Delicate

by K. L. Cottrell

  I just love these two.

  The thought quickens my heartbeat with equal amounts of pride and nervousness.

  I thumb at my engagement ring for a second. Then I rub both hands over the hips of my jeans and shake off the bizarre feeling trying to prod at me.

  It’s time to get Theo into a different dress, get the glitter from this one off of her, and get our butts out the door so we can satisfy our hungry tummies.

  —

  We have a really good time at dinner.

  Theo wanted to sit by herself on her side of the booth because she saw another kid doing it, so Beckett and I have been side-by-side across from her, like how we sat that time it was just the two of us here.

  Except this is better.

  Unsurprisingly, Theo has knelt and wiggled in her seat more than sat in it, but for the most part, her behavior has been fine. By the time we’re done with our food, the worst thing to come about was her brief stint under the table as a ‘princess monster.’ It really wasn’t embarrassing or disruptive, just nerve-wracking because we didn’t want her to possibly end up kneeling in old dropped food.

  Right now, Beckett is reviewing our check even though I told him I was fine to pay for my and Theo’s food. One of his hands rubs absently at my knee while he does some mental math for the tip portion of the payment.

  I sigh over what it does to my nerve endings, then put one hand on his thigh and reach the other across the table to steal one of Theo’s fries.

  “Hey!” She crosses her arms. “Those are mine!”

  I wave the fry at her. “And you are mine, so I think it balances out!”

  “Oh.” She picks up a fry and wields it like a tiny weapon in her small fist. “Let’s have a fight, Mommy!”

  I finish chewing and pick out my own weapon from the very few remaining on her plate. It ends up being a fry that is stubby but crispy. I’ve barely gotten the little thing secure in my grasp before Theo is leaning over the table and mounting her attack.

  Her ardor makes me laugh.

  Momentarily, Beckett is commentating on our battle, his fingers moving to lace through mine on his thigh.

  “Folks, whoever said princesses can’t fight didn’t know what they were talking about! Theodora is all about the offense! Look at that aggression—merciless slam after slam of that golden rod of potato against her opponent’s weak defenses! Though I do wonder if temperature is what has given the princess’s tactic its true edge, because we all know cold fries are stiff fries. Would this battle be going differently if the taters were fresh and Noelle’s spiky weapon of choice could do better slicing and dicing?”

  We all gasp as Theo’s fry suddenly flops over in her grip and falls to the table.

  I pause my feeble swipes. “Uh oh!”

  “What’s this, crowd?” Beckett muses. “What defeat has befallen our presumed victor?”

  Theo unclenches her fist and shows off how smushed the bottom half of her fry has become. It’s all over her fingers now.

  Beckett and I erupt into laughter.

  “Oh no, honey!” I manage to get out as I trade my little fry for a napkin.

  “You held it too hard!” He puts his free hand on his chest as laughs quake through him.

  Cackling, Theo ignores my clean-up attempt and leans over here to try to get us with her weirdly sticky-looking French fry hand. We groan about how gross it is, and then I get the idea to use the napkin as a shield. Beckett resumes commentating about my hasty rub at her fingers—a necessary use of emergency weaponry, he calls it.

  Once she’s clean enough, Theo heaves a big sigh and says she guesses I won the fight. Then her trusty Uncle Beck rushes to ask the imaginary spectators if they see what he’s seeing: our abandoned fries moving on the battlefield as if coming back from the dead.

  Zombie fries, yes.

  That is the direction he takes this in.

  And she loves it.

  It’s not too much longer before we’re heading out to the car, our food paid for and our mini food fight having ended in a grave way. After Beckett said he had his credit card back and we could leave, Theo introduced her stomach as a foe no fry could hope to beat (zombie or otherwise) and promptly ate mine, the intact half of hers, and the other two on the plate. She almost ate her entire meal tonight, actually; she must’ve meant it when she took that first bite of cheeseburger and claimed it was the most delicious one ever.

  In the car, she talks about how she wants the three of us to play in the blanket fort at home. I already know I’m feeling too full and lazy to huddle in there without falling asleep, though. I’d be willing to bet she’s not far behind me, so I suggest taking it down for the night and putting it back up tomorrow when her friend will be there to play too. She likes that idea.

  Once we’re home, I get her bathed while Beckett takes down the fort and entertains himself in the living room. Then it’s time for her pajamas and a movie of her choosing.

  Halfway through, she’s passed out on the loveseat.

  We opt to leave her there for a while and go on idly watching the movie together. Eventually, we decide to move her to bed so she won’t roll onto the floor like she has almost just done, thanks to my sneeze startling her in her sleep.

  Soon, Beckett and I are back to lounging on the couch by ourselves. The TV is muted, and I’m decidedly sleepy myself, and I know he is too. He has been yawning along with me for a few minutes now.

  But I’m also so comfortable like this, tucked under his left arm while he traces my left hand on his chest, that I realize I’m ready to talk to him about what has been on my mind.

  Okay. First things first.

  “I’ve been wanting to tell you Theo has some fun stuff coming up soon at preschool. Visitor-type things. One is for grandparents, and another is for—” I lightly clear my throat, “—for dads.”

  For the second time this evening, I’m so close to him that it’s impossible to miss the way my words affect his breathing. This time, I swear I can also feel his heartbeat picking up pace.

  Mine is doing the same.

  “That one is called Donuts With Daddy,” I go on. “I talked about it with her, and she would love it if you went. I mean, not because she thinks you’d go as her dad—she knows you’re just— although she did tell me the other day that she—um—but then—oh, I—”

  Just like that, my sentence has gotten away from me. Whatever I had planned has gotten knotted up and gone off the rails.

  I feel a deep blush coming on.

  It worsens when I realize Beckett’s hand has stilled on mine.

  Shit.

  All right, think, Noelle: where can you start to salvage this?

  “What was it she told you?” comes his soft voice.

  I take a slow breath.

  Looks like he has chosen for me.

  “She said she…um….”

  Closing my eyes, I will my face to cool off.

  This is Beckett, not some stranger who won’t understand what I’m trying to say or where I’m coming from. Even if it keeps coming out awkwardly, there’s no real need to be nervous.

  A comforting truth.

  “I asked her if she would want you to go eat donuts as her Uncle Beck, because she’s not stupid—she knows her dad isn’t here anymore, and I didn’t want her to feel out of place or anything among kids whose dads could go. But she wasn’t upset at all about that. She was just excited to be talking about you, and…she told me she thinks you should be her dad after all. Instead of her uncle. From now on, not just at the donut thing. Because she loves you that much and because you told her you love her that much, too, at McDonald’s.”

  As familiar tension starts building in my chest, it hits me in this moment, with all this said, that being nervous isn’t my real problem. Being emotional is.

  I’m not trying to sway him toward what Theo wants, nor am I trying to add to the tension he and I have already been dealing with. I just want to be open with him because that’s the kind of relatio
nship we have—there hasn’t been room for self-consciousness between us in many years.

  Yet neither of us can act like this isn’t a big thing. It is a big thing, whether any of us thought it would turn out to be or not.

  Just like me and him.

  He starts moving. His arm uncoils from around me until his hand is light on my lower back. I finally open my eyes to find him sitting up straighter, facing me.

  His sincerity is as obvious as the warmth in his own face.

  “Before I get to most of that,” he says lightly, “I have to tell you how sorry I am. Noelle, the kid thing from McDonald’s…. When I was telling you about the weird guy, I should’ve made sure not to leave out anything about the conversation I had with Theo. I’m sorry.”

  Now that his chest is out from under my hand, I’m able to tap my thumbnails together. But it’s not because I’m unsettled. It’s because this topic fills me with a good feeling I don’t know how to deal with.

  “Why didn’t you mention it to me?” I ask.

  He lifts one timid shoulder as a frown creases his brow.

  “It wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t a secret I wanted us to keep. I never tell Theodora to keep things a secret from you, and I never will.” As his eyes drift over me, he seems to drift into thought. “I guess if I dissect it…. The whole thing about her feeling like my child—my actual kid, not my niece or honorary niece or best friend’s daughter—it crept up on me. It seemed to come out of nowhere ‘cause that weird guy had alarms going off in my head and I reacted on instinct. And you’re right, she’s smart, so she heard exactly what I said to him and then brought it up in the car, and I couldn’t brush it off. It was important to me that I leveled with her and tried to help her see where my heart was. Where it is. I couldn’t stand the idea of her thinking I would throw around a sentiment like that without meaning it, or thinking I don’t respect what Cliff was to her. Those things couldn’t be further from the truth.”

  I don’t know how it is that I can’t get enough of this swelling emotion even as it makes me feel short of breath.

  Nodding, I whisper, “Yeah. Of course.”

  He nods too. “So we talked about it—about why I said it and whether it upset her. I guess part of why I didn’t think to mention it to you is that it seemed to be handled, you know? She and I talked it out and then got our ice cream and came back to you.”

  Now his eyes move over me with that stirring affection I also know I’ll never get enough of.

  “And if I dissect it even more,” he goes on more quietly, “even though it might sound stupid, I guess it’s possible I was subconsciously scared to bring it up to you. Scared of what it might do to you and us and….” He shakes his head and swallows hard. “You and I were already struggling with so much to do with Cliff, and the talk I had with Theo hit me in the heart so hard, and I was just his best friend, you know? He was you guys’ family in a way he wasn’t mine. But God, when she said….”

  Abruptly, he looks like tears are threatening him.

  My fidgeting thumbs go still. So does the rest of me, it seems. “What?”

  Seconds tick by while he breathes as measuredly as he can.

  Then a sad smile curves up one corner of his lips.

  “She said she thinks about Cliff a lot but thinks about me all the time.”

  Hearing this puts the burn of tears in my own eyes. In my throat.

  Holy Lord, how does my daughter come up with these heart-clenching words at five years old?

  I reach out and lay a hand against his chest again. He promptly wraps one of his around it. I get a surprisingly good breath, and so does he.

  “Beckett,” I say weakly, “that’s…beautiful.”

  He nods, and I catch the glisten in his eyes. “Yeah, I know.”

  His thumb swipes over my knuckles, back and forth, soothing.

  “One of the most special things anyone has ever said to me,” he whispers.

  I try to reply, “Yeah,” but my voice barely supports it.

  It takes me several seconds to be able to keep talking.

  “I would’ve loved to know all of this sooner. I mean, it was something special and emotional just between the two of you, so I respect that. But I just love….”

  Sniffling, he shakes his head. “I’m really so sorry, and I feel like an idiot for not thinking to tell you. Are you angry?”

  “No,” I assure him. “You would never hide something from me that would hurt her. You would never hurt either of us or manipulate us or anything like that.”

  He squeezes my hand. “No, never.”

  We fall quiet. Keep looking at each other. Keep my hand on his chest.

  At length, he whispers, “I would love to go eat donuts with her.”

  Fresh happiness joins the lovely chaos in me. “Really?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He pauses, regarding me with even more gentleness than before.

  “But…I mean, just so you know…I love her exactly as much as I said, and there’s not even a way to describe how it makes me feel to know she loves me that much, too, but I don’t expect any of us to just start calling me her dad.”

  I hadn’t realized the blush had left my cheeks, but it must have because I feel it coming back.

  “Yeah,” I murmur, “we don’t expect it either. She was really disappointed, you know, when I explained how things don’t really work like that, but…we got on the same page eventually. She just doesn’t understand most of it, which makes sense.” A rogue chuckle escapes me. “She only knows her heart loves you.”

  He chuckles too. “Oh, it’s all any of us ever know, huh? The love is there, and that’s the most important thing.”

  Another cascade of silent seconds.

  Another loaded look filling the space between us.

  I don’t think he meant for that to sound like it could apply to us, too, and yet….

  His hand is tight around mine.

  I wouldn’t pull away from him if someone paid me to—even knowing my scariest topic has finally come back around and is ready to be brought up.

  First, I want to confide one last thing in him.

  “Fault lines instead of veins,” I say, heat sitting firmly in my face, neck, chest. “That’s how you made me feel after we had the deer accident: like I had fault lines going all through me instead of veins. And I thought they would go away—I was sure they would—but they haven’t. I’ve felt like an earthquake ever since then because no matter how still and calm I try to be, I can’t do it. Not when…when you mean this much to me. I’m shaken up one way or another, a little or like crazy, all the time.”

  The look he’s gliding over me is sweet and soft. It holds awe and a bit of pride, like he’s both surprised he can affect me like that and also not surprised because he knows damn well how significant he is to me.

  “Fault lines,” he murmurs. “An ocean and an earthquake. I love that.”

  Wow.

  Yeah.

  I echo on a breath, “An ocean and an earthquake.”

  And I don’t know which of us started slanting into the other, but the space between us is disappearing.

  I want to kiss him.

  I want him to want to kiss me.

  I want him to hold my hand near his heart forever—and the rest of me, and my daughter.

  “It all makes sense, doesn’t it?” His eyes drop to my lips. “Earthquakes run deep, and I told you nothing has ever reached into me like you do.”

  Nodding, I curl my free fingers up to his cheek. “It does make sense.”

  Then my fingers against his chest are curling, too, into that gray sweater so they can tug him the rest of the way to me.

  He still holds my hand there while we meet in the middle for a kiss that I swear sends a zip of a shock from his lips to mine.

  He smiles out of it almost immediately.

  “Sorry,” he mumbles with a chortle.

  I smile with him.

  Then I know it’s really ti
me.

  “Beck?” I whisper.

  “Ellie,” he whispers back.

  There’s a sudden dryness in my throat. I swallow at it before letting the question out at last.

  “What about how much we loved Cliff?”

  It hangs between us.

  Our breaths slow until we’re holding them so not even they can distract us from this important part of what we’ve found ourselves in.

  They come back soon, though. His other fingertips find and follow my hair to the curve of my neck, and tingles dance all over me. He soothes their source by resting his hand there, gently trapping my hair against my skin.

  I let go of his sweater so I can turn my hand around to his and hold it. He returns my squeeze without pause, then settles his forehead against mine, causing my eyes to close.

  “It’s hard,” he finally says.

  I nod as small as I can, not wanting him to move his face away.

  A whisper is still the best my voice can do: “He was so good. So good as a person, and…and to us.”

  His thumb goes back and forth over my hair, slipping through it a little bit more each time. Beneath our other hands, his heart pounds.

  “Yeah, he was,” he agrees quietly. “But…we’re good people too.”

  I let that sink in.

  It seems like he does the same thing even though he was the one to put it out there.

  We’re good people.

  Logically, I know that’s true, but there have been plenty of times lately when it felt otherwise.

  Good people deserve to be happy, don’t they?

  Beckett’s thumb has swiped itself onto my neck now, past my hair. It keeps going, seeming almost fidgety, while he weakly clears his throat.

  “Um,” he goes on, “it’s never easy to be reminded of, but I’ve been realizing in a new way from before that—that he’s not coming back.” His voice goes to a whisper too. “He can’t come back, and we’re still here, and we’ve been doing our best with that, and we just….”

  ‘He can’t come back, and we’re still here.’

  Another truth that stings and soothes at the same time.

  Somehow, the latter swells up stronger and stronger as the moments pass. So instead of letting remorse and sadness pull me away from him, I speak with more soft honesty.