And I’m pretty sure The Beatles had a submarine in that exact color.
“I helped pick it!” Niko calls across the yard, oblivious to my many plans to strip the paint and beg her to pick another color. He sounds proud, like he can’t believe that he got to make such a big decision. One he gets to look at every day.
He runs over, throwing his arms around my legs, his smile matching his mother’s and erasing my remaining reservations.
I guess we’ll have a yellow door.
So what?
It’s different from every other house on the street, and if Niko ever complains about it when he’s a teenager, we’ll get to remind him that he’s the one responsible for it.
Now that I’m thinking about it, I can’t fucking wait.
“You did a good job, kiddo. It’s a great color.”
Blair’s eyes sparkle with poorly concealed laughter, and I only feel a little bad for how obvious my feelings apparently are. I ruffle Niko’s hair as he watches her carefully painting around the edges of the door.
“Can I help?” he asks, twisting away from me as he starts reaching for a spare paintbrush. “I can do the top!” He reachesabove his head to prove his point, knees knocking against the wet paint as he reaches a few inches above the doorknob. He teeters on his feet, and Blair and I both scramble to keep him upright so that he doesn’t fall into the paint tray.
“How about this? We’ll go inside and change into clothes that we don’t mind messing up, and I’ll hold you so you can reach the top. That way we won’t step on your mama while we help.” He nods and takes off like a shot, sprinting up the stairs while Blair laughs.
“He’s going to get paint everywhere, isn’t he?” I chuckle.
“He’s three. Of course he is.”
“You say that like the moment he turns four, he’ll instantly be coordinated.” I press a kiss to the top of her head. “And I suspect that won’t be the case.”
“Probably not,” she concedes. “But let’s withhold judgment. He might prove us wrong.”
I shake my head as I shuffle past her, quickly heading upstairs and changing into a pair of sweats and one of my old T-shirts that I dig out of Blair’s drawers. Niko beats me back downstairs, waiting impatiently as Blair shows him how to move the paintbrush so he doesn’t leave streaks everywhere.
I can almost see every word she says going in one ear and right out the other when he spots me, jumping to his feet and raising his arms until I pick him up. He squeals when I twist him around so that he’s sitting tall on my shoulders.
Blair hands him a loaded paintbrush while he lurches forward in his eagerness to get to the door, nearly tumbling over my head.
They both quickly lose themselves in their painting, Blair working efficiently while Niko and I end up covered in streaks of yellow while most of the top of the door is still white, with only a few messy globs of paint covering the primer. When Blair stands, her hair is splattered the same color, globs of yellow soaking the strands and dripping down her face.
She glares at Niko’s loaded brush while he laughs, hiding his face behind messy hands.
“Alright, let’s get you cleaned up before you end up stuck this color,” I suggest when he gets bored, slapping the brush against the door more than he is actually painting it.
“But I like being a sunshine!” he pouts, crossing his arms over my head and letting the wet paintbrush smack me in the face. I try to flinch away, but the damage is done.
Blair starts laughing, falling out of the squat she was in and landing right on her ass, sending Niko into a matching fit of hysterics. He wiggles as I lift him off my shoulders, slipping the brush out of his hand as I put him on his feet.
“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up now,” I mutter. “I’ll get even later.”
My warning does nothing to deter them. If anything, they just laugh harder, falling into each other for support while I scrape my hand over my face, trying to remove as much of the paint as I can. It comes away soaked in the awful color, and my attempts to wipe it off on the drop cloth under the door only smear it around more.
Great.
“Now we both need to get cleaned up before we’re stuck this way.”
Blair wipes a tear from the corner of her eye, face flushed while she catches her breath.
“You two go clean up.” She grins, patting Niko’s shoulder. “I’ll finish up here. Then we can order a pizza for dinner. That sound like a plan?”
Like she said a magic word, Niko turns and heads upstairs without a word of protest, leaving a trail of yellow footprints behind him.
