“I love you.”
“I know you do.”
Grabbing the key for the upstairs, I made my way out the back door, even though I had a feeling I was going to sparkle for days.
CHAPTER 78
harley
Will I get my pixie dust back tomorrow?” Aria asked as she crawled into her bed, disappearing underneath a mound of purple blankets and stuffed animals. I held one end up for her, making sure she wouldn’t get lost and tangled amidst her comfy chaos while she got situated for bed.
“No,” I said. After finding out she’d thrown glitter in some man’s face atSparrow & Sage, I’d taken her entire glitter supply and hid it.
“Butwhy?” She drew out thewhyfor a solid five seconds, her grumpiness fueled by tiredness. “I want my pixie dust back!”
“I know you do,” I replied, “but we’ve talked about what you can and cannot do with pixie dust. We can’t throw pixie dust at people without their permission. Someone could get hurt.”
“It’s magic!” she exclaimed.
“Aria,” I cut her off before she could go on another rant about magic. While I did my best not to limit her creativity and imagination, there were times when a line had to be drawn. “We can try again in a few days.”
“Fine!” She flopped back on her pillows, crossing her arms. The way that lower lip of hers protruded dramatically was almost enough to make me cave on the spot.Almost. I hated seeing her upset. “But I don’t like it.”
“And that’s okay. You’re allowed to not like it.” As soon as the blankets were tucked in around her, I sat on the bed next to her. I leaned against the headboard beside her and stretched my feet out in front of me. Despite her frustration with me, the minute I raised my arm, she took the opportunity to snuggle into my side. “Are you excited about your first day of school tomorrow?”
“Yeah!” Aria said. “I’m going to make so many friends!”
“Good.” I chuckled. I adored how social she was. It made it easier to send her into a situation like this. “We do need to talk about something, though, okay?”
“Okay.”
“This,” I began, shifting slightly to pull a bracelet from my pocket, “is your new allergy bracelet for the year.”
I held out the purple silicone bracelet for her to see. There were two large charm buttons on it—one for her peanut allergy and one to note that she carried an EpiPen. She took it from me and scrutinized it.
“It’s not very pretty,” Aria mumbled, making a face as she stared at the bracelet.
“I know,” I said. “And I’m sorry, but it’s not meant to be pretty. It’s meant to keep you safe.”
Every school year, I bought her a new bracelet. Not because I had to, but because I used it as an opportunity to have this conversation with her all over again. She had a severe allergy to peanuts, and, while I could control her immediate environment, the risk became greater when her environment expanded. Her private school was elite and small, making it easy to build a safe environment. Wilde Bay Elementary was a very different story.
“Fine.” She pulled it onto her wrist.
“The biggest issue is that I’m not nearly as close to your school as I used to be,” I continued. Her old school had been a block away. I could run there if needed—and I had in the past. On a good day with no traffic, her school here was still twenty minutes away. “Your class is bigger here, too, which means there’s a lot more going on for your teacher to keep track of.”
I didn’t tell her how much that worried me. She didn’t need to carry that into her first day. Her last school had been a small private school. There were only eight kids in her class. There were thirty-one in her new class. It was easy for something like peanuts to slip through the cracks when it was just one teacher.
“What do we say if someone wants to trade food with you?” I asked
“No, thank you,” she quipped.
“And if they keep asking.”
“I tell them I don’t want to die because of peanuts.”
“And if they tell you that there are no peanuts in their food?”
“I tell them peanuts can end up in all sorts of things, and then I tell them no. Again,” Aria said. “And if they ask again, I punch them for being a jerk.”
