Rachel
I was baking cupcakes with Piper when Nick called. “Hi, Nick. What’s up?”
“Just wondering if you and Piper wanted to go to the park today.”
“Let me ask her.” I looked at Piper who was frosting the cupcakes. “Nick wants to know if you’d like to go to the park today.”
Piper’s eyes widened and she nodded enthusiastically.
“Piper says that sounds good. Why don’t you come here? Piper is just finishing icing the cupcakes we made and I’m sure she’d love to give you one.”
I got off the phone with Nick and told Piper I was going upstairs to freshen up. I washed my face and pulled out my makeup kit. I didn’t hear Piper come up the stairs. “All done,” she said.
I jumped. “I didn’t hear you, Pipe. Why don’t you go get cleaned up, too?”
She looked at me and squinted. “Why are you putting on makeup?”
“Because Nick’s coming,” I said.
“But you didn’t put on makeup before.”
I hated how Piper called me out on things without even realizing it. She was right, of course. Normally I didn’t wear makeup, and yet suddenly I was putting it on and trying to look great for someone who was supposedly just a friend. She was wise for being five.
The doorbell rang. “I’ll get it!” Piper ran downstairs to answer the door. Suddenly I started to panic. What if Nick wasn’t at the door? What if Piper’s dad was? I flew down the stairs after her. I heard her talking when I landed at the bottom of the steps.
“Rachel’s getting pretty.”
“I see,” Nick said.
I walked in. “Hi, Nick!” I was sure my face was beet red.
“You look great!” he said.
“Thanks. And Piper, I wasn’t getting pretty, I was just getting ready.”
She put her hand on her hip. “Then why were you putting on makeup? Mommy only put on makeup when she wanted to look extra pretty.”
My face was as hot as an oven. I rolled my eyes at Nick.
“Rachel doesn’t have to wear makeup to look pretty, Piper,” he said. “She’s a natural beauty.”
Piper scrunched her nose. “What’s a natural beauty?”
Nick rubbed the top of Piper’s head. “Like you. You’re a cute kid and you don’t have to do anything special.”
“See, Rachel. That means I don’t have to brush my hair in the morning.”
I laughed. “I don’t think that’s what Nick meant. A natural beauty still has to brush her teeth and take a bath and brush her hair. Otherwise all that natural goodness will turn nasty.”
“Exactly,” Nick said. “You girls ready?”
We grabbed our backpacks and headed out to Nick’s car. He’d brought his pick-up truck and Piper sat between us.
“Want to play a game?” Nick asked.
Piper bounced in her seat. “Yes!”
“I’ll say a color and you and Rachel name the first thing you see that’s that color. The first person to spot an item the correct color gets a point. Person with the most points wins.”
Piper straightened in her seat.
“Find something red,” Nick said.
Piper pointed. “Stop sign.”
“Very good, Piper,” Nick said. “How about purple?”
This one was a little harder. Nick was now driving on the interstate and I looked for the color on the billboards we passed but kept coming up empty. Then I spotted a purple stuffed animal in the back of a car we were passing. “There! In the back of the car.”
Piper leaned over me so she could look out. “Ugh! I wish I would’ve seen that.”
We played the game the entire way to the park and Piper ended up beating me. She was a lot faster than I was at spotting items.
“That was fun!” Piper said.
Nick opened my car door and I jumped down. Piper slid over to the end of the seat and Nick held out his arms and Piper leaned in to him as he placed her on the ground. “Easy does it, Piper.”
Piper headed for the swings while Nick and I walked over to the bench and sat down.
“She sure is a neat kid,” Nick said.
“Thanks. And pretty smart.”
“I wanted to ask you something,” he said. “On my way home yesterday, I came across a place with a few old bikes sitting out front. The family was having a moving sale and they had a men’s, women’s and girl’s bike. Anyway, I bought them.”
I looked at Nick. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to tell me. “Who for?”
“For us.”
“For you, me and Piper?”
Nick nodded. “They’re, in the back of the truck. I didn’t want to say anything to Piper before I said something to you.”
I turned around to look at the truck. There was a large canvas covering the bikes. “So that’s what’s under that cover.”
Nick smiled. “Yeah. I put training wheels on Piper’s bike. The family had taken them off when their daughter learned to ride but had kept them.”
“That’s so nice of you, Nick. Thank you so much for thinking of Piper.”
Nick reached out and touched my hand. “I was thinking of you, too, Rachel.”
I smiled and could feel something deep inside of me begin to tingle. I was seeing another side of Nick. He definitely wasn’t the bad-boy bar guy I’d first pegged him to be when he walked into the bar a few years ago. He was so much more than that!
Nick and I were discussing getting Piper’s bike out of the back of the truck when she jumped off the swings and ran over to us. “Are you guys just going to sit on the bench the whole day?”
I looked at Nick and nodded. “Hey, Piper,” Nick said. “How would you like to ride a bike?”
“But I don’t have a bike.”
Nick stood. “You do now.”
Piper and I followed him to the back of the truck. He folded back the canvas to reveal three bikes. Piper jumped up and down. Nick lifted the smallest bike out of the truck.
“This one’s for you, Piper. I put the training wheels on. When you’re ready, I’ll take them off.”
Piper hugged Nick so hard I thought she was choking him. He helped her onto the seat.
“You can ride around here, Piper,” I said. “Just stay where we can see you.”
Piper took off on the bike and Nick and I returned to the bench to watch.
“So,” Nick said. “Claire told me you haven’t been feeling well.”
Damn Claire. She shouldn’t have said anything.
“Yeah. I actually had some bloodwork and a biopsy done of a swollen lymph node, but the doctor doesn’t think it’s anything to be worried about.”
“Are you?”
“I guess I’m a little worried. I mean, anytime the doctor insists you have bloodwork done and wants to do a biopsy right away you’re bound to get worried.” The truth was it was killing me not to google the symptoms. Normally, that’s what I’d do. But I’d resisted up until this point because I knew if I learned something bad my anxiety would get the better of me.
Piper yelled and we looked up to see her waving. We waved back.
“You’ll be fine, Rachel,” Nick said. “And if you ever need someone to talk to about it, I’m here.”
“Thanks, Nick. I appreciate that.”
“Looks like the bike is a winner,” Nick said.
I smiled. “I knew it would be.”