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Saturday morning, I wake with a hard-on and my hand cupping her full breast. I have less than sixty seconds to revel in my position before I hear soft tapping on the bedroom door and my baby girl questioning, “Daddy?”
I leap out of bed and grab my boxers from the floor. Delilah’s golden hair drapes over the pillow, and the sheet falls below her waistline. She’s gorgeous, but there’s no time to appreciate her. I pull the comforter up to her shoulders and charge to the door, thankful I locked it after my last trip to the bathroom last night.
I open the door, and an inquisitive face peers up at me. “Why’s the door locked?” My door is always open, but with a glance back at Delilah, I realize that’s a part of my routine that’s going to be changing. And I couldn’t be happier about it.
I scoop my baby girl up into my arms, closing the door behind me before heading to the kitchen to get coffee started. Kara’s arm points back to my bedroom as I’m carrying her away. “Did you have a sleepover?”
I flip the kitchen light on then set her onto the counter and set about grinding the coffee beans. I learned a long time ago that sometimes silence leads to an easier question.
“Can I play with Delilah today?” she asks as she kicks her feet back and forth against the counter.
After I press brew on the coffee machine, I squeeze Kara’s cool bare foot. “If she can.”
She beams a smile up at me, and my heart warms. “Yes. We can paint. And she can teach me to do the yoga.”
I kiss her nose. “I’m not working today, so we can do whatever you want to do.”
“Yay!” There’s a slight pause as I pull down the coffee mugs before Kara drops her bomb again. “Did she sleep over?”
There’s a sadness to her tone that has me twisting around to face her. “Yes, baby. She’s my girlfriend. We’re going to be spending more time with her. Is that okay?”
She toys with the edge of her nightgown. “Yes. Can she sleep in my bed next time?”
“You wanna to have a sleepover, pumpkin?”
She nods. “I’m not sure what age kids start doing sleepovers with friends. Let me ask some of your friends’ parents and see what they say, okay?”
“Why not Deelah?” she asks with her adorable little girl plea. I grin as I pour my coffee.
“You want a sleepover with Deelah?” She nods. “Tell you what. Why don’t we ask her?”
She leaps forward off the counter, and I barely catch her in time. “Kara! Careful.”
“Aw, Daddy. I can do it.” Before I can respond, she’s running out of the kitchen.
I follow, a little too slow pre-coffee to anticipate where she’s going. As I round the corner, I glimpse a flash of Kara’s nightgown heading into our bedroom—my bedroom. Not our bedroom. Not yet. Maybe one day.
I enter the bedroom as Kara jumps up and down, using the bed as an indoor trampoline, and Delilah ever so slowly reaches for my pillow and slides it over her head.
Airborne, Kara squeals, “Deelah! Wanna sleep over? In my room?”
I catch Kara in mid-air and toss her away from the bed as her peals of laughter cascade through the bright sun-filled room. Delilah lifts a corner of the pillow and peeks out.
“Morning, beautiful. Sorry about this one here. Want me to bring you some coffee?”
She smiles and nods, but the pillow stays on top of her head and the comforter remains near her shoulders. I step into my closet and pull out a pair of my sweats and one of my smaller t-shirts and throw them onto the bed. “Feel free to wear anything of mine you want.”
“Where are her clothes?”
I toss Kara in the air a few feet out in front of me and step forward, clearing us out of the bedroom, and continue doing the toss-catch game as I explain we had to rush home last night, and she didn’t have time to pack clothes.
“So next time she’ll pack clothes?” Kara asks as I set her back up on the kitchen counter.
I grin as I take out a second coffee cup for Delilah. “Yes, next time she’ll pack clothes. And when your friends come over, we’ll be sure they pack clothes.” I supply the next part more to get her brain thinking about future sleepovers with her friends.
Delilah rounds the corner into the kitchen, her hair pulled into a giant pile on top of her head. She’s wearing my sweats and a plain white t-shirt, and they swallow her, yet with her bare feet and shiny red nail polish, she’s adorable and sexy.
I reach into the refrigerator for the soymilk, finish Delilah’s coffee, and pull her body into mine when I deliver her mug. Her hair still smells of flowers, and I relax into her as I kiss her forehead. Delilah stands on tiptoe and places a kiss on my neck.
Kara smiles at us then holds her arm out into the air. “Deelah, wanna watch cartoons?”
“Absolutely.” Delilah scoops Kara up onto her hip and carries her into the den as they debate exactly which cartoon they should watch. It was close between Paw Patrol and Doc McStuffins, but I hear Delilah mention she likes the Doc, and after a squeal from Kara, TV sounds fill the now empty kitchen. I open the fridge and set about making pancakes for breakfast.
I’m lost in the world of flipping pancakes when two arms slip around my waist and Delilah’s lips touch the back of my neck. When I twist in her arms to face her, I place a soft kiss on her lips. I want more, so much more. But it’s got to be restrained, given we have a child in the next room. Delilah must be thinking the same thing, as she steps away from me and rests her back against the counter.
“Sorry about this morning.”
I tilt my head. “Huh?”
“I didn’t realize she would wake so early. You could have kicked me out. I would’ve been okay with it. I know she’s just a kid, and it’s got to be weird to have me here in the morning.”
“Uh-uh,” I break in. “Not weird at all.” Perfect, actually. “I told her you’re my girlfriend and you’ll be over. A lot.” Blue eyes meet mine. I hold my breath. This is the girl who told me she doesn’t like compound words. But surely things have changed now.
Her eyes widen, and she presses her lips together in a flat line. I pause, waiting for her response. We didn’t talk specifics last night but...
“Okay.” She reaches up and pulls me down to her for a deep, slow kiss that has my heart speeding up and blood rushing to my cock. For once, I’m glad my kitchen doesn’t open into the den like so many do in open floorplans.
It’s hard to describe the sense of peacefulness Delilah brings with her. Kara and I, we were happy before. We had a rhythm that worked for us, and my baby girl giggles and laughs as much as any kid. But there’s a brightness and energy to Delilah that warms the white walls in our apartment. She’s like a pair of Maui Jim sunglasses infusing the world with opalescence. And I am fully aware these thoughts are those of a cheeseball, and I don’t care. Not at all. Kara adores her and seems thrilled to have her around. Last night’s events with her mom seem to be forgotten. Kara’s beaming and giddy. All the happiness I see in my daughter is what I’m feeling on the inside.
After breakfast, we all bundle up to head to the park. It’s a chilly early December day, but the skies are blue, and red and green holiday decorations appear on every street and in most store windows. I hold Kara’s left hand and Delilah holds her right, and we swing her along, down the city sidewalks until we reach the park entrance. We’re the picture of the perfect family, the family I yearned for when I was a kid. The mother, father, and child. It doesn’t matter that Delilah isn’t Kara’s biological mother. But having someone in that role for Kara is something I’ve always wanted for her. Maybe I should have tried to date years ago. It’s almost as if I was trying to hold this spot for Amber, should she change her mind, even though she couldn’t have been more clear about her wishes.
In the park, Delilah finds a dry, sunny spot in the brown winter grass and proceeds to teach Kara and me a few yoga poses. I snap loads of photos of the two of them giggling and laughing and rolling around on the ground. Delilah’s phone is charging back at my apartment, so every now and then she reminds me to send her some of the photos.
After we’ve spent a couple of hours outside and our exposed skin turns pink from the cold, we duck into Colonie for lunch. As luck would have it, there are three open bar stools at the counter. Kara loves sitting at this neighborhood restaurant because she can watch the cooks prepare all the food. She sits mesmerized by the action, glued the way some kids focus on an electronic device or the television.
After lunch, we head home down Montague Street. Shops and restaurants pack the commercial thoroughfare. Kara begs to pop into a toy store. Delilah tells us to go ahead, and she walks over to a clothing store across the street. The toy store is small, but packed floor to ceiling with all kinds of toys and stuffed animals. She drops some silver marbles on a display, and we watch them roll down a sort of roller coaster. The display model shows what the plastic pieces inside the $180 box can build.
“Do you want to add it to your Christmas list?” From about September on, Kara doesn’t get new toys. Anything she shows an interest in gets added to her list. It’s what my mom did to me, and now I fully appreciate her brilliance. Wandering through a toy store adding to a wish list is so much easier than tears in response to being told no.
Kara plays with the marbles a bit more, watching them roll through the downward maze, before she says, “Let’s go find Deelah.”
We look both ways, cross the street, and peer through the glass of the shop Delilah entered. The door to the boutique chimes as we open it. Delilah stands at the register, chatting with the shop girl as she checks out. I see piles of clothes on the counter and can’t help but hope Delilah’s planning on storing some of her new purchases at my apartment.
Delilah drops down to her knees as Kara approaches and asks, “What’d you end up getting?”
Kara wraps her tiny fingers around two of mine, and her eyes grow big as she sees the large shopping bag by the register being filled by the salesclerk. “We was just looking.”
I scoop her up and kiss her cheek. “She added a few things to her Christmas wish list, right?”
Delilah frowns and reaches out to squeeze Kara’s thigh as if she’s comforting her. Kara pushes against my chest to get down, then scrambles up Delilah’s thigh to sit on her hip. She’s tiny, so she can get away with being carried, but those days are coming to an end. She’s about one growth spurt away from being too long and gangly to easily carry around. I take the shopping bags and reach for Kara, but Delilah twists away and exits the store.
When we get back to the apartment, Delilah and Kara immediately dig into the craft buckets. As Delilah plays art instructor, I grab my laptop to finish up some patient reports from Friday. There’s a surreal quality to the moment. I can’t remember the last time I had the chance to get work done in the middle of a weekend afternoon, at least, not since Kara dropped her afternoon nap. It’s also a little too perfect and dreamlike. This is the life I wanted when I was a kid.
When I turned fourteen, and yet another birthday went by without a call from Dad, I asked Mom what had happened. Asked why we moved away, why they got divorced. I’d been so young when it happened, it never occurred to me to ask why they were getting a divorce, and then as I grew older, it felt like the business of grown-ups.
We were in Joe’s Pizzeria on Montague Street. It was there, sitting on a round black leather stool, that I learned my father had an affair and she became pregnant. We lived in a small town, and she couldn’t bear to stay and watch this other woman grow large with his baby. He could’ve stopped her from moving to New York, but she offered to waive child support, and he chose money. Ultimately, he chose money over me. She never told him he couldn’t have anything to do with me. He simply got busy with his new family. So many years I would hope for a phone call or for him to ask me to come out and visit for a week over the summer. Then, eventually, I stopped hoping.
When I asked Amber to marry me, if I’m honest, I did so because I wanted the family I didn’t have as a kid. I told myself I could be there for her as she finished growing up. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t in love with her. I loved her carefree spirit. The opposite of mine. Paying for college and grad school, getting good grades, that required discipline. Constant work. Amber chased her dream without any care for anything else and no discipline to hold her back. She had a passion for music. For her, nothing was better than being on a stage.
It never occurred to me to question how that selfish quality would play out in a mother. Or wife. I believed I could give enough for both of us.
I still remember the hardness of the floor underneath my knee when I proposed. Her panicked expression as she backed away and the desperation seeping from every crevice as I saw the family I craved backing out the door. Then Kara arrived, and I fell into survival mode. Intense workdays as I struggled to remember everything from years of vet school, working to build my confidence in my ability to diagnose correctly on everything from snakes to parakeets to bearded dragons, while at night I was up with a colicky newborn.
When I first met Delilah, those crystal blue eyes and blonde hair caught my attention, but I was out of practice. It had been years since I took the time to look at women or to think about dating. Even with Delilah, when I first met her, my focus automatically shifted from the beauty in the room to my patient. That had been another manic day, but I still noticed the concern and care Delilah had for the creature under her care, a dog that wasn’t hers. One of my favorite quotes from Immanuel Kant is, “We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.”
Delilah held the dog’s head in her lap, massaged her ears, spoke to her, and provided her undivided attention. She treated her like she was human, actually better than some humans treat each other. She pushed me. Wanted to get her way. And she was cute. She flirted. Didn’t back down. And she pushed open the door to a possibility.
Delilah’s energy makes me smile. There is a literal bounce to her step that sends her hair billowing along her back when it’s down or jiggling when it’s wrapped up on the top of her head. She’s carefree, but she’s also stable and down to earth. She’s an artist, but her drive doesn’t stem from a desire to be worshipped on stage. She loves being around people and appreciating color and creativity. I love all those things about her. But seeing her with my daughter? Nothing could prepare me for the powerful emotions ripping through my body. The warm sensation in my core when they hold hands, when she does something as simple as cut up broccoli for her on her plate and then play a game to tempt her to eat it. I don’t know how to navigate us forward, to go from our initial dating to having her in our life each and every day. I don’t want to scare her away. But I have an idea of my ultimate goal.
She agreed to be my girlfriend. She wasn’t exactly joyous about it, but she agreed. That’s a step in the right direction.