“Give me a few minutes and I’ll be down,” I told them. I grabbed my toiletries bag and headed for the bathroom, hoping a good scrub to my face would help wake me up. Glancing in the mirror, I groaned at how awful I looked. I had dark circles under my eyes, only partly due to falling asleep without washing off my makeup last night.
All the travel and fast food over the past few days hadn’t done my complexion any favors; I was blotchy and oily and gross. But, there was nothing I could do about any of that right now. I’d left the majority of my skincare products at home, foolishly thinking I’d have been back on the road by later today. No one knew that’d been my plan, because I quickly realized it would be impossible to sneak out of town as I’d hoped.
“Peter, are you coming?” Sophia whisper-yelled from the other side of the door. “Maria’s getting out the ingredients and told me to tell you she made coffee. I helped, but only with the water. She said the rest could get messy.”
After quickly running a towel over my face, I opened the door and crouched down to Sophia’s level. “I’m sure you did a great job with your part. And Maria’s right. I spill the coffee all the time and it’s a mess to clean up.”
“You do?” She stared at me with the same wonder I would expect if I just told her we were going on vacation to meet all her favorite princesses.
“Yep.”
“But you’re a big person,” she observed, wrinkling her little nose.
“Everyone makes messes sometimes.” My statement applied to far more than coffee, but she didn’t need to know that.
Sophia curled her hand around my fingers, tugging impatiently. “Come on. We need to get breakfast for Daddy before he wakes up. Then, we can take it to him in bed and everyone can watch a movie together. When I’m sad, I like watching movies with my Daddy. Maybe he’ll let us watchReturn to Neverland.I was going to watch it last night, but I fell asleep and then Maria couldn’t find it on her iPad so we couldn’t watch it together.”
I wasn’t sure how Freddie did it. Faced with incessant rambling before coffee, no matter how cute she was, would drive me up the damn wall. It was hard to stay irritated though, because Sophia was trying so hard to make sure Maria and I weren’t sad. Maria would take longer, but I was better than I’d expected. Today, I woke up with hope that, despite the circumstances, Freddie and I might be on our way to clearing the air like we should’ve done long ago.
My first goal, after coffee, would be figuring out how to getoutof watchingReturn to Neverland.In bed. With Freddie. We might’ve talked a bit last night, but that didn’t mean it was time for a cuddle pile in his bed. Not to mention I could go my entire life without watching any of the Peter Pan movies.Ugh.
In the kitchen, Maria had all the ingredients out on the counter and was working on measuring everything into small bowls, just like Mama used to do to make it easier for us to help without setting us up to fail by measuring wrong. Sophia tugged a small apron off the hook, put it on, and turned her back to me. “Can you tie me? I’m not good at that part yet.”
“Absolutely.” Once her outfit was protected, the three of us got to work. There was no recipe in sight, but it was apparent Maria didn’t need written directions to make Mama’s muffins. They were a staple of our childhood, a basic recipe changed only by the fruit folded in at the end.
The three of us worked together mixing the batter, laughing as if we didn’t have a care in the world. And for that short time, we didn’t. Even Maria seemed more relaxed than she had been since I arrived in town. The sweet scent of cinnamon and apples filled the house a short time later and we started cleaning the kitchen.
“Something smells delicious down here.” All three of us turned to see Freddie leaning against the banister.
“Daddy! You’re supposed to stay in bed so we can surprise you!” Sophia scolded him, pushing against his thighs as he tried to join us. He looked to me for help and I shrugged. What was I supposed to do ifhecouldn’t stand up to his own kid? “Go upstairs. We made coffee and everything.”
“You did?” He took Sophia in his arms and swung her around the room. “You didn’t do it all by yourself, did you?”
“No, Maria said coffee’s messy, so she only let me do the water. And Peter said that even big people make messes sometimes. I like having them here.”
“So do I, Squirt.” The way he looked directly at me as he said those words did something funky to my insides. He seemed sincere, and that made my chest ache for what would happen when I eventually had to get back to my real life.
“Daddy, Itold youI hate that name. When will you remember?” she whined.
“I’m sorry, Tinkerbell.” She rewarded him with a kiss on the cheek. “As much as I appreciate you wanting to bring me breakfast in bed, don’t you think it’d be better if we stay downstairs? I don’t think Peter and Maria would be comfortable in the bed with us and we need to be good hosts.”
She seemed to think about that for a bit. “Okay. Then you go to the living room. I’ll ask Peter to bring you coffee because it’s hot and I might spill it.”
“I can do that,” I said, already making my way to the cupboard where I’d found coffee mugs earlier. “How do you take your coffee, Freddie?”
This was the type of detail I should know about my friend and not having the answer without asking twisted my gut. It was another reminder that I hadn’t been around, and it was partly my fault because it’d been easier for me to run than confront him about his reaction. I’d spent years telling myself Freddie would never accept me as I was, but last night, I’d gotten the impression he actually liked what he saw.
“Sweet and light,” he told me. “There’s a bottle of flavored creamer on the top shelf of the fridge.”
“Yes, sir,” I said with a playful salute. I wasnotexpecting the way Freddie’s eyes widened or the visible tense of his body.Holy shit.Maria cleared her throat and giggled. It seemed my sister wasn’t as sweet or innocent as I’d like to believe, and she knew damn well that I’d been having some very inappropriate thoughts in front of everyone. I turned away from the room and adjusted my swelling dick. Maybe I should’ve gotten dressed; jeans would’ve hidden this little problem much better than knit lounge pants.
“On second thought, I’ll take Sophia to the park and give you boys some time to catch up,” Maria offered.
“But the muffins will burn,” Sophia protested. “Can we go after breakfast? The park down the street has a new playground. It’s really cool. They even have swings big enough that you can play, too! Daddy swings with me sometimes.”
“That sounds like a great idea!”
While the muffins finished baking, Freddie pulled out a few containers of fruit and tasked Sophia with washing while he sliced everything, telling Maria to take a break from kid duty and me to go upstairs and take a hot shower. It was so domestic it made me shudder, but the discomfort quickly gave way to serenity. I liked this. Could get used to it. And that was a scary thought.
