up Gavin’s that he’d thrown on the floor and hung both of them up in the closet.

"Maybe now isn't the best time to tell you that he asked me if I he had a va**na this morning and then asked me to read him ‘The Va**na Monologues’ at the library."

Claire groaned and shook her head.

"What the hell am I going to do when he starts preschool in a few months? He's going to be like that kid in the movie, Kindergarten Cop, except he's going to announce "Boys have a penis and girls have a va**na and my mommy has nipples!" I wrapped my arm around her waist and pulled her against my side, noting again how good her body felt next to mine.

"You mean what the hell are we going to do?" I corrected her. I needed to make sure she understood that I wasn't going to change my mind about all of this.

"Don’t forget, he's also going to tell everyone just how huge my wiener is. At least I hope he is. Maybe I should remind him about the awesomeness that is my wiener. "

Claire raised her eyebrows at me and I realized that didn't come out right at all.

"That sounded a lot skeazier than I meant it too."

Claire turned her body into mine so that we were chest-to-chest and my back was to Gavin. She rested her arms on my shoulders, letting her fingers play with the hair on the back of my neck. I got goose bumps on my arms and Mr. Happy just woke up from his evening nap and started drooling.

"Can we please ban the word wiener?" she asked with a laugh.

I glanced over my shoulder at Gavin. He had his back to us and was busy talking to his Batman figurine, asking it if it had nipples. I looked back at Claire and let my hands slide down her h*ps and around to her ass to pull her up against me.

"Only if you use the word 'cock' from now on," I told her with a smirk.

She pushed her h*ps into me and I let out a groan when she came in contact with my raging erection.

"T.J. told me you paid him twenty dollars the other night to get me to say that."

Shit. T.J. was going down the next time we played P.O.R.N. He was going to get a ball right to his throat. I placed my lips to the corner of her mouth and then kissed a path across her cheek. When I got to the soft skin right behind her ear, I let my tongue snake out so I could taste her.

She let out a little moan and pushed her h*ps back into me. She turned her face so her lips hovered by my ear.

"Cock, cock, c-o-c-k," she whispered, drawing out the syllables in the last one.

"Holy f**king hell…" I mumbled, wrapping my arms around her waist and hugging her tightly so her h*ps stopped moving against me.

The timer in the kitchen went off and all thoughts of Claire’s lips and “cock” were put aside. I unwound myself from her and we all made our way into the kitchen so I could finish the spaghetti.

Dinner went very well even though Claire had to remind Gavin every ten seconds to stop talking and eat. I've never heard a kid talk so much in my life about anything and everything and I enjoyed every second of it. After dinner was over, I sent Claire and Gavin to the spare bedroom while I cleaned up the dishes.

A few seconds later I heard Gavin's yell.

***

I grabbed Gavin's hand and we took off towards the back of the house where Carter said the spare room was. I thought it was really sweet that Carter had made up a room for Gavin.

We got to the door and I pushed it open. Gavin took a step inside and let out a yell.

"WHAT THE FRIGGIN' HELL?"

He immediately ran into the room and I stood there with my mouth open, unable to muster up the ability to tell him to watch his mouth.

Carter had Toys R Us in his spare room. There was a f**king tree house in the corner! A tree house! How did he even get that in here?

I slowly took in every inch of the room and then did it again just to make sure I wasn't seeing things. Nope, there was definitely a pile of at least one hundred stuffed animals in the corner, a bunk bed with race car blankets, three Hotwheels tracks that intersected all over the room, a pile of puzzles, a drawing table filled with coloring books and crayons, and a shelf filled with multicolor bins that held cars, monster trucks, army men, leggos and God knows what else. Gavin zipped all around the room, touching everything.

"Holy shit," I muttered.

Gavin stopped his climb up into the tree house and looked at me.

"Mom, you can't say shit," he scolded.

I laughed hysterically.

"Oh yes I can. I can say shit. I'm an adult for shit's sake. You're the one that can't say shit. Shit! Shitballsack!"

I could feel the burn in the back of my throat and a sting in my eyes that indicated I was going to cry. Shit! That did it. Now I was in love with the jerk. He bought my...our son a f**king toy store. He wouldn't have done this if he wasn't serious. I know he told me he was - several times. I wanted so much to believe him, but I didn't just have myself to think about. I couldn't really move forward and turn this into something real until I was one hundred percent certain he would never leave Gavin. He could leave me, he could change his mind about us and I knew I'd survive. But I would never, ever let my son be hurt like that. Looking around this room, thinking about how easily he let us take over his life and change whatever plans he had for his future, I knew without a doubt I wanted him to be Gavin's dad. He wasn't just a sperm donor anymore. He was a father. And I knew he would be a damn good one.

I let the tears slip out of my eyes and run down my cheeks as I smiled at our son, happily checking out all of his new toys. I heard a throat clear behind me and I whipped around to see Carter standing there sheepishly with his hands in his pockets.

"So, um, how much trouble am I in? I didn't plan on getting this much but once I got to the store, I couldn't help myself. They make Hotwheels that change color in the water, Claire! And a garbage truck named Stinky that moves on its own and picks up toys and then burps. Did you know there was something called Moon Sand? Oh, oh and Aqua Sand that strangely looks like siding insulation when you put it in the water but when you pull it out..."

I launched myself into his arms and cut off his words with my lips. He was obviously surprised but caught me easily in his arms and returned my kiss. I poured everything I had into that kiss, all of my happiness, all of my trust and all of my love. I let him know with my lips just how thankful I was to have been blessed with a man like him in my life. I could have kissed him for days and never come up for air. The only thing that made me stop was the sound of absolute silence in the room behind us.

I broke from the kiss and Carter let out a groan of complaint which made my girly parts tingle knowing that he didn't want to stop. Keeping my arms around him, I turned my head around.

"Where's Gavin?"

"Ooooh this is warm. And it makes my hands tingle," we heard Gavin say from another room.

I sighed. "Shit, what did he get into now?" I muttered as I reluctantly pulled out of Carter’s arms.

Carter started to smile but immediately got a horrified look on his face. He turned and raced out of the room before I could ask him what was wrong. I followed after him and was right on his heels when he rounded the corner to his bedroom. It was like something out of a movie. Carter jumped up and dove through the air, arms stretched out in front of him like Superman. He sailed across the room and landed on his stomach on the bed right next to Gavin, but not before smacking something out of his hand. I just stood there with my mouth open, trying to understand what the hell was going on.

"Heeeeey," Gavin complained with a frown.

Carter was face down on the bed, his shoulders shaking so hard that Gavin's body was bouncing. Was he crying? Oh my God, was he having a nervous breakdown?

"Carter, what the hell?" I asked.

"What the hell, Carter?" Gavin repeated.

"Gavin!" I scolded while Carter continued to have a seizure or whatever the hell he was doing.

"But Mooooom, he took my lotion," Gavin pouted.

I walked up to the bed to see what Gavin was pointing at. A small tube of something was by Carter’s hand on the bed. As soon as I got close enough to see it, Carter grabbed it and flipped over on his back. And now I could see that he wasn't dying from an epileptic seizure, he was laughing his ass off.

"It's not funny, Carter. You took my lotion," Gavin complained.

This only made Carter laugh harder until he was gasping for breath. I looked at him in confusion. He just lifted his arm and handed me the tube of...

KY Warming Liquid?

Oh Jesus f**king hell. Lube? He put lube on his hands. It only took seconds for me to notice that Gavin was surrounded by condoms. A couple of them open and out of their wrappers.

"Your balloons suck, Carter," Gavin complained.

I collapsed on the bed next to Carter and laughed right along with him.

***

Twenty minutes into Toy Story 2, Gavin fell fast asleep with his head on Carter’s lap. I got up to go to the bathroom and grabbed my cell phone off of the kitchen table so I could sneak a picture. It was just too cute not to document.

I tapped Carter on the shoulder once I stowed my phone away and pointed to Gavin and then motioned back to his room. He awkwardly tried to finagle his arms around Gavin and you could tell he was freaked out about waking him up.

"It's okay," I whispered to him. "He won’t wake up."

Carter shook his head and muttered something that sounded like “Yeah right, until suddenly he disappears and you realize he’s been eaten by a clown.”

He moved quickly, scooping Gavin into his arms like he’d done it a thousand times before and Gavin never batted an eyelash at the disruption. I followed behind Carter down the hall and smiled at the sight of Gavin with his head nestled into the crook of Carter’s neck and his arms hanging limply at his sides. We walked into the bedroom, stepping over all of the toys so we wouldn't trip, and I stood back while Carter gently put Gavin down on the bottom bunk and covered him up. It took everything in me not to sob when he brushed Gavin's hair off of his forehead like I usually did every night.

"My lunch box makes cow nipples," Gavin mumbled in his sleep before rolling over to face the wall.

Carter looked back at me.

"What the hell was that?" he whispered with a laugh.

I stepped around him, bent over and kissed Gavin's head.

"Your son talks in his sleep," I informed Carter as I took his hand and pulled him off the bed. “I was kind of hoping it was hereditary. I don’t talk in my sleep and if you don’t either, then maybe it has to do with what he eats before bed.”

Carter held onto my hand as we walked across the room. “Sorry to say, I don’t talk in my sleep. What does he eat before bed?”

“LSD, shrooms, the usual bedtime snack for toddlers.”

Before we got to the door, Carter let go of my hand, walked over to the wall and plugged in a nightlight that was shaped like a race car. He joined me at the doorway and took my hand again.

“See? This is what’s wrong with the youth of America,” he whispered. “Too many chocolate chip cookies and not enough acid.”

I just stood there looking at him. A room full of toys and a nightlight? This man had thought of everything.

"What?" he asked, when I didn't move.

"You just amaze me, that's all," I told him with a smile as I pulled him out into the hall, shutting the door to Gavin’s room behind me.

We walked silently down the hall to Carter’s bedroom, both of us knowing without a doubt that this was the next step. I wanted to sleep with him again the first moment I saw him in the bar. It felt like this was a long time coming, but here, in this moment, it finally felt right.

Carter shut the door to his room and I reached around him to lock it just in case. Gavin slept like the dead, but he was in a strange place so I didn't know how well he’d do. Maybe that was selfish of me, but after five long years and no alone time, I think I deserved this. Plus, I’d much rather get a knock on the door warning us he was awake instead of him just barging in and asking why we were wrestling na**d.

The only light in the room came from a small lamp on the bedside table that cast a soft glow around the room. We stood there by the door just staring at each other. The weird thing was it wasn't awkward at all. I wanted to take it all in. I wanted to remember every single second of this moment. I didn't want to just have bits and pieces of a drunken night flowing in and out of my mind. I wanted to remember every touch, every look and every feeling. I would never regret the first time we had sex because it brought me Gavin. But this time would mean more, because this time, I loved this man with all of my heart.

In just a few minutes I was going to be totally na**d in front of him.

Oh my God, in just a few minutes I was going to be na**d. In front of Carter.

Shit, I have stretch marks on my ass. Okay, just keep his eyes off of my na**d ass.

He reached down and took my hand, pulling me to his chest. He didn't let go of my hand as he wrapped both of our arms behind my back, clasping our fingers together. His other hand came up to rest on my cheek while he looked into my eyes.