Page 12 of Kiss and Makeup
Emma knew a lot of words now and she wasn’t afraid to use them. During the whole walk back to the apartment, Emma told me all about how she had shared her necklace with Lily, so this week, Lily had let Emma borrow her favorite stuffed animal, which Emma proudly displayed after plopping down in the middle of the busy sidewalk to search her backpack.
“She wants to see the people!” Emma said insistently.
I took the little brown dog in my hands, tucked one paw under the strap of my handbag, and let her ride on my shoulder the rest of the way home.
“What do you want for dinner?” I asked as I closed the door behind us and double locked it. The dog had to come off my shoulder because the handbag needed to hang next to the door, but Emma was there to tell the stuffed animal that everything would be okay.
“Spaghetti!”
Spaghetti was Emma’s self-proclaimed favorite word and, conveniently, it was also one of her favorite foods. With premade sauce out of a jar, dinner would take me twenty minutes to make. “Sure, Honey. Why don’t you introduce your new friend—”
“Brownie!” Emma’s hands held the dog’s in a dance.
“Yes, take Ms. Brownie and introduce her to your other friends, Sweetie.” Introductions would take at least ten minutes. I could set the water to boil and make salad and garlic bread, then play for a few minutes before putting in the noodles. Then food, and then more play, because I knew that when Emma got a new toy, she took it everywhere and included it in every game.
That was nice of Lily. Not every little girl would let another one borrow something. Maybe it was about time to have Lily over to play one Saturday or Sunday, or even after school on Friday. I would need to meet her parents first, of course. Lily and Emma weren’t quite at the stage where they could exchange phone numbers and schedule their own playdates. Emma certainly didn’t need a phone yet and wouldn’t for a few years at least.
Introductions took longer than twenty minutes—Emma did have a lot of stuffed animals, after all—and I managed to delay our inevitable playtime until after dinner by switching on the TV to one of her favorite cartoons.
“Brownie is homesick,” Emma announced promptly the instant the show ended. “She misses Lily.”
Homesick. That was a new one. Maybe they had done some sort of story at school, or she had heard it from another classmate. “Oh no!” I exclaimed, setting my bowl on the table and sitting on the carpeted floor next to Cowboy, a horse I hadn’t had the heart to tell Emma couldn’t be a cowboy. “What should we do?”
“Hm…” Emma’s little eyebrows drew together and she sat importantly before her lines of stuffed animals, surveying the crowd. “What do you think?” She pointed at a grey-and-black striped cat. “Sam is a doctor. She says she can help!”
“Sweetie, homesickness isn’t like when your nose is all stuffy or your head hurts. You know what I think? I think Brownie just needs a new friend. What does she like?”
“Oh.” Everything Emma thought paraded across her face. “Cookies? And milk. And spaghetti.”
I smiled a secret smile. Just like someone else I knew… “Doesn’t Stripe like cookies and milk?”
The zebra’s legs flopped as he was snatched up by eager little hands. “Yes! They can be friends.” The next second, Emma had disappeared into her room and had one of her other toys in her hands, waving it wildly as the two new friends bonded over playtime before dinner.
Seizing this chance, I dug my phone out of my handbag and scrolled until I found Lauren in my contacts.
“Hello?” A cheerful voice picked up quickly.
“Hi, Lauren. Any chance you’re free Wednesday evening?”
“Sure. Need help with Emma?”
“Yes please. I’ve got a late business dinner, and I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Before nine, for sure,” I promised, knowing Lauren preferred not to stay up too late. “I’ll be home to put her in bed.”
“So I’ll pick her up from school? Sounds perfect. You don’t mind if I bring sugar cookies, do you? I promised Emma I would next time I came over.”
So that was where Emma’s obsession with cookies had come from. Oh well. A few cookies every now and then wouldn’t hurt. “Sure. They’ll make good bribes.” We shared a laugh, then I thanked Lauren and hung up.
I knew finals were coming up, but Lauren still sounded cheerful as always. Truthfully, Lauren reminded me of myself during my college days. Hardworking, focused, born in a family that didn’t have much but filled with determination to make something better of herself—it had been what had drawn me to her in the first place. When her mother had gotten sick and Lauren needed some extra income to help out, I had personally seen that she got hired as a receptionist in the company I had worked at during that time.
That had been a year and a half ago, around the time I adopted Emma after the accident. Now, Lauren was a senior, a trustworthy babysitter, and a happy daughter with a healthy mother. Any extra income she could earn babysitting was still welcome, and I kept her busy.
Now, to put Emma to bed. I stopped in the doorway, shaking my head as Brownie and Stripes made a pillow fort out of every single last piece of Emma’s bedding, which she had managed to strip from her twin-sized bed in the fifteen minutes or so I hadn’t been watching. Clearly, taking my eyes off a so-suspiciously-entertained Emma had been a mistake.
Unbidden, as I stood there and watched Emma decide which pillow should be the door, I thought about Xavier. Was dinner on Wednesday a mistake too? I didn’t know what he expected or wanted from dinner, but I doubted he would want to just sit there and chat about old times over sweet tea.
My nail found a tiny spot of something hard on the wall and scratched at it. What did I expect from dinner?
Nothing. I expected nothing. But…
That didn’t mean I couldn’t go, wait, and see where the evening went.
