5. Mia
Mia
Iwake up in a strange bed that’s a lot more comfortable than mine, reluctantly admitting that I slept better than ever. I stare at a ceiling I don’t recognize for a full ten seconds before it comes back to me.
Juno texted at four-thirty. Got the regulars.
Take the day. Don’t marry him for real. I sent back a flour emoji and put my phone away, because today is the one day I don’t have to be at the bakery by five and I’m choosing to spend it not thinking about the fact that I have voluntarily moved into a stranger’s apartment for money.
I lie there for another moment, listening. The apartment is quiet except for cartoons playing somewhere down the hall. Harper is already up. I should probably get moving before a six-year-old beats me to the kitchen.
The kitchen’s bigger than my entire studio. I find the pans on the third try, the batter ingredients on the fifth, and I’m mid-pour when I hear the stool scrape.
I look up. A small girl in unicorn pajamas is climbing onto the kitchen island stool, rabbit tucked under her arm, eyes already on me.
We stare at each other for a moment.
“I’m Harper,” she says.
“I’m Mia.”
She sets the rabbit on the counter and tilts her head, studying me. “Do you always make faces at pancakes?”
“Only on special occasions,” I say.
“What’s the occasion?”
“Tuesday.”
She considers this. “It’s Wednesday.”
“Even better.”
She doesn’t smile, but her eyes narrow a fraction, taking me in. She’s six years old and she’s already got Reed’s eyes. Takes everything in, gives nothing back until she’s ready.
I find that more interesting than unnerving, which is probably a problem.
“What shape do you want?” I ask Harper.
She eyes the pan. “Can you do a rabbit?”
I smile. “I can absolutely do a rabbit.”
What I produce twelve minutes later is open to interpretation, but Harper picks it up and holds it next to her stuffed rabbit. The resemblance is apparently close enough because she puts it down and says, “Again.”
Reed comes in while Harper is on her second rabbit pancake. He stops at Harper’s stool first, drops a kiss to the top of her head, and says good morning into her hair. Harper leans into it for exactly one second before she straightens up and points at the plate.
“She made me a rabbit,” she tells him. “Two of them.”
“I can see that.” He straightens up, clocks the batter on her chin, and hands her a napkin without comment. Then he moves to the coffee machine. I watch him in my peripheral vision, the way he sets a glass of orange juice near Harper, the way he checks her cup is full before he touches his own.
“The second rabbit was better,” Harper says.
“The first one had character,” I say.
Harper looks at me. “It looked like a shoe.”
“A very cute shoe.”
Reed sits at the head of the table with his coffee and his phone.
“Syrup?” I ask.
“Harper doesn’t have syrup on school days,” he informs me.
“It’s Wednesday, Daddy,” Harper says, without looking up from her pancakes. “It’s half day.”
Reed stares at her. “Since when?”
“Since today,” she announces.
Reed glances at me, but I avert my eyes at the syrup. No one says anything for a moment.
“One small pour,” he says finally.
I reach across the table for the syrup, leaning over the plate of pancakes, and my hand lands on his at exactly the same moment he reaches for his coffee cup.
Three seconds.
My hand on his, warm and still. Neither of us moves.
I pull my hand back and pick up the syrup. I pour it over the rabbit pancakes, doing my best to keep my hand steady.
“Sprinkle rainstorm?” I ask Harper.
Her eyes go wide. “What’s that?”
I reach into the pocket of my hoodie and produce the small container of rainbow sprinkles I brought from my room. I knew I was going to make breakfast, so I came prepared.
I hold the container above the plate and tip it, slow, letting the sprinkles fall in a shower across the syrup and the pancakes.
Harper watches the sprinkles fall with an expression of pure religious experience.
Reed clears his throat.
I glance at him. His face is neutral, coffee cup raised, eyes on his phone. But the tips of his ears are the faintest shade of pink. Busted!
“Excuse me,” I say, and take my sticky fingers to the kitchen sink.
I stand there with the water running and my wrist under the tap and tell myself the three second touch was an accident, a reflex, nothing with a temperature to it. I dry my hands on the dish towel, come back to the table, sit down, and eat my own pancakes.
Harper and I argue about whether the abstract cat looks more like a cat or a cloud, and Reed drinks his coffee, saying nothing. But he doesn’t leave the table either.
Celeste arrives just as we’re clearing the last pancake off the plate.
She walks in with a leather folder, a coffee she made somewhere else, and a face that has clearly already solved three problems before she walked through the door.
She takes one look at the sprinkle carnage on the table, at Harper still in her pajamas, and at me in my hoodie with batter on my sleeve. She doesn’t react to any of it.
“Good morning,” she says, and opens the folder.
Harper slides off her stool, looks at Celeste, and says, “You have the face you make when Daddy’s schedule is bad.”
Celeste glances at her. “Good morning, Harper.”
“Is it bad?”
“It’s full.”
Harper looks at me with an expression that says she warned me. “He’s nicer when his schedule isn’t full.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Celeste sets the folder on the island and turns to me. “We have a lot to cover.”
I lean back in my chair. “Go ahead.”
Reed’s phone buzzes. He glances at the screen, stands up, and takes it down the hall without a word, gesturing for Harper to go with him, which leaves me alone with Celeste and her folder and the distinct feeling that this was planned.
Celeste doesn’t watch him go. She just opens the folder.
She pulls out a printed schedule that looks like a military operation and walks me through it.
Couple photo opportunities, three of them in the first week.
A charity stop at a children’s hospital on Friday, which Celeste presents as a natural fit given my work with community mural projects.
A black-tie fundraiser on Saturday that Reed has been committed to for six months.
“The fundraiser is your first major public appearance as a couple,” Celeste says. “It’s attended by board members, investors, and press. It needs to land.”
“When you say land—”
“I mean it needs to look real. Not practiced, not stiff. Real.” She turns to the next page. “The photo opportunities this week are lower stakes, more organic. A coffee run, a walk. Things that read as a couple’s normal life.”
“Our normal life is a contract I signed at six in the morning and a bedroom with a lock I checked twice last night.”
“Your normal life,” Celeste says patiently, “is whatever we decide it is. That’s the point.”
I look at the schedule. It’s packed. Every single day has a photo op or an appearance or a briefing note with talking points and a list of photographers who’ll be there. There’s even a note about which side of Reed I should stand on for the lighting.
“You wrote down which side of him I should stand on,” I say.
“Left,” Celeste says. “The press favors it.”
“This is my whole life for six weeks,” I say.
“This is your whole public life for six weeks. Your actual life continues.” She turns another page. “You keep your bakery hours, you keep your mural work, we build those into the narrative. It’s actually useful that you have a real life. It makes the story more credible.”
I look at the children’s hospital visit. Then back at Celeste. “The hospital visit. That’s not just a photo op.”
“No.” For the first time, something shifts in her voice, not warmth exactly, just a degree less professional. “The hospital has a mural project they’ve been trying to fund for two years. If you’re willing, and it fits with your work, we’d like you to commit to it. The photo op is secondary.”
“That’s actually a good thing,” I say.
“I’m aware.” She closes the folder. “I don’t only do cynical.”
Reed walks back into the kitchen with Harper in tow.
“Questions?” Celeste asks me.
“The fundraiser. The black-tie one.” I tap the page. “What do I wear?”
“The stylist will come the day before.”
“I have two vetos.”
Reed turns a page. “One and a half.”
“We agreed on two.”
“We agreed on one and a half.”
“You can’t—” I stop. Celeste and Harper are watching us. I take a breath and smile. “Fine. I’ll be ready.”
Harper walks up to me, rabbit under her arm, sprinkles somehow in her hair now, and comes to stand beside my chair.
She tugs on my sleeve.
I turn to her. Her face is tilted up at mine, rabbit pressed to her chest, voice dropped to barely above a breath.
“You make Daddy smile,” she whispers, “I hope you stay.”