Chapter 12 #2
I never knew whether to be happy or not that Star, with all her espionage skills, had somehow passed on the need to always be honest to our daughter. Now, she could be sly. But invariably, a thread of truth could be found in whatever she said.
“Aunt Aoife could have prepared the dough on Sunday, and then we could have put them in the oven here at home. What have we told you about technicalities?”
She tapped a finger against her cheek. “That they equal victory?”
“Precisely.” I added, “And that they’re not a lie.” Her biggest issue.
Her gaze dropped to the counter. “But what if I wanted to bake cookies with you?”
“Me or your mom?”
“Either.” She hitched a shoulder. “Both. You.”
I pointed to myself. “Me? You sure?”
Kat ducked her head. “It’s fine if you don’t want to.”
“No, of course I do. I’m just not very good at from-scratch baking.
Remember last year when Benji and I made brigadeiros?
” I kept my tone light and teasing, sensing that there was something going on here.
Her snicker-snort told me she remembered the chocolate sprinkle disaster. “Aoife’s the go-to person for cookies.”
She shrugged. “It’s fine if they suck. I don’t like Mrs. Bosko anyway.”
I chuckled because that was such a “Star” thing to say.
Amused, I situated myself at the counter to wash my hands and grimaced when I saw how much flour dusted everything from this angle.
“Wow,” I muttered, eyes on the hazy spotlights as I grabbed the kitchen towel and dried my hands off. “You made a real mess. I’m almost impressed.”
“I didn’t think it would be that hard.”
“How were you carrying the bag from the pantry to the counter? Upside down? And why is none of it on you?!”
“Daddy!” she wheedled, but she made my heart soar regardless. I was mostly “Dad” now. Whenever “Daddy” came out, it always put a smile on my face. “Why do they make bags that big anyway?”
“I’m asking myself that question too.” I nudged her with my elbow. “Okay, so what’s on the docket?”
“Sugar cookies.”
“Fine. You have a recipe?”
“I asked Aunt Aoife.”
I grabbed the printout that she handed me and read the instructions. “We can do this.”
“You sure?”
“Well, no. But you’re in AP Physics and U.S. History and are designing a cantilever bridge for fun. As for me, I have the intelligence to keep up with your mother. We got this.”
I glanced over the ingredients she’d set on the counter, took note of the offending bag of exploding flour, and set out bowls to weigh individual ingredients into. We began with sugar.
“Dad?”
I shot her a look as she grabbed a teaspoon and shoveled granules into the dish once we neared the right amount. “Yes?”
She kept her gaze angled away from me. “Shay and I aren’t related, are we?”
Pondering the best way to answer that, I snagged the bag of sugar and fastened it with one of the clips Star insisted we use. The last time I hadn’t, she’d left the clips all over my desk for a month. By the end, we’d had to dedicate a whole cupboard in the kitchen to bag clips.
“Well, you are. You’re family. But genetically speaking—”
“Because cousins shouldn’t intermarry,” she prompted, and I thanked God she brought this to me and hadn’t discussed this with her friends at school.
Again.
“—correct. You’re not.”
“So, it wouldn’t be weird for me to have a crush on him?”
I blinked at her.
Why was she talking to me about this?!
I pondered calling in Star. Then, when she blinked back at me, I swallowed again.
Had the females in my family collectively decided to torture me today?
Hell, couldn’t she have asked her sister about this? Alessa never even twitched at the random madness Kat spewed.
If my voice sounded strangled, so be it. “No, cupcake. It wouldn’t be weird for you to have a crush on him. I think Freud said there was a phase in every child’s development where they had a crush on their parents, so a non-blood-related cousin isn’t strange at all within those parameters.”
Her aghast expression had me sniggering. “You made that up!”
“Nope. Look online.”
“This is why those shows exist. That Maury dude.”
“I’m surprised you know about him.”
“Mom made me watch a rerun.”
“I didn’t even know they had those,” I said dryly as I grabbed the butter and sliced cubes of it into the bowl. Deciding I needed to change the subject, I mused, “I thought it was all cups.”
“You mean weigh stuff out? Aunt Aoife says that baking by volume isn’t easy when you’re a noob.”
“I guess we’re noobs then.”
“Definitely.” She turned toward me. “So, would you be freaked out if I did have a crush on Shay?”
My little girl did not just ask me that.
Clearly, we were still on that topic.
With a sigh, I thought about how hard Shay hung on every word Kat dropped and couldn’t deny they’d make a great couple. He was the calm to her storm, but whenever he could get bogged down with his grand plans, she’d be there to put a smile on his face.
But still.
She was my little girl!
“I wouldn’t be freaked out,” I offered cautiously, “but I wouldn’t want you to act on it yet.”
“Is this like in the movies? Where I’m not allowed to date anyone until I’m thirty?”
Yes.
Snickering, I grabbed a wooden spoon from the drawer. “No. Though you’re not technically allowed to do that anyway, and honestly, you should be grateful. Your mom said thirty-five. I got her down to thirty.”
Kat rolled her eyes so hard, I was surprised she didn’t fall on her ass. “So, when can I talk to Shay about this?”
“When you’re eighteen.”
“That’s years away!”
“That’s how time works.”
“But he could be dating someone by then. Victoria, maybe. They’re always together,” she whined.
“Victoria is a close friend of his.” I tapped her nose. “You know that. Plus, she’s married.”
“Shay’s prettier. He’ll be married by the time I’m that old. This conversation is ruining my life!”
Ah, to be this young.
“Well, you just made me feel ancient. Thank you for that. And here I am, helping you bake!”
Her cheeks gusted out. “Why eighteen?”
“Well, older would be better because of your prefrontal cortex, but also because you’re still a kid to him, honey. He loves you. I know that. But you just need to grow up a little bit. Anyway, are you ready for boys? Do you want to kiss them?”
“I want to kiss Shay.”
My lips twitched at her mulish expression. “No, you don’t.”
“I want to hold his hand.”
Thank God it was only his hand!
“Well, boys his age, they do a lot more than that. Not that you should let them. You shouldn’t. You should do stuff like that when you’re ready and never allow anyone to pressure you into anything you don’t want to do.”
“Including you and Mom when you tell me to clean up the mess I made tonight?”
I grinned. “Nah, kiddo, that’s the kind of thing you have to listen to. Nice try.”
“No fair!”
“Definitely not. But it’s character building. Or so they say.”
“Is this Freud’s idea too?”
“Maybe. He came up with some whacko notions.”
“He sure did.” I almost gagged when she wrote “Shay” in the flour dusting the counter but didn’t hide my grimace as she drew a bunch of hearts around his name too. “Do boys do that, then?”
“Do what?”
“Make girls do stuff they don’t want to?”
I often came face-to-face with how great a job Star had done on this kid. With her fucked-up background, Star had had her work cut out for her. Like always, she’d knocked it out of the freakin’ park.
“They do. And you don’t let them. If anyone ever tries, you tell your mom or me and we’ll sort it out.
” I prodded the wooden spoon in the air.
“We don’t care if you were doing something we told you not to.
If the circumstances will get you grounded.
You tell us if anyone pressures you to do anything and we’ll fix it.
“We can’t fix what we don’t know, and I’d prefer for you to come to either one of us first. There’ll be stuff you’ll want to do as you get older.
Sneak out of the apartment to go to a club or some other dumb stunt, and it’ll put you in danger—that’s why if you asked us, we’d say no.
But we’re not totally ancient. We understand that some things are a rite of passage…
not that your mother would like you to believe that.
“Don’t let sneaking out stop you from standing your ground or from coming to us if you’re in trouble. You will always be safe with us. Understood?”
Pursing her lips, she nodded. “And I won’t be grounded?”
I knew I was making trouble for future Conor here… “No. Your safety is all that matters to us.”
That earned me another nod. “Dad?”
“Yes.”
“You know I love you, right?”
I shot her a shy smile. “I do. You know I love you too, yeah?”
“When you say stuff like that, I do.”
“Good.”
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
If my voice sounded wary, that was experience talking. I knew Star had gone through the birds and the goddamn bees a few times, and Kat had even asked questions when I was around, but fuck if I didn’t brace myself for a more in-depth convo tonight too.
“Will you help me with a school project?”
My shoulders sagged with relief. “Sure!”
She gnawed on the inside of her cheek. “It’s… I don’t want Mom to know about it.”
“Okay, fine. What is it?”
“We have to make a family tree as an end-of-year project. Shay and I have been working on it, but we hit a wall.”
I blew out a breath.
Somehow, I’d have preferred the birds and the bees talk.
“I can tell from your expression you don’t mean the O’Donnellys.”
She shook her head. “Not just them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want yours, Mom’s, and… mine and Alessa’s.” She peeped at me. “I want to know more about them.”
“Are you sure? You might not like what you find out,” I warned gently.
“Forewarned is forearmed. Star says that all the time.”
“She does.” Damn, my wonderful woman. “So, this is you doing that?”
Kat nodded.
I stopped binding the sugar cookie dough together and held out my hand. “We’ll work on it together.”
She squeezed my fingers. “We won’t tell Mom?”
“Well, I will because forewarned is forearmed,” I said dryly, “and you know we don’t keep secrets from each other intentionally. But I’ll ask her not to bring it up with you if you don’t want her to.”
In a tiny voice, she whispered, “I don’t want her to.”
I rubbed her shoulder. “I understand, cupcake.”
When she tunneled her arms around my waist, my lips quirked into a smile and I gently hugged her back.
“What the fuck happened to my kitchen?!”
Both of us jumped at Star’s shriek, but ever the little shit, her nose still buried in my sweater, Kat chimed in, “That’s ten bucks, please, Mom!”