Chapter 6
Theo
My poor kitchen was a disaster.
Flour dusted the countertop like fresh snow, despite the fact that I wasn’t making anything that required flour.
An angry pot of water boiled aggressively on the stove, sending steam billowing toward the ceiling while I frantically searched through the pantry for the box of macaroni that I could have sworn I’d bought yesterday.
The dulcet tones of “Come Sail Away” by Styx echoed off the linoleum floor and tiled backsplash.
It was one of my favorites, and despite the mess I was making, I couldn’t help but hum along and shimmy when the chorus kicked in.
God, I loved classic rock. Was I born in the wrong decade?
Possibly the wrong century? Some days, it sure felt that way.
“Daddy! Daddy! Dance with me!”
I shook free of the hazy daydream of Victorian men and sweaty horses, suddenly aware that sweaty men would’ve been much more appealing. No offense, Bessie. I’m just not a horse guy. Check with your gal Catherine the Great if you need special attention.
Like the mischievous nymph she was, Debbie magically appeared at my elbow, tugging on my cardigan with sticky fingers that smelled like the strawberry jam I’d specifically told her not to touch before dinner.
“Not right now, Button,” I said, finally locating the elusive pasta box behind a can of green beans. “Daddy’s trying to make dinner before we both starve to death.”
I don’t know why I started calling Debbie “Button,” or even when the nickname stuck.
I mean, she was cute as a button. She was little like a button.
Her outie belly button begged to be poked.
In a lot of strange, childlike ways, it made sense.
Still, when I called her that in front of others, they usually gave me a confused look followed by a scowl.
I didn’t care—and neither did Debbie. It was her special name, and we both loved it.
She was my little button, after all, the fastener that somehow kept my life together—and in complete disarray.
How did kids do that?
How did they make life tolerable while simultaneously upending any sense of order or structure?
My musing again dissolved as her squeaky voice paired with pouty, stomping little feet. “But I want to dance!” She stomped for emphasis, her pigtails bouncing. “Please? Just one song?”
“Baby, I need to—” I started, then stopped. Her bottom lip jutted out to prepare for what I knew from experience would escalate into full-scale waterworks if I didn’t intervene immediately. I sighed and looked at the pot of water, then back down at Debbie.
“Fine, but only because you are so stinking cute and I love this song.” I bonked her nose with my index finger, eliciting a giggle that made my heart swell. “But then you have to let Daddy finish dinner, okay?”
Her face lit up. “Yay. Come sail with me, Daddy.”
How could any man deny that face?
I was more wrapped around her little finger than a Cirque du Soleil performer and her silks. I was mush, and she knew it.
Annoying little Button.
Before I could say another word, she was racing toward the living room, her bare feet slapping against the hardwood. A moment later, Taylor Swift’s voice filled the house at a volume that probably violated several local ordinances.
I turned down the heat under the pot and followed in her wake, finding her spinning in circles in the middle of the living room, arms outstretched like a tiny tornado in Disney princess pajamas.
She looked like a miniature version of the women in the Abba movie as they danced their butts off to music only they could hear.
“Dance, Daddy!”
I held out my hands, and she immediately stepped onto my feet. This was our thing—had been since she was barely able to walk. She’d stand on my feet, I’d hold her hands, and we’d sway around the living room while she giggled and tried to sing along to whatever song was playing.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Ready!” she squealed.
I started moving, taking exaggerated steps while she clung to my hands, her head thrown back in delight as I spun us slowly around the coffee table.
She was getting bigger now—five years old, all knees and elbows—but she still fit perfectly on my feet and still trusted me completely to keep her upright and safe.
“Faster, Daddy! Faster!”
“If we go any faster, we’re going to crash into the couch,” I warned, but I picked up the pace anyway, spinning us around until the room blurred and Debbie’s laughter filled every corner of the house.
The moment was perfect.
It was a postcard or a movie or whatever kids did these days to save their memories. I wished for a snapshot, a way to freeze time and make it last forever. Why did she have to grow up?
This was exactly what I needed after a long day of dealing with teenagers who thought Twilight was classic literature and trying to explain to the principal why we needed more funding for actual books instead of more computers that would be obsolete in two years.
Just me and my girl, dancing badly to pop music in our living room.
What could possibly be better?
The song was reaching its crescendo when the doorbell rang.
We both froze mid-spin, Debbie still balanced precariously on my feet, both of us slightly breathless and probably looking ridiculous.
“I’ll get it!” Debbie announced, as though I might have somehow missed the sound that was most definitely not Taylor’s whistle tone. “You stay here. I can do it by myself.”
I chuckled and shook my head. She really was growing up too fast.
“It’s the mailman,” she shouted back to me after peeking through the curtain, then yanked the door open before I could stop her. “The handsome one with the big arms!”
My heart stopped.
Thankfully, my feet missed the memo and kept moving. I reached the open doorway to find a man, impossibly broad-shouldered and perfect, wearing a not-torn blue uniform shirt that clung to his chest like a sports bra on a size-D tennis player.
Pecs and nipples were visible.
The headlights were on bright.
I couldn’t look away.
“Hey there, princess,” Jeremiah said to Debbie, his voice warm and familiar, like a grandmother’s blanket, handed down through generations of love and fabric softener.
He reached out and tousled her already messy hair, just like he had that first day, his large hand gentle against her small head. “How’s my favorite pasta expert?”
Debbie giggled, preening under the attention. “Daddy and I were dancing! Want to see?”
“Absolutely.” His face lit up like a Las Vegas sign. “I love to dance.”
I became aware I was still slightly out of breath from our impromptu session, my cardigan askew. I was pretty sure I had flour on my cheek, and I likely smelled like the chaos that was currently my kitchen.
“Maybe later,” I said, placing a hand on Debbie’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go clean up for dinner? It’s almost ready.”
That was a lie. The boiling water had probably evaporated—sans pasta—but I needed an excuse to face Jeremiah without prying eyes. I didn’t quite know why, but I felt it.
That’s when I noticed the package in his hand—small, rectangular, wrapped in brown paper that looked far too fancy to be from any delivery service I knew.
And there wasn’t a shipping label.
I looked closer.
There was definitely no label.
Jeremiah’s expression did something complicated.
“Hey you,” he said. His eyes landed on me, flitted away, returned, then fled again. He looked nervous, which was odd. He was a delivery guy. He was delivering a package. Nerves weren’t part of the gig.
“Hi,” I managed back.
He looked even better than I remembered. His uniform was perfectly pressed, his blond hair catching the afternoon light like a halo in one of those medieval religious tapestries, and when he smiled at me, I forgot how to breathe.
“I, uh,” he started, holding up the package. “I brought you something. To replace the, um, the pasta thing from last week.”
My face went nuclear. Like seriously. Redder than red. Lava from a Hawaiian island-producing volcano red. Okay, fine, technically lava wasn’t red, but it was really hot, and that’s exactly how I felt. On my face. And neck. And arms. And chest.
Damn it. Everywhere.
“Oh, you didn’t have to—”
“What is it?” Debbie interrupted, reappearing a blur of unruly hair and disheveled pajamas. She bounced on her toes to see over the package. “Is it another Willie Wee? Can I open it? Pleeeeeeeeeeeease?”
I wanted to slam the door, crawl under the couch, and die.
Jeremiah’s face went slightly pink, but he was grinning as he held the package toward me. “It’s definitely not a Willie Wee, but it is for making pasta. Real pasta this time, not the whoopie pasta from before.”
Before I could protest or even properly take hold of the proffered box, Debbie had somehow launched herself up and snatched the package from between us like some kind of tiny, demented pirate.
“Willie Wee! Willie Wee! Willie Wee!” she declared, tearing at the brown paper with the enthusiasm of a starving hyena who’d just found dinner.
“Debbie, wait—” I started, but she was already halfway to the living room, the package clutched against her chest.
Which left Jeremiah and me standing in the doorway, staring at each other.
He shuffled his feet, his gaze darting between my eyes and somewhere around my left shoulder, like he couldn’t quite decide where to look. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, and there was something so unsettled about his posture that I didn’t remember seeing before.
“So,” he said, then cleared his throat. “How, um, how have you been?”
What an odd question from a delivery man who’d just, well, delivered.
“I’m good,” I squeaked, then immediately cleared my own throat and tried to sound more like a functional adult. A hand rose to reflexively tangle fingers in my disastrous hair. “Fine. I’ve been fine. You know, work and Debbie and the usual chaos.”
“Right. Chaos. I can, uh, I can hear the music.”
As if on cue, Taylor Swift’s voice swelled from the living room, where Debbie was presumably still wrestling with the package wrapping.
“I’m pretty sure they can hear the music in space,” I said, chuckling weakly.
“We were dancing. She likes to stand on my feet while we—” I stopped, realizing I was rambling, unsure why I felt the need to explain anything to this guy I barely knew.
“Sorry, you probably have other deliveries to make.”
“No,” he said quickly, too quickly. “My shift ended a couple hours ago. This isn’t actually a delivery. It’s more of a . . . personal thing.”
My heart did something acrobatic.
“Personal?”
He shifted his weight again.
“I felt bad about last week,” he said in a rush.
“The whole mix-up, and Debbie thinking the . . . you know . . . Willie Wee . . . was a kitchen thing. I just wanted to make it right, so I went to this fancy culinary store downtown, and I asked the lady there what would actually be good for making pasta, and she showed me this whisk thing that’s apparently supposed to be amazing for mixing sauces and—”
He was babbling.
Full-tilt word salad.
Jeremiah stood on my front porch, looking like he’d stepped out of some fitness magazine, babbling about whisks and pasta sauces. It was possibly the most adorable thing I’d ever witnessed—aside from Debbie, of course.
“That’s . . . very thoughtful,” I managed, fighting back a smile. “You really didn’t need to—”
“Daddy, look what the mailman brought us!” Debbie’s voice carried from the living room, followed by the sound of something being dragged across the floor.
A moment later, she appeared in the doorway, holding what was indeed the most beautiful whisk I’d ever seen. It was stainless steel and probably cost more than I spent on groceries in a month. Its handle looked like it belonged in a professional kitchen.
“It’s so shiny!” she announced, holding it up like she’d just removed Excalibur from a pesky stone. “Can we make pasta now? Please?”
I looked from the whisk to Jeremiah. He was watching Debbie with an expression of pure delight.
“That’s a very fancy whisk,” I said. “I didn’t know whisks came gilded.”
“The lady at the store said it was the best one they had,” he said, his cheeks slightly pink. “I may have gone a little overboard.”
“A little?”
He grinned sheepishly. “I figured if I was going to replace your, uh, pasta equipment, I should do it right.”
Debbie had wandered back toward the kitchen, presumably to test out her new treasure, leaving us alone again.
Taylor Swift had taken the hint and left the stage, too.
The silence stretched between us, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.
It was charged. Electric. Full of something so distant in my past it was unrecognizable.
Jeremiah shuffled his feet again, his gaze finally meeting mine and holding it.
“You’re really cute, you know, and smart. I mean, fuck a duck, you might be the smartest guy I know,” he blurted out suddenly, his eyes going wide like he couldn’t believe the words had just come out of his mouth.
Fuck a duck?
I blinked, and my head tilted.
“We should do dinner, right?” flew out of his mouth.
“Together. You and me. Minus the munchkin—though I love kids, don’t get me wrong.
If you really want to bring her, we can.
We could do one of those pizza places with games and stuff.
Or putt-putt. She’d love that. But you know her better, and maybe you would have other ideas, and I’d totally be open to anything.
I just think . . . maybe . . . you and I could . . . couldn’t we?”