Sweet Nothing

by Henry, Mia

  He thinks we’ll be together in six months. He thinks we could be something. My heart speeds up.

  “And she’s a really important part of my life. The most important part of my life. It would feel wrong for you not to meet her, you know?”

  The first bell rings, making us both jump. I pull away.

  “I know, Luke.” I reach around him and find my coffee. Suddenly, I need something to do, need something between us. I take a long sip. It’s cold. “I didn’t mean to freak out. Really. I just—”

  “You need time to think. I get it. It’s okay.” He squeezes my arm and kisses me on the forehead. “Really, Elle.” There’s pain in his eyes. Pain that I caused. “Let’s leave it like this: the invitation’s open. Dinner’s at six at my house. If you want to come, great. If not, it’s okay. Okay?”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem. Hey. Wish me luck with Goodwin today.”

  “You won’t need it.” I’m trying for light. Breezy, even. I’m failing.

  Luke waves and slips out the door just as my first few students are trickling in. I greet them and then turn my back to the class, scribbling something unnecessary on the board. I’ve hurt him with my hesitation, I know that. And I hate it. But doesn’t he see that meeting his daughter is a huge step? It’s a step I need time to think about. A step I’m just not sure I’m ready to take.

  chapter twenty-four

  Elle,

  I’m really sorry about the things I said on the phone yesterday morning. I didn’t mean them. It’s just that I’ve been thinking about coming to stay with you ever since you left New York. Even though school isn’t terrible, and I’m used to Mom being…. Mom, I really loved the idea of the two of us living together. And then it felt like you shot me down. But I know you’re right. One more year. I can do it.

  Love you for infinity,

  A

  “It’s just like the movies,” Waverly says the next afternoon after school. The girls and I are stretched out on a sunny patch of grass at the edge of campus, overlooking the bay. The breeze is warm; the sun brassy on the water. “So, here’s how it goes. Usually, the kid is a jerk. Especially if it’s a girl. He has a girl, right?”

  I nod.

  “Girls are the worst,” she confirms. “Total bitches. I was a bitch to my stepmom when we first met.” She plucks a few blades of grass and twirls them between her fingers. “Actually, I’m a bitch to her now, come to think of it.”

  “You’re being the opposite of helpful.” Gwen tears a piece of fruit leather into two and offers me the bigger half. I force a smile and shake my head.

  “She’s five, Waverly.” I ball up the soft blue cardigan I wore over my strapless gray dress and use it as a pillow. The grass is thick and rough beneath me. I want to stay here forever. Or at least until breakfast tomorrow. “I sincerely doubt she’s a bitch at five.”

  “You obviously haven’t seen the movies.”

  “What movies?” I snap.

  “Waverly. Take it down a notch, okay?” Gwen says warily.

  “Let me finish,” Waverly protests. “They’re bitches at first, but then they come around, and by the end, you’re getting pedicures together and buying her her first box of tampons.”

  I close my eyes and try to breathe deeply. “What about you and your stepmom?”

  “That doesn’t count. The woman is a gold-digging piece of—”

  “Listen. Ellie. It’s simple,” Gwen interrupts. “Trust your gut on this one. What does your intuition tell you?”

  “My intuition says I’m about to throw up,” I murmur. “My intuition also says that this dinner is happening in an hour and a half, and I still haven’t told Luke whether I’m coming, and that’s really rude.”

  “Who eats dinner at six?” Waverly muses.

  “FIVE YEAR-OLDS,” I bellow.

  My pale skin is starting to burn under the afternoon sun. It feels good. I lie there in silence for a while, trying not to think of all the things that could go wrong. I don’t know how to act around a little kid. I won’t know what to say. And if there’s anything genetic about maternal instincts, then I’m totally fucked.

  “Hey, Elle?” Gwen’s voice is soft. “Do you love Luke?”

  The question swoops down and covers me. Do I love Luke? A man who’s kind and gentle, and who takes the time to surprise me and cook for me and who understands pain and surviving it and who makes my body and heart want to burst when he’s close.

  “Of course.” My voice is small, and I know the words to be true.

  “Then it’s fairly simple, right? If you love him.”

  “Oh.” I sit up and squint into the sun.

  “I don’t mean that it’s easy.” Gwen leans over and brushes bits of grass from my shoulder. “I just mean that it’s simple.”

  “Do you not want to meet her?” Waverly asks.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to meet her. I mean, she’s just a kid. An adorable kid, actually. It’s just that we’re getting to a really good place, Luke and me. I don’t want to screw it up.”

  “You won’t screw it up,” Waverly argues.

  You don’t know me. Not really. I screw everything up.

  “You won’t,” she says again. “Just don’t curse in front of her, get drunk and hit on her boyfriend on her birthday, or try to fit into one of her outfits even though you haven’t been a size four since HIGH SCHOOL, psycho-skank.”

  “We’re not talking about me any more, are we?”

  “Listen.” Gwen’s eyes are bright in the late afternoon sun. “The only thing that matters is that you love him. And she’s a part of him. You’ll love her, too.”

  Gwen’s words echo in my mind as I stand paralyzed at Luke’s front door, debating whether to ring the bell or bolt. My stomach churns loudly enough to drown out my heartbeat. I’m not sure I can do this. But it’s too late. I sent him a text already. A cheerful, looking forward it to it text. There were exclamation points and smiley faces involved. I can’t take back a smiley face.

  Inside, I hear the slap of bare feet against the floor, and a half-laugh, half-screech so loud I can’t help but smile. I’m reaching for the bell when the door swings open. Luke’s wearing a white t-shirt and bottle green shorts, accessorized with a frilly pink apron and an equally pink chef’s hat about six sizes too small. There’s a dab of chocolate on his cheek.

  “Oh. Wow.” I bite the inside of my cheek, trying not to laugh. “You look amazing. And so big! Lilah, is it?”

  “Hilarious,” Luke deadpans, patting the chef’s hat. “I’ve been instructed that if I don’t wear the chef’s hat, the cookies will be sad.”

  “Sad cookies are the worst.” I extend the plastic bottle I brought as a last-minute dinner offering. “Apple juice?”

  Luke’s grin is enough to melt my anxiety. Some of it, anyway. “That’s really sweet. Come on in. You look great.” He takes the apple juice and closes the door behind me.

  “Thanks.” I smooth the red and black-striped boatneck tee I’m wearing with skinny jeans and flats. I’d changed clothes at least four times, until Waverly told me that the boatneck said “I’m casual, fun, and definitely not banging your dad.”

  Done.

  When Luke locks the door, I catch a whiff of vanilla extract. I want to bury my mouth in his neck.

  “Daaaaaaaaaaaad!” I hear Lilah’s voice before I see her, dashing out of the bathroom in tights, a t-shirt, and an apron that matches Luke’s. There’s a purple tutu cinched around her waist. She stops in her tracks when she sees me.

  I freeze. “Um… hey, there.” Hey there?

  She tilts her head to one side, studying me. I’m suddenly, strangely overwhelmed. That’s exactly what Luke does when he can’t figure me out. She looks exactly like him.

  “Are you Dad’s friend?”

  I nod. Swallow the lump in my throat. “I am. My name is Elle.” I extend my hand. “And you’re Lilah?”

  “Yeah. If you’re uncomferble, it’s okay,” she
informs me. “But you still have to be nice.” She grabs my hand and squeezes it, holding on for dear life.

  “Um…” I glance at Luke, who looks amused and embarrassed at the same time.

  “We may have had a heart-to-heart before you got here,” he explains.

  “Come on! We’re making cookies!” Lilah drags me to the kitchen table, where bowls of toppings surround a baking sheet topped with mounds of sprinkles and frosting. The table is covered in a fine mist of pink sugar.

  “There’s some cookie dough under there somewhere.” Luke helps Lilah climb onto the chair. Gingerly, she reaches for a white chocolate chip and places it carefully atop a mountain of marshmallows.

  “That one’s beautiful.” I take a seat next to Lilah and push up my sleeves. “Can I decorate one?”

  “Well, I did them all already. But you can have this one.” She picks red heart candies out of a lump of dough and pops them all in her mouth.

  “Hey! What did I say?” Luke protests.

  “After dinner.” She sticks out her tongue, which is stained bright red. “Too late.”

  “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.

  chapter twenty-five

  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 bre
athe. 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.