I shoved the thought back where it lived, and ate a dumpling.
The next ten minutes were good. They were good in a way I hadn't budgeted for. Bonnie told me about the octopus — the same octopus we had seen with Beau the first time, the same octopus Bonnie had namedWalter, even though the octopus on the placard had a name I couldn't remember. Beau told me the octopus had been moving on its tank wall in a pattern Bonnie had been able to predict by the third time around. Bonnie told me the octopus had recognized her.
I let her tell me the octopus had recognized her. I didn't, for the first time in my life as a parent, fact-check her.
I had to go back to work.
I kissed Bonnie on the forehead. Then I kissed Beau. I left them in the booth with their dumplings and water bottle. Beau was looking at my daughter like she’d just said something remarkable. I walked the four blocks back to the bar at something faster than a normal pace.
I was — I was actually happy.
I was happy. But I was scared, too, and that was the part I didn't have words for. I might have been falling for him.
After work, I came home to find Beau on the couch.
Her was on the couch with the cephalopod book open in his lap. The book had three pieces of paper sticking out because it was being annotated, per Bonnie's specifications, with notes.
Bonnie was on the other end of the couch.
She was in pajamas, and Pickles was on her stomach. Pickles, who'd stopped hissing at the man on the couch, decided this morning that she would lie on him — especially if Bonnie was there too.
Bonnie was watching a movie I hadn't been consulted about. It had spaceships that were, by the look of things, doing something Bonnie had a lot of feelings about.
He looked up at me and smiled. I quietly sat down on the couch beside Beau and put my head on his shoulder.
He kissed my hair. "How was your day?"
"Long. Kit caught me checking my phone again."
"I caught myself checking my phone fifteen times."
"You aren't allowed to check your phone fifteen times when you are at the aquarium with my daughter."
"I checked it after the aquarium."
"Mmm… How was the aquarium?"
"Walter has been recognized as a regular."
"Has he?"
"He has. Bonnie says she made eye contact with the octopus, and the octopus did the curling thing it does when it is, possibly, communicating."
"Possibly."
"Bonnie has cited two papers."
"Yes, I’m proud of her."
"Me too."
He kissed the top of my head.
He went back to the book.
I closed my eyes against his shoulder.
I hadn't been on a couch with my head on a man's shoulder while my daughter watched a movie about spaceships. I hadn't, in any of the nine years of being Bonnie's mother, been on this couch with a man my daughter was attached to. The couch was, this evening, all of ours.
