“I just hope she hasn’t been bothering you too much,” he says. “I feel bad that she’s targeting you because of me.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. She was targeting me long before you moved in.”
We share a laugh at that, and the rest of the dinner is spent making plans for tomorrow. We settle on a time to leave and pick a diner near the zoo for breakfast. I run home for something to wear, and when I get back Hailey is mid-tantrum. She doesn’t want to get ready for bed yet, but Micah’s insistent that she go to sleep early because we’ll be leaving early. It takes both of us to wrestle her into bed and convince her that the quicker she goes to sleep, the quicker she can wake up and see the monkeys.
With Hailey finally asleep, Micah and I get into bed and snuggle together for an early night ourselves. I fall asleep in his arms, my head resting on his chest while he strokes my hair.
Chapter 22
Micah
By putting Hailey to bed early last night, I’d hoped to avoid a cranky four-year-old in the morning.
No such luck. She’s in rare form as I get her dressed and ready for the zoo.
“I don’twannawear the princess shirt! I wanna wear themonkeyshirt!”
I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose. “Hailey, honey, it’s not a princess shirt. It’s just pink. And you wore the monkey shirt two days ago and got it dirty. Daddy hasn’t had a chance to do laundry since then.”
“I wanna wear the monkey shirt!”
Her shriek makes me cringe, and I hope it didn’t wake Iris up. I had been wanting to let her sleep as long as possible before we had to go.
“Hailey, if you keep screaming, we’re not going to go to the zoo.”
Wrong move. She wails even louder at that, and within minutes Iris is at Hailey’s door, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh, sure. Everything’s fine. Except the monkey shirt is dirty, and I made the grave mistake of threatening to cancel the zoo trip if she didn’t stop screaming.”
Rather than roll her eyes at my ridiculous dilemma, Iris smiles and sits gingerly on the edge of Hailey’s bed. “Hailey, honey, do you want Miss Iris to come to the zoo with you guys today?”
Hailey sniffles and nods.
“Okay, then tell me what’s wrong.”
“I want my monkey shirt!”
“Well, Daddy says it’s dirty. You don’t want to meet the monkeys in a dirty shirt, do you?”
To my surprise, Hailey actually stops to consider that. “No …”
Iris picks up the pink shirt that Hailey threw on the floor. “And what’s wrong with this shirt? I think it’s pretty. I think the monkeys will like this shirt.”
“You do?”
“Of course! I heard a secret that the monkeys’ favorite color is pink.”
My jaw drops as Hailey raises her arms for Iris to help her into the shirt. I’d been fighting with that girl for ten minutes about what to wear, and Iris just swooped in and saved the day in a few seconds.
“There! Look how pretty you are, Hailey! The monkeys are going to love you.”
Goddamn. My heart just melted a little bit.
While Hailey runs to brush her teeth, I pull Iris in for a long kiss.
“You’re fucking magical, you know that?”
Iris giggles. “Me? I just made up some bullshit in the hopes she’d calm down. I didn’t do anything special.”
