39. Daddies
39
DADDIES
WYATT
I ’m never going to sit down again.
Now that Vi’s walking, she walks everywhere.
She doesn’t want me picking her up because she wants to “wah!” —which sometimes means walk and sometimes means water—so I’m constantly juggling water bottles while holding her tiny hands to help her balance. I miss the days when she was a crawler, but Dakota’s been helping me keep an eye on her.
On Saturday, I pry myself from Dakota’s arms because I promised to help my parents with some flower deliveries around town. She’s got her skills session with Colt anyway, and it gives Vi the chance to stretch her tiny legs (and hopefully tire her out) as we go from shop to shop in our old red pickup truck. The truck is thick with the scent of flowers from our deliveries, a mix of zinnias, lavender, and eucalyptus.
That’s a trendy plant now.
Mama adjusts her straw sunhat from the passenger side, fixing her blonde hair in a braid. “I can’t believe she’s finally walking! You’re gonna miss those crawling days, sweetie.”
“I already do,” I grumble, leaning back against the ripped leather headrest. “That girl won’t sit down unless she’s sleeping. I’m never going to have a quiet morning again.”
She leans over the console to kiss my cheek. “You’ll get your quiet mornings back, but then you’ll end up missing the hectic ones, so just enjoy what you have now.”
“You’re probably right, but the days seem so long.”
It’s our routine delivery day, bringing fresh bouquets to all the small shops around town, but each delivery is taking triple the time because everyone wants to ooh and ahh over my girl.
I can’t blame them.
She’s looking especially cute today in her mini cowgirl hat and matching pink booties that Dakota bought for her, and I love seeing her fawn over my baby girl. I’m so damn happy all the time. I don’t think there’s anything that could bring me down.
My mom shouts something outside the Granite Falls Bakery, so I crank down the hand-rolled window. “You ready to go?”
“In a minute!” she says, propping Vi up on her hip, who’s trying to rip Mom’s navy Guardians cap off her head. “Ms. Thompson here is gonna give us her apple pie recipe. You need to use Granny Smith apples because the Honeycrisp makes it too sweet!”
I didn’t ask, but that’s small towns for you—go to deliver flowers and come out with a homemade apple pie recipe from the local baker. The sweet aroma of cinnamon and apples drifts to the truck as we chat for the next fifteen minutes.
The sound of the car door creaking open interrupts our conversation, and I turn to see my mom cradling Vi. “Okay, we’re ready to go. She’s getting a little fussy.”
She gently places my squirming girl in the car seat. Long drives normally calm her down, so I start heading home as we talk about the upcoming hockey season.
“I hear the new goalie’s pretty good,” Mom says, popping her head up from the backseat. She likes talking stats and players. “But he’s no Tremblay. ”
“There will never be another goalie like Rhode Tremblay,” I say, thinking of our retired veteran player.
I always thought Tremblay had been crazy, giving up his dream to move to Argentina for his girl, but maybe he had it right. As I stare out at the rolling hills stretching beneath the wide blue sky, I’m hit with how much I don’t want to leave Texas.
“I’m thinking I might put in for a transfer,” I blurt as we drive. “Austin’s getting an NHL team, and it’d be nice to move back home.”
“Oh my goodness!” Mama shouts, clapping her hands. She tends to respond to everything with an excited squeal. Vi starts clapping her hands in her car seat, trying to mimic her, and I smile at her in the rearview.
“We’d love that,” Mama continues. “Wouldn’t we love that, Jessie? I’ve always wanted to come back home. We could offer tours of the farm!”
My mom, being the serious planner, presses her lips together as she scrutinizes me. “How do you feel about that? Is that really what you want?”
She’s always getting me to dig deeper into my thoughts. I hated it in high school because she loves playing the devil’s advocate, and that made writing my philosophy papers hell, but I know she does it to try and help.
“It feels like home for me,” I say, glancing at her brown eyes in the rearview mirror. “I love it down here.”
“And there’s a girl you love too,” Mama adds with a knowing grin.
I smile. “That too.”
The memories flood in—the nights we spent under the stars, the feel of Dakota’s hand in mine. I think back to all our almosts—almost kisses, almost admissions, almost touches. Our past is too full of tangled what-ifs and could-have-beens, and I need to make it permanent .
Mom scans my face from the backseat, and whatever she finds in my expression has her sighing. “Then I guess we’re moving back to Texas.”
My heart jerks.
“You’d follow me here?” I squeeze the steering wheel, hopeful. They’ve helped me out so much that I don’t know what I’d do without them. “Come back home? Really?”
“Sweetie.” My mama rolls her eyes. “If you think for one damn second I’m going to live more than five minutes away from my grandbaby, you’re sorely mistaken.”
Mom leans over from the back to kiss her cheek, and then she kisses mine. “There’s nothing you can do to keep us away. You’re stuck with us forever.”
My throat goes tight, thinking of all those summer memories—Mom teaching me how to fish, Mama taking me to Sweet Berry Farm to pick strawberries. And now, I’m doing all that with my little girl, and they’re still by my side.
“I love y’all,” I say. “You know that, right? I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Both their eyes go glassy.
“You’re our home, sweetie,” Mama says.
“That’s right,” Mom adds. “Where you go, we go.”
“Here’s that bouquet of roses and bronze leaf wax begonias, Willie,” I say, setting the giant arrangement of pink sherbet flowers on the bar counter.
His Caribbean eyes narrow on the flowers, and he stares at the bouquet like it’s about to explode into pink confetti. “I didn’t order these.”
“Hey, don’t look at me. Alanna said the bar could use some ‘prettyin’ up.’ Her words. Not mine, and I think there’s something else in there for you too.”
He digs around the white box I used to stabilize the bouquet and pulls out the embroidered apron. “What the hell is this?”
I hold up my hands. “She’s the one who told me to put it in there.”
He pulls out the pink floral apron with an image of a cartoon man with oven mitts on his hand that reads, Always Use Protection.
It must be some inside joke because I don’t get it.
He stares at it, but I can’t read his expression under all that dark hair. After a few seconds, he scrunches up the apron, throws it behind the counter, and mutters something under his breath that sounds like Fuckin’ Barbie.
The door suddenly bursts open with a bang.
Colter Cutler strides inside the bar, clad in Wrangler jeans and a plaid button-down. He scans the crowded bar beneath his cowboy hat, and when his eyes land on me, he cuts through the smoky haze. A few patrons give him a nod of hello.
This man turns more heads than his daughter.
Once he reaches the counter, he scrapes out a seat, turns it backwards, and straddles the wood. “Mind if I join you?”
Colt has finally started to ease up on the scowls directed at me, so I slap his shoulder. “I’ve actually got to finish some flower deliveries, so I was just heading out, but I’m glad I caught you. I wanted to talk to you about the Granite Falls rodeo in a few weeks.”
“What about it?” he asks, nodding to Willie who hands him a long-necked beer.
“I know Dakota lost her shot with the scout because of me, and I want to get her another chance. Think you could get me a meeting with him so I can convince him to come watch her at Granite Falls in a couple of weeks?”
He takes a slow sip of his beer before answering. “I’ll try. He’s a hard-ass, though. Fair warning. I already tried talking to the man, and he gave me nothin’. You might have to beg. ”
“I’ll beg for her.”
He appraises me, piercing me in the way he always does, like he’s staring at my soul, not my face. “You’ll do whatever it takes for my little girl, won’t you?”
I dip my hat. “Yes, sir, but she’s not so little anymore.”
“Some part of them will always stay little. You’ll see,” he says, creaking back in the stool. His eyes seem to fill with memories. “You’ll always be her daddy, no matter how old she gets, but instead of asking you to tuck her into bed, she’ll ask you if she can stay on the family phone plan because it’s a better rate .”
I groan a chuckle. “I can’t even imagine Vi having a cell phone right now.”
“You best believe it. They grow up too damn fast.” He tosses back the beer. “One minute, you’re holding them, trying to keep them from falling off the petting zoo pony. And the next, they’re giving you a heart attack on the back of a bull, and you’re feeling all kinds of proud. But you also know she’s gonna put you in the ground early from all the worryin’ you have to hide from her ’cause, at the end of the day, her dreams are more important than yours.”
A wave of chills rattles my body, and my eyes burn.
“Well, fuck,” I sniff like a man. “Thanks for that. I’m gonna cry now.”
Willie clears his throat. “Me too, and I don’t even like kids.”
Colt salutes us with his empty bottle, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Welcome to fatherhood, gents. It’s the worst best thing that’ll ever happen to you. The only person who can make me cry on this Earth is my little girl.”
Love isn’t a big enough word to encompass what I feel for my daughter, and I don’t want her to grow up too fast. Every day, she seems to change, learning new words, discovering new things, falling, standing, getting back up.
I want her to always need me, but I guess one day, she won’t. Even then, I hope she always knows she can come to me for anything, because she might not always need me, but I’ll always need my little girl.
I swallow. “So, the worrying never goes away?”
“Never. You just learn to deal with it, and then eventually you get to share that worry with the person she chooses to spend her life with.” His brown eyes spear me, and he waits, holding onto whatever words he’s going to say next just long enough to get my heart racing. “That gonna be you, Wyatt?”
He doesn’t bullshit me, so I don’t hesitate. “Yes, sir. I’ve always been hers.”
He gives me a long appraising look and seems to come to some internal decision before giving me a hard nod. “Good man. Now enough with the ‘sir.’”
“No can do. My mama would kill me.” I wink at him on my way out. “Once a gentleman, always a gentleman, sir.”