Page 22 of A Kickin' Karate Christmas
Eventually, we hung up. I went to bed with a smile on my face.
The next morning, I was filled with nervous energy. I’d never had a boyfriend with a kid before, and while I knew Emerson, it would be different now. I wouldn’t just be her sensei. I would be her father’s boyfriend. Iwasher father’s boyfriend, but after today, she’d know about it. Would it make her view me differently? Would she expect special treatment in class?
What about later down the line? If things worked out between me and Jake, would she want to keep taking karate lessons from her stepdad, or would that be weird?
I was jumping the gun. I knew I was jumping the gun, but I couldn’t stop myself. Why couldn’t it be time to meet up already?
Because it was Christmas, I couldn’t even call Sophia to talk me down from my proverbial ledge. All my friends had other plans, and I wasn’t going to interrupt their holidays just because I was having a small meltdown over meeting my boyfriend’s daughter as his boyfriend. I would have to talk myself down. I tried breathing exercises, and when that didn’t work, I grabbed my workout bag and went to the dojo.
It was the one tried and true method that nearly always worked when I got amped up like this. I didn’t know if it was habit, from doing martial arts for so long, or if it was because when I was in the dojo, I knew I could handle anything. I was competent. I was a skilled fighter. I taught children. I knew who I was on the mat.
And an hour of free sparring a punching bag worked wonders. I was centered when I left the dojo. The nerves came back a little by the time it was head to Jake’s, freshly showered and in a pale green polo shirt I’d borrowed from Kevin, but they weren’t so overwhelming. The doubt from that morning was gone. I wasn’t drowning in my own thoughts. My heart was racing, but I expected that.
It felt like the night I drove to his house and kissed him, and that had turned out okay. That thought soothed me.
The drive to Jake’s took less time than it usually did. There was less traffic on the road due to the holiday, or maybe it only felt like it took less time. Either way, before I knew it, I was pulling into his driveway. I could see the Christmas tree lit up in one of the windows, despite the bright sun still in the sky. I raced up the sidewalk and knocked on the door.
I heard Emerson’s voice and footsteps followed by Jake’s heavier ones. As they got closer, I heard Jake lecturing Emerson about safely answering the door. A moment later, I heard her little voice ask who was at the door.
“Mateo,” I called out.
The door flung open, and Emerson’s face went from confused to delighted in two seconds flat. She began jumping up and down, and Jake had to reach around her to open the door. Before I even had a chance to step inside, she flung herself at my waist. “I cannot believe you’re dating my daddy!” she squealed.
I looked over at Jake with a raised eyebrow. “She overheard me and Becca talking on the phone this morning,” he explained. “I didn’t realize that little ears were listening outside of my bedroom door.”
“I wanted to tell you Santa had come,” she whined before looking back up at me, her blue eyes glimmering with excitement. “Because Santa did come and there were a lot of presents, but Daddy won’t let me open them until he’s in the living room with me. So I went to pull him out of bed, but I heard him talking on the phone, but I’m not allowed to go into his room when he’s on the phone because sometimes he’s talking to people from work and those are private, grown up conversations.” She said those last few words with the tone of a child who had heard the phrase too many times. “Then I heard Daddy say that you were coming over later and that he’d tell me then and then I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t have self-controlordiscipline.”
“She bust right into my room and started shouting tell me what on repeat and wouldn’t stop until I gave in.”
“Mommy was laughing.”
“Becca thought it was hilarious. She said I folded like a wet napkin.”
“I don’t know what that means, but I know that it means that you and Daddy are boyfriends and that means you’re going to come over a lot now, right? I mean Mommy’s boyfriend comes over when I’m over, and I didn’t even know him before they started dating.”
“Yes,” I assured her, finally stepping into the foyer, “but it won’t be every night. Your daddy wants to spend some time with just you, and I have friends that I spend time with, too.”
“And sometimes Daddy has to work until it’s really late after I go to bed,” she said with a nod. “But you’re dating Daddy meaning that you’re going to come over more!”
She was still bouncing around and didn’t stop even after we got into the living room. She buzzed around showing me all her presents while Jake put the finishing touches on dinner in the kitchen. I heard him laughing from the other room as his daughter went deep into the lore of some doll he’d given her. I’d never heard of the show the doll was from, but I wasn’t up to date on current cartoons.
She kept talking through most of dinner. She was full of stories, and I couldn’t help laughing at the first-grade drama with her and her friends. After she ran out of stories, she peppered me with a thousand questions. She asked me about my friends and family. She asked me about karate and competitions. She even asked me the little questions that no one ever thought to ask: favorite colors, favorite song, favorite dinosaur.
When we got to those, I tried to pull Jake into the conversation about favorites. It led to a heated debate about dinosaurs. After we cleared the table, Jake sent Emerson to her room to calmdown a little and put away her Christmas presents while we did the dishes. The dishes took longer than they would have if he weren’t so damn distracting. His lips just begged to be kissed every few minutes.
“You’re really great with her,” Jake said after another kiss. He handed me a dish he’d just washed, and I rinsed it and placed it in the drainboard. “The few people I’ve let meet her got annoyed by how much she talked.”
“Kids talk,” I reminded him with a shake of my head. “She’s sweet. She’s energetic. She’s a really happy kid. Besides, if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have known that you were terrible at picking favorite dinosaurs.”
“There isnothingwrong with Velociraptors!”
“Except that everyone chooses them thanks to theJurassic Parkmovies. The Spinosaurus is so much cooler.”
“You even said you only picked those because of a weird cartoon music video you saw on the Internet.”
“A weird cartoon music video that had a ton of cool facts. I’ll show it to you later. After Emerson goes to bed. It’s a bit…” I thought of how to describe the video. I finally settled on, “violent. Cartoon violence, but there’s blood and he kills a T-Rex.”
“And that’s her favorite carnivore.”
