Read Way Past Legal for Free Online Page A

He looked out his window with his mouth open, wonderment plain on his face.
     
     
"Yeah, breakfast. Lock your door, push that button down. Okay, come with me."
     
     
I probably should have put him next to me in the booth so that I could help him out, but I was new at this. He climbed up and got onto his knees on the bench so that he could lean his elbows on the table the way I did. When the waitress came, she handed me a menu, but she spoke to Nicky.
     
     
"You want a booster seat, honey?"
     
     
"No, I'm okay," he said. "Do you work here?"
     
     
"Yes, sweetheart," she said, smiling. She glanced over at me. "Coffee?"
     
     
"Yeah."
     
     
Nicky recaptured her attention effortlessly. "Are they good to you here? They treat you nice?"
     
     
She smiled again, wider this time, looked over her shoulder in the direction of the kitchen. "Well, you know," she said, "sometimes they do, and then sometimes they don't. You want something to drink, honey?"
     
     
The two of them turned and looked over at me like I knew something. It took me a couple of seconds. "You want a glass of milk?"
     
     
"Milk?"
     
     
"It's that white stuff goes on your Cheerios."
     
     
He gave me a look, like, Okay, buddy, and turned back to her. "You got chocolate milk?"
     
     
"I don't know, honey," she said. "I'll go check." She walked off chuckling, shaking her head. I've got to learn how he does it, I thought. I knew that part of it was his looks, but still, he had a way of connecting, of opening people up and making them want to talk to him. He'd been able to do it ever since he'd learned how to talk, and I had no idea how it worked. Put me in a room full of strangers and I will be guarded and defensive until I figure out who's who and how much compensating I have to do to make up for what I am, you know, no education, jail, and the rest of it. Put Nicky in the same room and he'll walk out a half hour later friends with everybody in there, he'll remember their names and everything they talked about. Jesus. He should be helping me eat my breakfast, not the other way around.
     
     
They didn't have chocolate milk, so he settled for the white stuff. I don't think he'd ever had pancakes before but he didn't let on, he watched me carefully and did what I did. He had some trouble cutting them into manageable portions, so after a while I woke up and helped him with that, and then he did okay, aside from getting maple syrup all over his face, hands, and shirt. I think he was pretty worried about how I was going to react to that. When we were done we went to the men's room and hosed him down. After I got him more or less clean he stood there with his face upturned and his eyes squeezed shut, getting blasted by the hot-air machine. Jesus, God, I thought, I know this is my job, but I got no idea what the fuck I'm doing, You got to help me out, here. It struck me then that he had no other clothes, he had nothing in the world except what was on his back.
     
     
The stores in the mall were open by the time we left the pancake house. Nicky and I went inside and wandered around for a couple of hours. I bought him a knapsack almost as big as he was, then we went into Baby Gap and filled it up. I watched him work on the ladies who staffed the place, and then I took one of them aside and told her I was taking him to camp for the first time but I had forgotten to bring his stuff, I didn't want to ruin things for him, could she fix him up with all the normal kid stuff?
     
     
She put a hand on my shoulder. "It would be my pleasure," she said, hardly looking at me at all. She and the other women fussed over him for what seemed an eternity. He sucked up all the attention like a camel drinking water after a long dry trip, and I watched, feeling inadequate. What had made me think I was qualified to be anyone's father? I knew the answer to that one, though. When you get a hard-on, the blood rushes out of your brain and into your dick so you can't think at all.