“Okay, well, let me know if you need anything, and I’ll do it! Emma needs me right now,” I lie. Emma’s face turns toward me, confusion written there.
“Okay, well, bye—” he starts, but I hang up before he can finish.
“I don’t need you for anything,” Emma says, looking at me skeptically.
“I know,” I say with a smile. “But your Uncle Madden is a yapper, and I would much rather have girl time. How are we doing over here?”
That’s enough to distract her, and she launches into an explanation of the shelves she’s moved onto organizing. Then she gives me a task of my own, a distraction for which my lingering guilt and I mind are grateful for, as I throw myself into it.
THREE
“Dad is going to be so shocked,” Emma says hours later with a giggle as she looks around her room.
While we were cleaning, we found the vision board Wren and I helped her make at the beginning of the year, of all the things she wanted to do during the year. It’s something Wren and I started with Mrs. King when we were kids, and we’ve continued it into adulthood. Once a year, Wren, Nat, and I get together to eat, drink, and cut up magazines, setting goals and aspirations for the year ahead. Somewhere in my room, I have years and years’ worth of vision boards, a lifetime of dreams and desires and aspirations.
Last January, Emma heard Wren and me planning our vision board night and begged us to do one with her, too. Later that week, we met at Wren’s place after school, armed with magazines, stickers, poster boards, and glue, and had a girls’ night with the youngest King.
When we unearthed Emma’s board, she noted that some things—like getting into the town soccer championship or graduating from fifth grade—had already been accomplished. Others, like learning to do her makeup or redecorating her room, weren’t. Loving a plan, and with barely a week of the yearleft, I decided we should try to knock out as many of them as possible while she was on break.
Since we were already halfway through cleaning her room, we finished that task, reorganized and moved her furniture around, and then ordered her some new decorations for her room on my phone. She promised to pay me back with the Christmas money her dad has, and I agreed, knowing full well I wouldn’t accept it.
Afterward, we put together a simple dinner of grilled cheese and tomato soup, which we kept warm in the kitchen. Jesse might not be happy I’m here, but I’ve been around long enough to know that the week after Christmas is always tiring for the guys as they take down the decorations and put them away for next year. He shouldn’t have to come home and worry about dinner, too.
But now that he’s here, that panic and nervous energy are brewing in my stomach once more, cresting as the door creaks open. Emma turns to me with wide, excited eyes, the complete opposite of how I feel in this moment.
“Emma?” he calls, confusion clear in the word.
“In here!” The telltale sound of boots on hardwood floors gets louder before his presence fills the doorway. “Tada!” Emma shouts with a flourish, her arms moving as if she’s a game show model showing off the grand prize.
His eyes scan the room, and I force myself not to scanhim, his worn baseball hat on backward, a worn Three Kings hoodie hanging off his shoulders perfectly, and a pair of old jeans that I know from experience if he turned around would fit his assperfectly?—
Jesus, Hallie, there’s a child in the room.
And it’s your best friend’s brother.
And it can and could never happen.
“What do you think?” Emma asks, and I snap myself out of my internal debate.
“Your room is clean,” Jesse says, shock written all over his face, the mustache he started growing three or four years ago quirking a bit with his joy-filled awe.
“And the living room!”
“I saw.” Then his head turns to look at me, and I get the full force of the handsomeness that is Jesse King. “You cleaned her room?”
I shake my head. “Emma did it.”
His eyes widen then, somehow that being even more of a shock. “You convinced her to clean her room?”
I smile then, a genuine one. “It was her idea.”
It’s not a lie, even though I very heavily guided her in the direction I wanted her to go. From the mix of shock and relief written across his face, I know it was a good choice.
“I cleaned the living room so I could have a fashion show, and then I cleanedmyroom because I remembered on my vision board, I wanted to redecorate my room this year. Remember when I told you all the things I wanted to do this year?” Emma asks, and I fight back a laugh as she barely even waits for her dad to nod. “Well, Hallie and I found the list, so we’re doing a last-minute race to get them all done. I don’t think we’ll get themalldone, since, like, you probably won’t let me get a cat.” She pauses just long enough to see if Jesse will proclaim his love for cats and the idea of his daughter getting a pet, but when he stays silent, she continues. “But the others, we’re totally doing. Come on, I’ll show you dinner. Hallie and I made it.” She tips her head toward the kitchen, then moves around us and out the door, leaving Jesse and me in her small room.
“I, uh…” I take in a deep breath. “I hope this was okay. I figured getting her room clean was worth a little redecorating.” I gesture toward the project we worked on today.
“Considering I was concerned things were living in here, yes. A little bribery is definitely worth a clean room.”
