Page 54 of Motivating Mira
He shook his head. “No, man, I’ve got a daughter. No one should use ‘girl’ as an insult. They’re tough.”
I blinked again. He glanced at me.
“That girl’s been through hell and she’s still a force. I’d be a flat-on-my-ass mess.”
I grinned, clapping him on the shoulder. “One hundred percent. Now you just need to make sure she knows you feel that way.” My grin fell when he swallowed hard and frowned.
“Yeah, I need to tell her shit like that. Girls need to know their dads are proud of them.”
“Everyone needs to know someone is proud of them,” I said, and for a second I saw Mira in my mind’s eye. Maybe if her mom told her she was proud, that she knew how capable Mira was, she wouldn’t be lying in bed beating herself up right now, and I knew that’s what she was doing. I clapped Jesse’s shoulder again. “You’re growing, figuring this out, and I’m proud of you, dude.”
He flashed me a toothy grin. “Thanks.” Then his expression turned serious. “Couldn’t have done this without you. Still can’t, but someday I will. And when that day comes, I hope your girl has come around too and you can leave us to start a life with her.”
I shrugged. “Someday always comes sooner than you think. You’re always going to have difficult days. Days when she’s being an impossible teen or days when she’s an adult doing things you wish she wasn’t, worrying about her, dating guys you hate or know aren’t good enough, but those days will be met with the confidence of someone who knows they belong in the role of dad, and nothing, come hell or high-water, will stop them from being that.”
When we walked in the house, Marni was sitting at the kitchen bar holding the note.
“I woke up when I heard the door,” she said, taking a swallow of milk. “Couldn’t sleep after that.” Her eyes locked onto Jesse’s. “Thanks for the note. I probably would have freaked out if you hadn’t left it.”
He nodded but surprisingly kept his mouth shut. There was no joke to break the seriousness of what she’d just admitted,no blundering confession that it wasn’t his idea, and no cocky “I got you, bruh” sentiment. Nope, Jesse just walked over to his daughter, kissed her on the top of the head, and gave her shoulders a reassuring squeeze. And then he poured himself a glass of milk and sat down next to her.
I blinked staring at their backs a moment, my eyes going blurry, which I was totally blaming on alcohol and lack of sleep.
Eleven
Mira
I bolted upright, instantly regretting the swift movement as the pain from my well-paddled bottom exploded. The ringing which woke me up from a deep sleep wasn’t from a fire alarm like it had been in my dream, but from my phone alarm. I grabbed it from the nightstand and tapped the stop button while simultaneously rubbing the sandy sleep from my eyes. Only it started vibrating in my hand almost immediately. And when I looked down to see who was calling me this early in the morning, I noticed the time and it wasn’t early.
Shit, shit, shit!I pressed the call answer button as I untangled myself from the blankets.
“Hey, where are you?” Cleo’s urgent whisper had my stomach flipping.
“I’m late!” I squealed.
“Babe, I know. Your shift started twenty minutes ago.”
“Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod!” I jumped out of bed, but with the sheet not quite untangled, my backside hit the floor and I swallowed a scream of pain. “I’m coming!”
“Relax, I covered for you.” She said it so breezily, I stopped in my tracks. “According to the now altered schedule, you’re doing my shift tomorrow morning and I’m doing yours now.”
“What?”
“I wasn’t supposed to work this morning, but I went in to talk to Silas about switching shifts next week, and he told me that you hadn’t arrived yet for your shift, so we conspired and doctored the schedule.”
“Clee! I don’t want you guys getting in trouble for me.”
“It’s okay. No one noticed and luckily because I wanted to catch Silas before he started his shift, I wasn’t even late.”
“No, it’s not okay. I’m on my way.”
“Mira, if you show up now, Silas and Iwillget caught, so sit your ass back down on the bed and get your bearings.”
I heaved a sigh into the phone. “Okay, but I’m totally making this up to you guys.”
“I know how you can make it up to Silas,” she said sounding almost salacious. “But don’t worry about me. You’ve covered for me a million times over the years.”
“Silas? How could I make it up to Silas?”
