His pupils are wide as he returns his attention to me. “Right. You’re right.” He turns and hollers, “Zoe? Can you come here, baby?”
She carefully positions her block tower before coming to us. Her pink pajamas are decorated with sparkly frogs, and her hair still looks damp.
“Cassie!” she says when she sees me. “Look, Daddy put a new Band-Aid on my booboo, and this one has little dogs on it.” She still has a tiny lisp, probably from losing a tooth, which makes her even cuter, if that’s possible.
“Oh, really? Let me see!”
She doesn’t hesitate, lifting her pajama pants up to her knees while standing on one foot. I ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’, and the smile she sends me in return is as if I’d given her the moon.
Eli’s posture relaxes. He kneels in front of her. “Zoe, I have to go to work tonight after all, but Cassie will stay with you. Is that okay?”
She doesn’t give him an answer, instead turning to me. “Can I show you my fish? His name is Fish.”
I grin. “I’d love that.”
“All right.” Eli remains on his haunches for a moment, discomfort transpiring from his every pore, but eventually, he does get up to go collect his keys. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he tells me. “Make yourself at home. There’s leftover lasagna in the fridge, and—”
“Eli.”
“Right.” He rushes to his daughter, pressing a kiss to her forehead and saying something in a hushed voice that makes her smile. The sight should be framed, hung in this living room to be looked at every day. It makes my entire body melt. Louder, he says, “Be good!” Then, to me, he mouths a “Thank you so much,” and then he’s out.
It feels like a tornado has just passed through the house, the dust settling as silence returns. Zoe is still standing on one foot for unclear reasons, her round eyes on me.
“So. Where’s that fish?”
Chapter 6
I’m halfway through my sixth episode of some baking show—who knew making cakes could be so stressful?—when Eli steps back through the front door. He looks like he’s gone through an entire World War in the past ten hours. His hair is tousled, the dark-gray T-shirt under his unbuttoned white coat covered in a white substance I want to assume is flour, but in the state he’s in, anything is possible.
“Hey,” I say, leaning over the back of the couch to peer over at him. The Grants’ house is mostly open-plan, and while it’s bigger than Ruth’s, it’s still fairly small, enough that you can see the entire first floor at a glance. It’s barely changed since I was here last, only a few different trinkets now sprinkled around. “Rough night?”
“You could say that, yeah.” He throws his keys in a bowl, then removes his coat. I’m not sure whether it’s the lighting or the stiffness in his body, but I barely recognize him. He looks…heavy. Like an invisible weight is pulling him down, and every second he remains upright is a struggle.
When we were kids, Eli would always be up before me, at least over summer break. I’d be dragging myself out of bed and he’d already be waiting for me in Ruth’s kitchen, dressed and ready fora packed schedule. “You’ll sleep when you’re dead,” he told me one morning when I grumbled that I didn’t want to go swim at eight in the morning in ice-cold water.
“Eli, I’d swear sometimes it’s hard to believe you’re not a ninety-year-old in a seventeen-year-old’s body,” I said, my pillow probably still stamped in my face. The only person I’d ever heard use this expression was Ruth.
“I’ll try not to take it personally.”
“You should. It was a very personal attack.”
He grinned, grooves that would become smile wrinkles already etched into his skin.
That jumpy, almost hyper-excited kid is nowhere to be seen.
“Sorry I’m so late,” he says now, padding over to the fridge. His shoes are off, and even though I’ve been in his house all evening, it feels strangely intimate, to be seeing him like this, knowing what kind of brand of socks he uses now. Like I haven’t earned that privilege.
“It’s fine. I had a great time.” What I don’t say is I played with Zoe for almost an hour before I finally enforced her bedtime. I couldn’t get myself to burst her bubble. She wanted to show me every toy she owned, words spilling out of her faster than she could think them. In an hour, she went through her favorite animals—starting with the Froot Loops toucan—her dream vacation destination—the swamp from The Princess and the Frog—and what we wanted to do when we were grownups—I reminded her Iama grown-up, and she went with a magician.
I don’t know where Eli got the idea that his little girl is shy.
By the time I got her to bed, she fell asleep before I could finish the first page of the book she’d chosen.
Eli stops by the couch to give me a doubtful look, then walks to the kitchen and grabs a bottle of beer from the fridge. “Want one?”
It’s almost two in the morning. I shake my head.
He pops the cap before taking a seat on the opposite end of the couch. After taking a long sip, he says, “It shouldn’t have fallen on you. I’m sorry.”
