“Phew, just look at that UST.” Derek made a show of peering toward the couple walking ahead of them, his hand at his forehead, shading his eyes. “I swear you can see it sizzling off of ‘em,” he muttered to Emily.
Granted, he should have considered that the small person between him and his girlfriend had ears also. Despite the mysterious statement, Derek’s little brother, Jonah, continued swinging his arms, right hand holding onto Emily and left hand holding onto Derek.
“What’s a ‘oost’?” the diminutive form asked, sounding out the acronym.
“Uhhhhh.” Derek looked over at Emily, and she shrugged. It really was his fault for bringing it up in the four-year-old’s presence. Derek knew well that the little boy had an insatiable curiosity for all things unfamiliar.
“Emily, do you know?” Jonah turned to his right to peer at his older brother's girlfriend. Emily knew a lot of things, and Emily was always right. That’s what Derek had told him.
“Why don’t you ask your brother?” she deflected, even though Jonah had done just that not five seconds ago. Derek gave her a ‘gee thanks’ look but quickly switched his face to scholarly and contemplative as he tried to invent something innocuous.
“It’s... uh... let’s see... UST stands for... Unclaimed Stolen Tricycle!” He grinned, albeit more sheepishly than usual. If they hadn’t been trying to give Jonah an alternative explanation, Emily would have stared at him incredulously for the ridiculous suggestion.
“Unclaimed Stolen Tricycle?” the child repeated. Emily wasn’t sure if he was trying to process what that phrase meant in the first place or why the term applied to Chris and Seth, who were inching farther and farther away from them.
“Yeah. ‘Cause, uh, you know how Chris met Seth because he accidentally chained his bike to hers, right?”
“Twice!” exclaimed Jonah. He liked that story and always giggled behind his hands whenever his older brother dramatized it for him.
“Yup, twice.” Derek held up two fingers on his free hand. “Sooo... umm... well, ‘stolen’ is kinda because Seth sorta held Chris’s bike hostage while it was chained up to hers. And ‘tricycle’ is because... uhhh...”
“They had a three-wheeled vehicle when the bikes were chained together!” Jonah offered. “Like a three-legged race, when the two legs in the middle are tied together and then you only have three legs left instead of four!”
“Yeah, exactly!” Derek snapped the fingers of his left hand, but the barely audible wisp of a result was anticlimactic to say the least. Unfortunately, his right hand was being occupied by Jonah’s tiny hand.
Emily rolled her eyes but decided to play along. “Why is it ‘unclaimed’ then? Shouldn’t you have used ‘unchained’ or something?”
Derek opened his mouth to say that he hadn’t thought of the idea earlier but then caught himself just in time. “Ah right. My bad. Unchained, unclaimed. They sound pretty similar. And they rhyme!”
“Like ‘Belly Button’!” interjected Jonah, referring to one of his favorite VeggieTales songs.
“Yeah! Exactly!” Derek skipped forward a step and watched to see if his brother would imitate him. He did.
“Like pretty much any song, you mean?” prodded Emily.
“Oh whatever.” Derek waved off her technicalities. She was unphased.
“So... ‘Unchained Stolen Tricycle,’ huh?”
Derek nodded sagely, ignoring how that made the phrase no longer make sense in the original context. “Yes, ma’am. That tis correct. Very correct indeed.”
“WTF...”
“What’s that mean?!” Jonah snapped his head over to Emily this time. Oh d’arvit. She should’ve known better too.
“Wednesday, Thursday, Friday!” covered Derek. “WTF means Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.”
The little, dark-haired boy scrunched his face up at his brother, wrinkling his nose. After a few seconds, he relented and kept skipping along.
“Okay.”
“Phew,” Derek whispered across at his older companion, left hand wiping off imaginary sweat. “Good save, right?”
“I can’t decide which one is worse,” Emily muttered back.
“They’re both good!” Derek’s voice rose back above the whisper level.
“Tee lub!” announced Jonah, trying to pull the two of them forward.
“Um, what?”
“T.L.U.B. ‘They’re leaving us behind,’” he gestured at the rest of the people walking ahead of them. “I wanna eat! I’m hungry!”
“Okay, okay, buddy. I’m hungry too. Let’s go!”
