“Did you swallow those whole?” The edges of Luke’s stern grimace twitch with laughter. “Lilah.”
“Hey, Dad! Take a picture of us making cookies!”
I’m taken aback when I feel Lilah’s tiny arms around my waist. Awkwardly, I rest my hand on her shoulder while Luke fumbles with his cell phone.
“Alright. Say sugar cookie. One, two…”
“SUGAR COOKIE!” Lilah practically screams at the phone.
“Very good.” Luke mouths an
I’m sorry
at me.
“Hey, Dad?”
“Yes, Lilah Bear?”
“I have to tell you a secret.” Standing on her tiptoes, Lilah lifts her lips to Luke’s ear. But instead of whispering, she plants a bright red kiss on his jaw.
“Best secret EVER!” Luke grabs Lilah and squeezes her. She squeals, pretending to try to get away as he holds her tighter. I watch them together, glancing at the ceiling every few seconds. My throat closes in.
Of all the things I expected to feel tonight, sad wasn’t anywhere near the top of the list. But seeing Luke and Lilah together reminds me of time I used to spend with my father. I miss feeling as safe as he used to make me feel. I miss knowing that he would take care of everything, that nothing could go wrong in my world as long as he was the center of it. I miss loving him unconditionally.
Luke lowers Lilah to the floor and gives her a playful swat on the rear. “Go wash your hands. Dinner’s almost ready.”
“But—”
“Now, please. The sooner you wash your hands, the sooner we eat. And the sooner we eat—”
“COOKIES!” Lilah yells.
Luke nods. “Now scoot.”
Lilah disappears into the bathroom.
“She’s great, Luke. Really sweet,” I say. And I mean it.
“Yeah. She’s definitely my favorite tiny human.” Luke smiles and pulls me into him. “She likes you. I can tell.” He holds the back of my head as he kisses me. Softly at first, then more urgently.
After a few seconds, I pull away. “How?”
“How what?”
“How can you tell? Sure, I know she’s your kid and everything, but maybe she secretly hates me and you have no idea.”
“Well, for one thing, she told me that the code word if she hated you was
rhinoceros. And since she hasn’t screamed rhinoceros yet, I think you’re okay in her book.”
“Oh.”
Luke shakes his head and pulls me in for another kiss. “I’ve wanted to do that since you got here.”
I nuzzle his neck. “Is it weird that your stern dad voice turns me on?”
“There’s more where that came from, young lady,” he jokes. “Be a good girl, or you might get spanked.” His hands slide over my ass.
My body hardens. “Promise?”
“Okay! All done.” The bathroom door bangs open, and Luke and I jump apart.
“I’d better wash my hands too.” I scurry past Lilah into the bathroom, trying to ignore the pulsing in various parts of my body. I close the door and lock it, then lean over the sink and peer into the mirror. My cheeks are a deep pink, and my hair is mussed where Luke grabbed me. I comb it with my fingers and dab a little water on the back of my neck. Then I wash my hands with lemon-scented soap from the chocolate-smudged dispenser. Luke and Lilah are already seated when I emerge.
“Smells great. What are we having?”
“Macaroni and hot dogs,” Lilah announces. “And cookies if you clean your plate.”
“She picked out the menu,” Luke says apologetically.
I widen my eyes and blink at Lilah. “How’d you know macaroni and hot dogs are my favorites?”
Her jaw drops. “Are you kidding me?”
“Never.” I laugh and pour myself a glass of juice. “I would never, ever do that.”
“Dad! We have the same favorites!”
“I heard, Lilah Bear. That’s awesome. Now take a bite for me, okay?”
I raise my fork, and Lilah follows my lead, spearing macaroni and hotdog with dramatic flair.
“So, my friends have this game they like to play,” I tell her after we’ve all taken a few bites. “It’s called
Guess what happened at work today?
. We go around the table and tell something good that happened today. You want to play?”
“But I don’t go to work,” Lilah pouts. A chunk of bright orange “cheese” clings to her lower lip.
“You go to school, right? I take her napkin and dab it away. “So you could tell something that happened at school.”
“Okay.” She winds a cheesy finger around a section of strawberry blonde curls. “Ummmm, today at school, we made paintings and I splattered Jeremy P.’s with black paint to make it look like a Pommack—”
“Wait. Hold up.” Luke mimes a timeout. “You did what?’
“I splattered it with paint,” she says proudly. “Little bitty dots. To make it look like a Pommack.”
“A
Pollack
?” Luke says warily.
“That’s what I said. It was pretty beautiful, Dad. But then Jeremy P. cried and I had to sit in the reflecting corner.”
I raise my juice glass to my lips, pursing them together so tightly they hurt.
“Lilah. Honey. Love of my life. You can’t just go splattering other people’s art with black paint.” Luke rubs his temples. “If you want to splatter your painting, I’m all for it. But not Jeremy P.’s. Got it?”
“Got it. And then we had cheese crackers for snack.” Lilah finishes, then looks at me. “Go ahead.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure I can’t top that.” I take another bite of macaroni, which is slightly crunchy and tastes vaguely like cookie dough. “But
yesterday
at work, I got a lovely dinner invitation from a very nice family.”
“That’s us, Bear,” Luke clarifies.
“Dad. I am NOT saying rhinoceros. Got it?”
“Got it.” Luke catches my gaze and holds it.
I don’t look away. I don’t want to. I love the way he looks at her, like he would do anything to make her happy. She looks at him the same way. I love that Luke the Guy doesn’t really change that much when he’s Luke the Dad. I love the crunchy macaroni and the lumpy sugar cookies and the tutus and the frilly aprons.
And I love Luke Poulos so much it should scare me. But tonight, it doesn’t. So I pinch a wayward candy heart from my placemat and slide it across the table.
“I’ll just hold on to that.” He picks up the heart and drops it in his shirt pocket. “Keep it safe.”
I believe him.
Elle,
Mom and I got into it last night. It was worse than usual. I can’t even tell you the things she said about us. All of us. You, me, Dad—and I’m lying here, staring and the ceiling, and trying so hard to tell myself that the things she believes aren’t true. But her hatred just weighs me down, you know? Feels like a weight on my chest; makes it hard to breathe. And I don’t know how to shake this without you here.
Love you for infinity,
A
I sleep in on Saturday morning for the first time in months. The muffled clang of dishes being stacked in the kitchen draws me out of sleep, and when I roll onto my side I almost expect to Luke to be there, grinning from beneath a mop of curly, sleep-mussed hair. Instead I find a pile of folded laundry I’d been too lazy to put away, and one of Gwen’s back issues of
People
.
I flop onto my back and blink at the ceiling, allowing myself to sink into the warm memory of the night before. It comes in brief moments, like a series of short films I want to rewind and play again and again. The look of sheer joy on Lilah’s face when I pulled her inedible lumps of burned sugar from the oven. The way she settled into my lap after dinner and fell asleep in my arms, her mouth slightly open and smudged with frosting. The way Luke looked at me as I held her. Liked he loved us both, separately and together.
The sweet scent of Waverly’s hazelnut coffee drifts beneath the crack in the door. I slip out of bed and grab the first pair of jeans I can find and one of the folded t-shirts from my laundry stack, my navy WHARTON tee. As I brush my teeth, I study my reflection in the mirror. Tousled auburn hair, pale skin with just a whisper of pink in my cheeks and on the tip of my nose from the sun.
The girl in the mirror looks like me. The real me; the me I’ve become since I arrived in Miami. She is not a fraud, not the imposter I believed her to be when I first arrived at Dr. Goodwin’s house for the Allford reception. I give her a small smile. A peace offering.
Your name is Elle Sloane. You are an economics teacher. Your life so far has been anything but normal, or bland, or average. But you have survived it all, and you are loved by a good man. And maybe one day soon, you’ll explain everything. Maybe he’ll understand. Right now, in this moment, you are happy.
This time when the words echo in my mind, I truly believe them.
In the kitchen, Waverly and Gwen are sitting at the table nursing steaming mugs and bowls of cereal.
“Well, it’s about time, girl,” Waverly says. She’s dressed already, in turquoise jeans and a cream tank top.
“I know. I slept late,” I yawn, shuffling toward the coffee maker.
“You’ve had a long week. I’m sure your body needed it.” Gwen smiles over the top of her mug.
Waverly’s features contort in disgust as I pour my coffee and take a seat between them. “I could care less what your body needs. How’d it go with the kid?”
“She was a really sweet little girl, actually.” I pour my coffee and take a cautious sip. “You know what was really weird, though?”
“I knew it.” Waverly smacks the table with an open palm. “What’d she do?”
“Nothing. What was really weird was that it wasn’t weird at all.” I trace the rim of my mug with my index finger. “It just felt natural. There was nothing forced or fake about the whole thing.”
“That’s so fucking cool.” Gwen beams at me. “So you felt like you could be yourself? You weren’t nervous?”
“I was when I first got there. But then I met her, and we just sort of fell into this…” I pause, searching for the words to explain. But the searching is like sifting through handfuls of sand to find the perfect grain. The words slip through my fingers too fast. “…routine. We ate dinner and made cookies, and it felt like we’d been doing those things together for a long time. It felt… normal.” Heat rises to my cheeks.
Gwen doesn’t answer right away. Instead she seems to study me, her chocolate eyes traveling my face; her lips pursed slightly.
“What?” I study my mug. “I know. It sounds stupid.”
“It doesn’t.” Her voice is strong. “It sounds really nice, El. I’m glad…” Her voice trails off, and she squeezes my arm. “I’m glad. Luke’s a good dude.”
My cell buzzes on the table, and I glance at it before returning to my coffee.
“Oh, please.” Waverly twists her blonde ends into a messy bun, then releases it. She lowers her voice to a sexy rasp. “You know you want to get it.”
“Go on, El. We don’t care,” Gwen assures me.
“Sorry, guys.” I grab the phone and head into the hall as I answer. “Hey, you.”
“Hey, yourself. How’d you sleep last night?”
My body relaxes instantly at the sound of Luke’s voice. “Great, actually. Would have been better if you were there.” I pump the handle on the patio door and step outside, into a veil of muggy late September heat. The pavement sears my bare feet. “How’s Lilah?”
“A handful. Hyped up on sugar. Awesome.”
“You’ve got a great kid, Luke.”
“I know it. You know what else I have? About three dozen leftover sugar cookies. I was hoping you’d have dinner with me tonight, after I drop Lilah off at Ashley’s. We could polish them off for dessert.”
I laugh. “In one sitting?”
“It’s the only way to do it. You know what they say: Go hard or go home. How’s seven?”
“I’ll be there. Don’t start without me.”
The door is unlocked when I arrive, and I let myself in. Luke is standing next to the sink, prying burned cookies from a baking sheet with a metal spatula. Acoustic guitar music seems to float down from the ceiling. I recognize the tune immediately. Ray LaMontagne.
“Where’s the apron?” I tease, joining him in the kitchen. I stand behind him and loop my arms around his waist, feeling my body respond instantly to the contact. I’m not sure we’ll make it all the way to dessert.
“Hey. Be nice. Real men wear aprons, right?” He turns around and pulls me in for a kiss. His lips are warm and salty, and I’m suddenly overcome with intense wanting. I have to have him. I want his hands all over me, his mouth on every inch of me.
“Real men definitely wear aprons,” I nod, resting my chin on his chest. “And real men take care of their daughters and bake too many sugar cookies and go snorkeling and make amazing surprise collages for no reason at all.”
He smiles, but his eyes are serious. “Oh, I had my reason.”
“What’s that?” I trace the imperfections in his gray t-shirt. It’s wrinkled and warm and smells like the beach.
“You. You were my reason. I was… am… falling for you. In love with you. And so I gave you these little pieces of me. That’s all those things are, you know?”
The lump in my throat rises fast. I should tell him. I should tell him everything, because he’s given enough of himself and he deserves the same from me. I close my eyes and the words wash over me.
I am his reason. I am enough.
If I tell him, he might understand. He could love me anyway. “I… I love you too, Luke.” It’s easier than I ever thought it could be. It’s my truth.
He bends down to kiss me, weakening every fiber of my being. If I reveal who I am, I could lose this. I could lose him. Us. Not having Luke by my side could break me.
“You’re so damn beautiful, Elle,” he tells me. I let him. “And I know you don’t always believe that. But I can show you. Let me show you how beautiful you are.”
Suddenly, I can’t breathe. My chest is tight; my body closing in on itself. “Just… give me a second, okay?”
I give him a parting squeeze and duck into the bathroom. Turn on the faucet and cup my hands beneath the cold stream. The water is like ice on my face, my neck. Slipping past my collarbone. My heart is racing, pounding, chanting the truth.
I love him. I love him. I love him.
And I have to tell him the truth. I know that. I just don’t know how.