“Yeah, I think that’s exactly what happened,” he answered, the weight of this moment sinking in.
Georgie’s expression grew pensive. “We know the brand of the formula. We saw the can at their house. I assume we just buy the same thing.”
“Yeah,” he answered, still a little dumbstruck.
“Would you like my cart?” a man said, pushing an empty one toward the outdoor cart corral.
“Sure,” Georgie answered.
The man grinned as his gaze slid to Ollie. “Mine are nine and thirteen now. Enjoy them while they’re little. It goes by in the blink of an eye.”
“Okay,” Georgie replied, sounding stunned as the man turned and headed for his car.
“Should we put him in it?” he asked, angling the offered cart toward his wife.
Georgie shook her head. “Not yet. Grab the disinfectant wipes from the back of the car. We need to get it sanitized. And get Faby. We’re all going in together.”
“Right!” he said, remembering the wipe stand in the simulation, then sprang into action as hope and anticipation fluttered in his chest.
This was their chance. Their shopping with a baby re-do.
Lucky for them, Ollie looked wholly incapable of shooting an endless stream of baby poo. Thank Christ, they had biology on their side—or at least basic volume.
He wiped down the cart, then buckled little Ollie into the seat. Georgie set Faby next to him, and the delighted six-month-old giggled and cooed, tapping and touching his plastic seatmate.
“Look at that. Faby made a friend,” Georgie said, pushing the cart toward the entrance.
And that’s when he discovered he’d developed dad eyes.
Yep, dad eyes—the ones that see danger lurking around every corner.
All of a sudden, every crack in the pavement, every bird, every car, every person near them became possible threats.
“We’ll want to go in with a plan,” he said, eyeing a pair of teenagers carrying skateboards.
“I agree. Let’s get the formula first, then do the pineapple grab.”
“Roger that, MBG,” he parried back.
The market’s automatic doors slid open, but Georgie stopped in her tracks.
“Who’s MBG?”
He held her gaze. “You are. Messy bun girl. MBG.”
“You’re not playing around?” she replied, that playful twinkle back in her blue-green eyes.
“That’s an affirmative, MBG.”
They were taking this to combat-level serious with codenames and everything.
She grinned up at him. Her real smile. Her Georgie smile. “Let’s do this, PTA.”
He frowned. “PTA? Like the parents who run the bake sale at elementary schools?”
“No, perfect ten asshat,” she replied, looking damn pleased with herself.
PTA didn’t have the badass quality of MBG, but if it made his wife smile, he was totally good with it.
“PTA, MBG, the F-A-B-Y, and the real O-L-L-I-E are good to go,” he said, holding her gaze for a fraction of a second before they moved in on the target aka the grocery store.
They sailed down the aisles and even maneuvered past one of those little caution wet floor warning cones with ease. They picked up the formula. They plundered the pineapple yogurts. They pillaged the juice display. They filled the cart with pineapple delights and were headed for the check-out when a smell akin to roadkill wafted up from little Ollie.
They stared at the boy, who’d nixed the giggles for a pensive pout.
“You don’t think Faby made that smell, do you?” he asked.
Georgie shook her head. “Diaper bag. Family restroom. This mission is taking a detour.”
“Jesus, babe!”
“What?” she asked.
“It’s pretty hot when you go GI Georgie.”
And boom! They’d added another sexy role-play scenario option to the naughty-times’ portfolio. As much as he would have liked to take a minute or twelve to think about a commando-clad Georgie, they had a bomb to defuse—a stink bomb.
A fart, smelling as if it came from a water buffalo, cut their sexytime talk short. They changed course, slicing and dicing past shoppers, cutting corners, and nearly taking out a pallet of sparkling water before making it to the family restroom.
The vacant sign above the door handle signaled they were good to go.
Georgie plucked Ollie from the cart, and the three, well, four counting Faby, of them entered the market lavatory.
And…
“Wow, it’s nice in here!” Georgie said, glancing around the spacious room.
“There’s even a chair,” he remarked, setting the baby bag on it.
“Okay, I need you to clean the changing table with a disinfectant wipe. I’ll get the diaper and the baby wipes.”
In action movies, there’s often a scene accompanied by an intense techno soundtrack where the characters operate in sync. Hacking the FBI—the real one. Fortifying a stronghold. Whatever the high-stakes scenario, that serious shit-is-getting-done music starts to play, and you know it’s that part of the film where the real nitty-gritty gets done.
In that quasi-luxurious family restroom, he and Georgie fell into that very scene. Except, the store didn’t have hardcore techno playing. No, the piped-in background music was…
He could barely believe it!
“Michael Bolton,” Georgie whispered as a lovely instrumental version of “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You” played over the market’s sound system.
He caught Georgie’s eye, and she nodded. A tiny move that would have gone unrecognized by most, but not him.
This song had been with them from the beginning. It couldn’t be a coincidence that it was playing now.
Table down.
Wipes deployed.
Jordan Marks was a man on a disinfecting mission. He raised his hands, then stepped back and allowed Georgie to move in.
Gently, she laid the baby on the changing table, then proceeded to remove his little baby shoes and his little baby jeans, which were, honestly, damn cute.
“Mr. Ollie, that is quite a smell,” Georgie said, adding a pee-ew sound that had the boy laughing a toothless baby giggle that was also cute as hell.
But the smell!
“You want me to do it?” he asked, eyeing the bulging diaper.
“No, I’m going in. Baby wipe,” she said, holding out her hand like a surgeon requesting a scalpel.
Wipe in hand, she removed the diaper, and, while the VR simulation wasn’t completely accurate, it was still freaky how much poop a tiny person could produce in real life. Still, at least this stuff wasn’t erupting out of him like Mount Saint Diarrhea.
It took a good ten or eleven wipes, but together—no, mostly Georgie with him earning a solid assist—they’d cleaned up the boy, disposed of the diaper, and had those baby jeans and shoes on before that Michael Bolton song even ended.
Things moved quickly after their diaper change win.
They’d washed their hands, left the bathroom oasis, and paid for their items.
And just like that, they’d mastered the real grocery store challenge.
He carried the groceries and Faby while Georgie lifted the boy out of the cart.
“Let’s wait on the bench,” she said with a mischievous grin.
“Ah, the very bench where you cracked open a tube of—”