Now though, it was all smiles. Even on my face as I watched them.
The timer buzzed on the oven and I made sure to get the pizza’s out while the girls continued to color. I plated our dinners and grabbed some waters to bring to the table. It wasn’t a fancy dinner and small talk wasn’t needed as we all devoured the food in front of us. Amelia stopped a few times to continue coloring a piece on the page of her book.
“Do you like how it’s cooked?” Melanie asked, the first question she’d asked since we’d sat down to eat.
“I do.” I took another bite, the sauce oozing out from underneath the cheese. “It makes it so that the sauce is baked onto the crust, rather than into it. Which means, more sauce.”
I took another bite, sauce dribbling down my chin but I didn’t care. It was some of the best pizza I’d ever eaten and all because Melanie had made it. It might have been different but it was perfect. I felt like it was the perfect metaphor to our relationship: completely different from how others typically did it but in the end, it was going to come out better than anything else in the world.
“Mommy makes good food.” Amelia took the last bite of her pizza and then left the room. I could hear her running up the stairs, probably going to play for the last few hours she was going to be up for the night.
“She’s been asking where you’ve been.”
“What have you said?”
Melanie and I were alone finally and it was the first time since the breakup. I couldn’t count the cafe earlier as there were other around but right now, it was just us with no one to interrupt the conversation that needed to happen.
“That I didn’t know when you would be back.”
“I bet she didn’t take that well.”
“She didn’t at first. She cried the first few nights that you couldn’t read her a story. Then she stopped asking me to read to her and has gone straight to bed every single night by herself.”
“Is that where she went to now?”
“No,” Melanie laughed and shook her head. “The second she found out you were coming over tonight, she made a game plan of what was going to happen.”
“What?” I laughed along with Melanie at the thought of little Amelia making plans for what would happened tonight.
“She said we’d eat dinner, then she’d leave us alone for a little bit while getting ready for bed, and finally she’d call you up to read a bed time story to her which is when she’d fall asleep immediately.”
“That sounds like a damn good plan.”
“She thought one of the reasons you left was because she was making you read too many stories to her so she said tonight it’s only one and then bed.”
I leaned back in my chair, picturing Amelia with a determined look on her face as she told her mom everything she wanted to happen tonight.
“Jack,” Melanie started back up, “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t answer her back immediately. I let the apology sink in, knowing that for Melanie, this was even bigger than her telling me she loved me. She wasn’t the kind of woman to admit that she was wrong but she knew it this time. Where she wasn’t the personal type to admit wrongdoing, I wasn’t the kind of man to gloat in it but I wanted to revel in this. For the first time in this relationship, it wasn’t me who had to apologize.
“Don’t look so smug.” Melanie rolled her eyes at me and I leaned forward and placed a hand on her knee.
“It’s not me being smug, Melanie. It’s me reveling in the fact that you finally realize what this is here.”
“Yeah,” Melanie leaned toward me, placing one of her hand on top of mine and the other on my knee, “and what is this, Jack?”
My eyes were locked on hers but then she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and my eyes were glued to her mouth. My cock grew in my pants at the thought of getting my lips on hers again.
“Jack!” Amelia screamed from upstairs, beckoning me to her.
“You’ve been summoned,” Melanie smirked at me but not before looking down and catching a glimpse of what she’d done to me. A blush crossed her face as she ducked out of the room and headed to Amelia. I followed behind, quickly adjusting myself.
I laughed to myself as I did so, remembering having to do this same thing before. We always managed to get interrupted by Amelia just as things were starting. I wouldn’t have traded any of it, though. To hear Amelia call my name again was one of the best things I’d ever heard. Next, I was going to get her mother to scream it and it’d make today the best I’d ever had.
When I reached Amelia’s room, Melanie was no where in site but Amelia was cuddled up in bed with a book sitting on her lap.
“Will you read me a story, Jack?”
