“Goodnight, Pumpkin. I love you.” Tyler placed a kiss on her forehead.
Lili turned to look at Kaiya. “Goodnight, Mommy. I love you. I’m glad you found me.”
The breath whizzed out of Tyler at his daughter’s words. His eyes misted as he saw tears of joy in Kaiya’s eyes.
Kaiya sniffed, vividly trying to hold back her tears. “I love you, too, Baby, and I’m ecstatic that I found you. You’ve brought a lot of joy into my life. Goodnight, Sweetie.”
She threw her arms around her little girl and hugged her tightly as Tyler looked on with a teary smile on his face.
Chapter 15
“I can’t believe you want to listen to pop music.”
Kaiya laughed at Tyler who shrugged shamelessly and grinned back at her, “And I can’t believe you want to listen to heavy metal.” They were in Tyler’s car, on their way to get furniture for Tyler’s house. Lili was with her grandmother today. Kaiya and Tyler got into a playful argument over what radio station to listen to. Tyler wanted one that played pop music while Kaiya wanted to listen to something with a little more base. They playfully argued about it all the way to the store.
The store was massive and from her brief overview, they seemed stocked with everything someone might need when furnishing their home. She was excited. “Joybird?” That was the manufacturing info of the office chair they were looking at.
She smiled, “I mean, who doesn’t feel instantaneous happiness when they’re sitting on furniture from Joybird, it’s scientifically proven.” Tyler let out a laugh as he settled into an office chair to test it out.
He tapped the arm of the chair he was sitting on, and swirled around like a Lili would. She pushed him, “Stop playing little boy. We have important grown up shopping to do?”
Tyler guffawed, “Let me show you the little boy.” He made to grab her hand, but she darted out of the way. Grinning, he ran after her, they darted in between closets and ducked under stands before entering the bedroom section and collapsing on a king sized bed.
Kaiya bounced once for good measure and smiled, “It looks steady. It should take Lili’s bouncing and her play fights.”
“And everything else in between,” Tyler raised his eyebrows. He pulled her closer to him and kissed her hard. Kaiya forgot where she was and rolled unto Tyler, straddling his lap, without breaking the connection of their lips. The sound of someone coughing brought back their awareness. They looked into each other’s eyes and smiled.
Tyler called out to a store attendant and asked for the bed to be marked for them. The attendant blushed at the sight of them in a compromising position and Tyler winked at her.
Kaiya stood up from the bed and smoothed out her clothes, attempting to get some sort of decorum into her appearance while Tyler lay on the bed smiling at her. She leveled him with a look.
“I’ve been thinking of getting some bunk beds for when the kids stay over my place. I should get it now.”
“Let’s go get it.”
They were walking through the children’s section when her phone beeped, she took it out and sighed, putting it back in her purse. It beeped again and she ignored it. Tyler gave her a suspicious look, “You’re not going to get that?”
She sighed, staring at her phone with an angry look as she tapped away at the screen with anger while she spoke to Tyler. “It’s the real estate agent for the dance school. He’s telling me now that the building has problems. I don’t feel like dealing with it now.”
He dragged her into a chair and sat beside her, “What problems?”
“Remember I told you about opening a second location for my dance school, well apparently, the building only very narrowly passed inspections and it looks like the structural integrity has been compromised. I honestly don’t know what to do. It was the perfect place for the second location and now it looks like it’s gonna be way more things to deal with.”
Tyler took her hand and squeezed it as she continued talking, “And I really just want to get this school up and running. My grand opening is in three months and it’s stressing me out.”
She took a deep breath, raising a hand to her temples to massage it. Tyler kissed her knuckles before he started talking, “I can go to the building with you and we can come up with something. I could also look around for other buildings that will suit your needs.”
Kaiya could hear him, but she wasn’t really processing what he was saying, she was lost in her thoughts, thinking of solutions. She whipped out her phone and dialed Finn’s number, waiting for him to pick up.
The call went through and she nearly shouted into the phone, “Finn! Thank God I got you. Marcus said the building had problems and I really can’t wrap my head around it. Can you find out what’s really going on?” She paused to listen to him before nodding, “Yeah thanks. That’d be great. I owe you one.”
She hung up and looked up to see Tyler giving her a dirty look.
“What?”
He shrugged in response and stood up to get their purchases in order. After finalizing the delivery days and times for the purchases they left the store, with none of the jubilance they had when they entered. Even when they were in the car on their way home, Tyler barely said a word to her, not even when she changed the radio station. She couldn’t think of anything that could’ve made him upset.
Did he somehow conclude that her real estate agent – Marcus was her friend with benefits?
