Chapter Eleven
Trish
"Are you sure you want to wear the tutu?" I question Cora as we get ready for the Ice Cream Social.
"Yes, it's my favorite, and I want to show Mark.
He brought me all those colorful flowers last night, and I want him to see how much I love color.
" She's putting on her shoes, a pair of orange Converse, and I've already got her hair in a braid.
She's always the cutest kid I've ever seen, but today she's even more cute.
"Alright, we're out of here in a few minutes, okay, kiddo?"
She nods, having a seat on the couch as she waits for me to get ready. I've decided on a pair of shorts today, and I hope they aren't too short, but at the same time I want to show off what I've got.
Reaching into my back pocket, I grab my phone, and shoot off a text to Mark.
Me: We're heading out. See you in a few minutes.
Mark: I'm already here. I'll be waiting on ya.
Mark is not kidding about already being there.
I spot him the second we turn the corner onto Main Street, standing near the pavilion entrance with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, wearing a grey t-shirt that fits him in a way that makes my mouth water. He's scanning the crowd, and the moment his eyes land on us, his whole face changes.
He raises a hand in a wave, and Cora takes off at a dead sprint toward him, tutu bouncing, orange Converse slapping the pavement.
"Mark! Look at my outfit!"
He catches her when she reaches him, swinging her up slightly before setting her back on her feet, and he crouches down to give the tutu a full examination. "That," he says seriously, "is the best outfit I've seen all year."
She beams as she smiles at him. "I wore it because you brought me colorful flowers."
"It matches perfectly." He stands as I reach them, and his eyes move over me once, unhurried, and I feel it from my collarbone to my knees. "Hey."
"Hey yourself." I adjust my sunglasses. "You're early."
"I'm always early." He falls into step beside me as Cora darts forward to look at the first booth we pass, close enough that his arm brushes mine. "You look great, by the way."
"The shorts aren't too much?" I worry my bottom lip between my teeth.
He looks at me with an expression that answers the question more thoroughly than words would. "No. Definitely not."
Downtown has been transformed the way it is every year.
It’s the biggest event besides Christmas.
The streets are blocked off from traffic, booths lining both sides, the smell of kettle corn and fried everything drifting on the breeze.
The carnival rides are set up in the parking lot behind the pavilion, and I can already hear the music from the carousel mixing with the crowd noise.
It's peak small town, and I've always loved it, but today it feels different.
Today I'm watching Cora experience it with someone walking next to me who keeps pointing things out to her before she notices them herself, like he's been paying attention to what she gravitates toward.
We find Gunner and Amy near the lemonade stand, Rosa stands next to Gunner. Amy lights up when she sees us.
"Oh, she wore the tutu." Amy holds her hand up and Cora slaps it immediately. “It looks really good, girlie."
"I told her," Cora says.
Rosa and Cora talk excitedly to each other. I can’t understand what the hell they’re saying, but they’re very excited. Gunner extends a hand to Mark and they do the manly handshake thing that always makes me laugh. I catch Amy's eye over their heads.
She mouths he's so hot at me.
I mouth back stop it.
She grins and doesn't stop it.
We move through the social as a loose group, stopping at booths, eating things we probably shouldn't in the first hour.
Mark buys Cora a funnel cake and only slightly regrets it when she ends up with powdered sugar on her nose, her chin, and somehow her elbow.
He finds a booth selling handmade jewelry and points out a bracelet with orange beads that Cora immediately has to have, and he buys it before I can say anything, fastening it around her wrist with more dexterity than I expected from someone with hands as big as his.
When we get to the carnival section, Cora and Rosa make a direct line for the carousel. Gunner and Amy follow behind, Amy looking over her shoulder. “We’ve got this!”
Mark and I stand at the edge of the gate watching, and he leans back against the fence rail next to me, close enough that our shoulders touch.
"You're good at this," I say, giving him the compliment.
"At what?"
"Hanging out with the kids, and not losing your cool. You’re good at anticipating what she wants and needs." I nod toward Cora, who is now mounted on a white horse next to Rosa. They’re talking with their hands and laughing loudly. "You didn't have to do the bracelet."
"She looked at it for a long time."
"She looks at a lot of things." I give him a look. “Doesn’t mean that she should get everything she looks at. I work hard not to spoil her.”
"I know, but getting her a few things isn’t going to spoil her, I promise.”
I'm quiet for a second, watching the carousel start to turn. "I'm not used to someone paying that much attention."
He looks at me, and I keep my eyes on the ride. "You should be."
I don't have a response for that, so I let it drop in between both of us. I’m aware this is my hang up and no one else’s.
When Cora comes back to us, she grabs both of our hands and demands we go toward the Tilt A Whirl, which she has already declared too scary for her personal taste but very appropriate for adults.
Gunner puts his arm around Rosa and offers to stay with Cora while Amy finds them something to eat, and somehow within ninety seconds I'm in a Tilt A Whirl car pressed against Mark's side with the bar down across our laps.
"I should tell you I'm going to scream," I say.
"Good to know."
"I always scream on this thing. I've screamed on it every year since I was nine."
"Trish." He puts his arm around me, pulling me closer into his side, and tilts his head down toward mine. "That’s fine with me, at least then I’ll know how it sounds when you scream."
The car starts to move.
I scream, and he laughs the entire time.
Not at me though, but with me, or maybe just at the general absurdity of the spinning and the way it’s plastering us both to the left side of the car.
I grab onto his arm at one point and don't let go, and he covers my hand with his and holds on through the whole rotation.
When the ride slows to a stop, I'm laughing too hard to stand up straight.
"Every year?" He questions, helping me over the bar.
"Every single year." I catch my breath. "Worth it every time."
Cora is waiting for us with Gunner and Rosa. She tugs both of us over to where someone is taking pictures before either of us has agreed to it.
"We want a picture," she announces to the photographer, who is clearly delighted by the tutu.
"All three of you?" the woman asks.
"Yes." Cora positions herself between us and holds both of our hands. "Because we're together."
I swallow. Mark glances at me over her head and I see him accepting this by the way his jaw relaxes.
The photographer counts to three and takes the shot, and then a second one when Cora tells her the first one probably wasn't good enough.
When she shows us the screen, I see the three of us standing in the sunshine, Cora in her tutu and orange Converse looking cute as hell, Mark tall and relaxed with his thumb hooked through Cora's hand, and me on the other side, and we look like the family I haven't let myself picture in a very long time.
"Can we be a family?" Cora asks, looking up at Mark, and the question sucks the oxygen out of the space between us all.
He doesn't flinch. He doesn't look to me for rescue, doesn't redirect or deflect. He just crouches down and looks at her directly.
"Maybe we can," he says. "Would that be okay with you?"
She considers it with the gravity of someone making a very important decision. "Yes," she says. "But you have to keep up when we dance."
He laughs, placing his hand over his heart. "I'll practice," he tells her. Mark straightens up. His eyes meet mine. "Too much?" he asks quietly.
"No," I say. And I mean it completely.
The evening cools as the sun drops, and the whole crowd moves toward the park two blocks over where they set up for the fireworks.
We find a patch of grass and spread out on the blanket Amy produces from the bag she's been carrying all day, and Cora immediately horizontal between me and Mark, her head on my leg and her feet in his lap.
Rosa leans against Gunner’s chest. Amy has her head on his shoulder. Around us, the town spreads out on the lawn with their chairs and blankets and coolers, and when the first firework goes up, Cora's whole face goes bright.
"That one was green," she informs Mark.
"I saw it,” he reaches out and grabs for her nose.
"That's my second favorite color. Orange is first."
"Obviously." He looks up and down at her outfit.
She laughs and turns back to the sky.
I lean back on my palms and watch the fireworks climb and break apart, and I'm aware of everything around us.
Cora lays solidly against my leg, there are the sounds of the crowd, the low murmur of Gunner and Amy talking behind us, and Mark's hand, which at some point in the last ten minutes has found mine on the blanket and wrapped around it.
I look at his profile in the colored light. The way he watches the sky with Cora, answering her color commentary without missing a beat. The line of his jaw, the ease in his shoulders, the way he laughs when she says something particularly authoritative about the firework formations.
I am falling in love with this man.
The thought should scare me, but I don’t let it. Instead I lean into it, and allow myself to feel it completely. Truth be told it’s probably been there since he agreed to meet my daughter.
The finale goes up in a long, rolling string of overlapping explosions. Cora stands, tilting her head up to watch it properly, and Mark's hand tightens on mine. Once it’s done, we're packing up the blanket when I hear a voice I have spent two years training myself not to react to.
Fucking Derek.
He's twenty feet away, in the crowd filtering out of the park, a woman I don't recognize has her arm around his waist. He's laughing at something she said, and then his eyes sweep the crowd in our direction and land squarely on us.
First on me. Then on Cora.
And he looks away. Like he doesn’t know who the hell we are.
He looks at his daughter, the little girl in the orange tutu with the powdered sugar on her elbow and the bracelet she hasn't stopped touching all afternoon, and he looks away like we are strangers. Like we are nobody.
Because that’s how he’s treated us since he decided to check out on us.
Cora hasn't seen him yet, thank God. I try to control my breathing, to try and keep my reaction at a minimum. No one else seems to notice, but then I realize someone has.
I feel the way Mark’s body changes beside me, the ease is gone, tension replacing it. He steps forward slightly, just enough to put himself at my left, and he looks at Derek until Derek is out of sight.Then he looks at me. Then down at Cora, who is telling Amy about the finale.
"Hey." His voice is low, meant only for me. "Look at me."
I do.
"It doesn't matter," he says. "Because you're mine now. Both of you." His eyes hold mine, certain and clear, no performance in them. "You hear me?"
My throat is tight. I nod.
He picks up the blanket from my hands and tucks it under his arm, and then he reaches for Cora's hand, and she takes it automatically, already mid-story, barely breaking stride.
I watch them walk ahead of me for exactly three seconds.
Then I catch up, but I can’t help the feeling that all that’s good might turn bad.