Piper was on a roll. Soon she’d be offering up more of my secrets, my likes, my plans, or my time. All in the pursuit of making Dean happy. I walked over and wiped chocolate pudding off her face with my thumb. “It’s almost time for bed, kiddo. Are you done with that?”
“Almost.” She peeled the lid off all the way and licked it clean, leaving more chocolate pudding on the end of her nose. “Can we play a game with Dean first?”
“Yeah, we can do that. What game?”
She scrunched up her face, thinking. “Twister?”
Dean’s eyes met mine before I could think better of it, and I blushed. I blushed so hard I had to clear my throat before I gave Piper a calm no. My embarrassment was the most embarrassing thing ever, because it told him I was picturing us playing Twister together. I was never looking at him again.
“What about Chutes and Ladders?” I asked her, knowing she’d say yes. She loved that game.
“Alright. But no cheating.”
I crossed my heart. What she didn’t see was that I was crossing my fingers behind my back at the same time. “Okay, no cheating.”
Piper put her hands on her hips. “For reals?”
“What? I play to win.”
“I know, you big cheater.” Piper turned to Dean. “You have to keep her from cheating.”
“I’ll do my best.” Once she ran off to get the game out of the cupboard, he leaned over to me. “Why would you cheat at Chutes and Ladders?”
“Clearly, you’ve never played.” I still wasn’t looking at him. My fingernails were the most interesting things ever. “If you don’t cheat, the game goes on forever. The trick is to be good at it.”
“If she knows about it, you can’t be that good.”
“She doesn’t know I cheat on her turns as well. It’s never a surprise who wins. It’s all carefully planned. When, how, who.” Piper came back in, cutting off my speech early, which was a great thing, because I was sounding a little bit like a murderer at the end of a who-done-it-mystery confessing all.
It didn’t take Dean long to figure out why I cheated at this game. After sliding down three chutes, he was suddenly all ladders, and Piper was giving him stink-face.
“You’re cheating, Dean.”
“He must not be very good at hiding it,” I quipped.
Dean reached over and pinched my side, using a lot more stealth than when he moved his game piece extra steps. I poked him in the ribs and got caught by Piper. She gave me the look I always gave her when she tried to hide her peas in her mashed potatoes.
“Be nice, Mom.”
“I’ll try.” I glanced up at the clock, calculating how long to let the game go before orchestrating a win. This was the most interesting part of the game for me, which was pretty sad. Maybe we should have chosen something more entertaining for Dean’s sake, but if he was bored, he hid it well. Another thing he was better at than me. I’d been told I needed to work on my happy-to-be-here face. I believed it.
Dean stopped cheating and immediately sailed down a chute into never-going-to-win-land. At a minute to eight p.m., Piper beat me by a small margin, just as I predicted.
“See, your cheating didn’t even work, Mom.” She sounded so smug.
I hugged her. “Congratulations, kid. You have a big day tomorrow with the birthday breakfast and the lemonade stand. It’s bedtime.”
Piper opened her mouth to protest, and a big yawn came out. She wrapped her arms around me tighter. “Okay. I’ll go to bed. Can I stay up late tomorrow?”
“For sure.”
I didn’t think of the ramifications of putting her to bed on time until Dean was leaning in her doorway after she’d brushed her teeth, and I was tucking her in. I hadn’t had a man over after Piper was asleep in… oh… ever. I’d thought he would excuse himself and go home after Chutes and Ladders, but he didn’t, and I didn’t hint at him needing to, and now it felt like Irish step dancers were doing a jig across the bottom of my stomach.
I’d sensed this coming for a while now, this dare that Dean dangled in front of me.I dare you to like me back.I dare you to let me make a move. I dare you to let me in.
It was a strange setup for a friendship. Maybe it wasn’t all my fault we weren’t really friends. Yes, I was nervous around him, but he made it worse with the way he looked at me.
“Five songs?” Piper asked, clutching the soft ducky she always slept with. She smoothed down the fluff at the top of the stuffed animal’s head and kissed it.
