Chapter Thirteen
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Casual meeting between friends night!
Wolfe
“I’m super tired,” she says, feigning a yawn. “Super duper tired. You should just tuck me in now, Dad. I already brushed my teeth and everything!”
I eye her dubiously. “Is that…” I sniff the air, bringing my nose closer and closer to her mischievous little body. “A scheme I smell?”
She giggles and pushes my head away from her, and a good thing, too. I was getting dangerously close to her armpit.
“Dad!” she squeals. “Stop! You don’t have time to play!”
I pull back and raise my eyebrows. “I don’t?” I ask. I look around, at all the things I have to do. Dinner dishes are done. Laundry is folded. Upkeep tidying tasks have been accomplished. “It looks to me like all I have is time to play.”
She shakes her head at my clear idiocy, and it reminds me so much of my mother, I can’t help but laugh. “You look just like Gigi.”
She lifts her nose in the air and says haughtily, “That’s probably because you’re acting silly, just like you do with her.”
My laughter roars, and I scoop her up into my arms, ignoring her squeaks of protest. “No bedtime,” I tell her. “I’m not missing a minute of my time with you just because you’re feeling impatient.”
“I’m not impatient!” she protests. “Miss Leora is probably down there waiting for you right now!”
“Aha!” I declare while falling into the soft embrace of our cozy blue couch. “So you were scheming.”
“It’s not scheming,” she huffs. She crosses her arms over her chest indignantly.
“It’s helping. You’re going to be late. Miss Leora can’t wait down there all night for you.
She has an early bedtime, just like me. She told me so.
She said she has to go to bed on time even when it’s the weekend or summer, and I have to, too, so she’s not all alone in dreamland.
She told me she only gets to stay up late if she’s visiting Auntie Almond or her grandparents.
That’s why I’m allowed to stay up until nine-thirty when I stay with Auntie Almond or my grandparents. ’Cause it’s special.”
I contain my amusement. Barely. “Don’t you think Miss Leora would consider hanging out with me to be special, too?” I ask. “Maybe even special enough to stay up past her bedtime?”
Amia’s dark eyebrows furrow, and her nose scrunches. “Why would hanging out with you be special?” she asks.
Oof.
I keep my face carefully pleasant despite the ouchhhh I’m feeling inside.
Amia won’t be little forever. She won’t think chilling with me is fun forever.
I know that. Still, I didn’t think my cool factor would disappear so soon.
I thought I’d get at least ten years, maybe even eleven if I’m lucky. Eight seems abysmally few.
“You’re a boy,” Amia continues as I battle the bittersweet pain of her growing up.
Then, unknowingly, she balms my hurt, and it seeps back down to wait for the time of resurgence.
“I’m the only one that thinks hanging out with you is special, and that’s ’cause you’re my dad.
You’re not Miss Leora’s dad. You’re just a boy to Miss Leora.
She’s definitely not staying up late for a boy. ”
I sag further into the couch, settling Amia comfortably on my chest. She digs her elbows into my pectorals to push her upper body up so she can look at me seriously. Very, very seriously.
And I take her seriously. Of course. I do not struggle at all to maintain a neutral face as hers adopts a demeanor I know all too well—my mother’s lecturing demeanor.
I tuck my hands behind my head and prepare myself. Amia has, clearly, learned from the best. I’m about to be in for a real treat.
“Daddy,” she begins sternly, leveling her eyes on me.
“You can not mess this up. If you want Miss Leora to think you’re special enough to miss bedtime for, you have to show her that you can be a good enough friend to her to make it worth it.
That means you can’t make her wait a whole bunch of hours for you if you have plans together.
That’s called being late, and being late is meanie behavior, remember?
” She shifts from quoting snatches of my mother’s lessons to quoting my own.
“It’s unkind and inconsiderate. We are not a family who acts unkind and inconsiderate.
It’s okay to be late sometimes, because it happens to everyone and sometimes it’s out of our control, but if we make it a habit, then it’s not just being late that’s our habit.
It’s being unkind and inconsiderate that’s our habit. ”
I blink as she rolls, landing on her feet with all the grace of a newborn deer. “And so!” she proclaims. “I am going to bed, so that you won’t be unkind and inconsiderate. Because I’m a good kid.” She nods succinctly, turns on her heel, and marches toward her bedroom.
I catch her with a finger in the waistband of her pale pink pajama bottoms.
She tumbles back toward me with a squawk.
“My turn,” I tell her, spinning her around to face me and circling her with my arm, locking her in place.
She pouts at her foiled getaway.
“Thank you,” I tell her, then lean in to kiss her on the nose.
She blinks. “Thank me?” she asks before remembering herself. “I mean, yeah. Thank me. You’re welcome.”
I chuckle. “I see what you’re doing, and I appreciate it,” I tell her. “Even if you’re only doing it so you can meet Miss Leora faster.”
“That’s not true!” she objects. “I do want to see her faster, but I also want you to be happier, and nobody makes you happier than Miss Leora. Except for me, obviously.”
My eyes soften. “You’re a sweet girl. You know that?”
“I do,” she says, lifting her chin. “My daddy calls me that all the time.”
I sigh, letting all her sweetness infiltrate my blood stream and warm my heart.
“So…” she drawls. “Are you going to let me go to bed?”
I watch her as I deliberate.
Do I want to let her go to bed? Absolutely not. Also, absolutely yes.
Leora is unlikely to be at the bar this early, but I’m anxious to get there anyway.
I don’t want to miss a second of our time together.
My stomach’s been in riots since I sent the letter telling her I’d be there.
I’ve been vacillating between anxious nausea and jittery excitement all week.
The idea of being there when she walks into the bar so that I can slurp up every moment she so graciously gives me is enticing, and tempting, and alluring.
I want it, badly.
However.
Just as badly, I do not want to miss a second of my time with Amia.
Every day, I’m reminded in big ways and small that she’s getting older.
Sure, sometimes she brings it back in—like with the confirmation that she still finds me special—but sometimes she doesn’t.
Sometimes she starts to pronounce a word right when she’s only ever pronounced it wrong.
Sometimes she picks out a shirt with a character from a show she’s decided is “too little kid” for her now, and she asks me to donate it.
Sometimes she lies atop me and recites, word for word, a life lesson she’s heard enough times to memorize.
Sometimes I blink, and she’s grown two sizes bigger, and she’s gotten two seasons smarter, and my heart beats two times faster wondering how many more twos I’ll get before it adds up to eighteen and she’s gone.
“Daddy,” she prods. “Seriously, Miss Leora isn’t going to wait forever.
You can be with me anytime. You live with me.
” Her big, brown eyes roll. “Plus, I’m just going to be in bed whether you go or not.
I have some coloring I want to do before I sleep.
” She turns, stretching in my arm to reach the video monitor on the side table.
“Here, you can watch me the whole time, so it’ll be like we’re together, but you can be with Miss Leora, too.
You can show her the video and I can wave at her! ”
“If you really want to go to bed, you can go to bed,” I allow. “And I’ll watch you on the monitor.”
Her face alights.
“But.”
Her face falls.
“I’ll be upstairs until at least eight o’clock.
I don’t think Miss Leora will be at the bar any earlier than that, especially when she knows that your bedtime is at 8:30, and that I’ll need to be here to get you safely tucked away.
She would never try to steal my time with you.
And since my bedtime isn’t for hours yet, I have plenty of availability for the both of you.
We’ll let Miss Leora worry about her own bedtime, though, okay? ”
Amia’s lips turn down in a pout as she realizes that she really, truly is not going to get me out of this apartment and downstairs at the bar until I decide for myself that it’s time to go.
The parent is, shockingly, in charge of the situation, and the child is, even more shockingly, appalled at the hierarchy.
And by the way, the sky is blue, too.
“For the record, I think this is the wrong thing to do.”
“I’ll note that,” I tell her seriously. “Would you like to go get our list?”
She runs off to retrieve the spiral-bound, college-ruled notebook we keep in a drawer in the kitchen, right next to our scissors, capless pens, rubber bands, tacks, dice, paperclips, keys to nowhere, and various forms of tape. Among other things.
When she returns, I open the notebook where we jot down anything Amia decides should be “for the record”, take her proffered pen, and add the newest offense to her sensibilities to the list.
“Number four-hundred and thirty-seven,” I murmur as I jot down a semi-detailed version of the sequence of events that led us here. Amia hangs over my shoulder, ensuring I leave nothing out.
“And don’t forget to mention how Miss Leora is going to miss her bedtime because of you!”
With a twitch of my lips, I regale the page with tale of my atrocities. I do it slowly, under the watchful eye of my daughter as she pokes and prods me into adding more detail here, or adjusting a sentence there.
I place my final period right as the clock strikes 8:00 PM.
What a coincidence, that.