Missing in Action

Chapter 023

The chicken was on the table, a day belatedly, but at least it finally got made, as did the potatoes and gravy and the dessert for later. Ryan had had a lot of fun making it with Jenn and he was definitely understanding why Brendon had kept her around. It had been years since he'd really made a new friend, sad though that might sound, but this woman definitely had potential. It didn't hurt that she was closer to his own age, at just a couple of months younger, than anyone else close to him. He reached out with a smile and started cutting the chicken, putting the first drumstick automatically on his daughter's plate, followed by a wing. Then he turned to Isaac. "What would you like?" he asked, smiling at the boy.

Isaac scrunched his nose up as he looked at the chicken, then turned to stare at Ryan. "What is that?" he asked, eyes wide. He looked at his father and Godmother, frowning a bit, and seemed frightened. Brendon sighed, rubbing a hand over his eyes, and then turned to his son. "It's chicken, Isaac. You like chicken, we eat it all the time. This is just... a different way to eat it," Brendon explained, giving him an encouraging smile. Isaac shook his head forcefully.

"Birdie!" he cried, causing Brendon and Jenn to both groan at the same time. It really was not the time for their son to figure out that he was eating animals.

Jenn reached over and took a hold of Isaac's hand. "Listen, sweetie. This is meat. People eat meat because it's good for their health, and that includes you, alright? Just eat ten bites, okay?" she asked, and smiled when Isaac nodded reluctantly. "Just give him the whitest meat you can find... or give Brendon part of the breast and he can go digging through it," she said, looking over at Ryan and smiling before rolling her eyes a little.

Ryan nodded with an amused smile and cut off half the breast before putting it on Brendon's plate. "And you?" he asked, looking at Jenn even as he kept cutting pieces off so they'd be easier to get for a second serving. He got in all the way to the filling and put a tiny bit of that on Lucía's plate as well before raising an eyebrow at Brendon, waiting for confirmation before giving him some as well.

"Wing," she answered with a wink, watching as Brendon served his son potatoes and then started the task of finding some meat he would eat. "Did you guys have fun at the park?" she asked, smiling when Isaac seemed to brighten. He went on to babble about swings and a doggie, then looked expectantly at Keely for her to fill them in on all the things they had done.

"We used the swings, and Brendon pushed me real high," Lucía declared with a wide smile. "And then there was a lady who thought Brendon was my Daddy, but she had a really cute doggie, so I didn't tell her she was wrong, and we petted the doggie and played on the merry-go-round and used the slides and we had so much fun." She was nearly squealing by the end of her retelling, grinning wide.

Ryan found himself chuckling amusedly even as he steadily served Jenn the other wing and took a bit of filling and the second half of the chest for himself before helping Lucía with her potatoes and gravy, grinding the potatoes with a fork to get a sort of pseudo mash and mixing it with the gravy the way he knew she preferred it before serving himself. "Sounds like it was a lot of fun," he stated.

"We did. And we had a bit of a talk on our way back," he said, smiling as he winked at Lucía. He was feeling nervous about using her name, now, because he knew how much it meant to Ryan, and he wanted to surprise Ryan by using it, and saying that she had given him the right to say it; the privilege, even, of using the name that she only saved for her father and Godfather. But that made him nervous, because he wasn't sure if the surprise would be good or bad in Ryan's eyes.

Ryan found himself biting his lip a bit nervously, slightly anxious as to how it had gone. But on the other hand Lucía hadn't come raging to him, demanding they get rid of Brendon, so it couldn't have gone too bad. And he still held hopes that it had gone well. He didn't want to have to end this before it had really properly started back up, but for Lucía he would. He just hoped he wouldn't be forced to make that decision. "I'm glad you had a good time," he finally settled on saying.