She popped upon her toes and pecked a kiss on his cheek.
“Okay, then,” she said. “Tell me all about your process. I’ve never written a song before, but I’m excited. What do we need to do? Do we need equipment? Tell meeverythingabout your process.”
Her exuberance was contagious. Levi couldn’t remember the last time he felt this excited about working on a new song.
He directed her over to the kitchen table, then began to grab some things out of the fridge.
“Well,” he said. “The first thing you need for writing a new song is some snacks. You can’t write on an empty stomach; that’s a well-documented fact. But after that, all you really need is a piece of paper and an idea.”
The butterflies in Levi’s stomach fluttered happily as he and June sat down and began to get to work.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Oh, hey there, Diana!”
Diana turned at the sound of her name and waved to one of the moms that she had met during some of the other times she’d done pickup at Eloise’s school. Usually, she had come to retrieve Eloise with Anthony, but today he had asked her if she wouldn’t mind grabbing his daughter on her own, and Diana had practically leaped at the opportunity.
She still felt a little unsettled about the distance between her, Anthony, and Eloise these past weeks, but she was definitely reassured by Anthony asking her to get Eloise from school. Surely, he wouldn’t do that if there was somethingwrongbetween them. They were definitely just busy. That was what everyone had been telling her, so maybe it was time to listen.
Diana tried not to show any of these thoughts in her expression when she turned to face Stella, the woman who had called her name.
“Hey, Stella!” she greeted. “How are you feeling?” She gestured to the other woman’s rounded belly. “You have to be coming up on your due date, right?”
Stella chattered good-naturedly about the irritating things about pregnancy, making Diana laugh at several points in a storyabout Stella trying to pick up one of her kids’ toys from the floor. By the time the heavily-pantomimed story was over, the school had opened its front doors, and the students were pouring out.
Stella was quickly swarmed by her three kids; Diana applauded the other woman’s energy in dealing with all their exuberance and still deciding to add a fourth child to the mix.
But then Eloise was charging in her direction, and Diana only had eyes for the grinning little girl.
“Diana, Diana, Diana!” Eloise chanted. She barely had enough time to bend down and open her arms before Eloise threw herself into the embrace. “Hi! Hi hi! Daddy told me you were doing pickup today and I wassoexcitedallday and I told myteacherand all myfriends.”
Diana laughed at Eloise’s chatter, each word of which was punctuated by a tight squeeze around Diana’s middle. She hadn’t realized that Anthony had known so early in the day that he’d be working late. He’d sounded as though it was a new revelation, when he’d called Diana asking her to swing by and get Eloise. But maybe Diana had just misunderstood.
“Well, I’m excited to see you too, sweet girl,” Diana said, ruffling Eloise’s dark curls and throwing a quick wave in the direction of Stella and her children, whom the pregnant woman was herding toward the car. Diana had a brief flicker of recognition that, before Eloise came into her life, she would have been jealous of the soon-to-be mother of four. Before she’d met Anthony and his daughter, Diana had wanted nothing more than a family of her own.
And now, occasional doubts aside, she was pretty sure that she had one.
“We’re going to your house, right?” Eloise asked, slipping her mittened hand into Diana’s and skipping beside her as they began to walk down the sidewalk. Diana’s house was close enough that she hadn’t needed to drive to get to the school.
“We definitely can if you wanted to,” Diana said. “But I thought you might want to grab a treat at Honey Bee Bakery?”
This was something that they’d done before after school, and Eloiselovedthe pastries at the bakery. Therefore, Diana was extremely surprised when Eloise shook her head determinedly.
“No, can we just have a snack at your house?” she asked. “I was thinking we could play fashion.”
Playing fashionwas what Eloise liked to call dressing up with the contents of Diana’s closet. Since the little girl was always so respectful of Diana’s clothes that it bordered on reverent, Diana didn’t mind.
Besides, Eloise was more important than merethings, anyway. And Diana had more clothes than she needed.
“Of course,” Diana said. “Let’s head over, huh?”
Eloise kept up a steady chatter about her day as they walked. She and her friend Beth were working on drawing up a treasure map that led to a pile of acorns, which they were going to hide in a library book so that somebody could find the trove.
“If the map stays hidden for a hundred years though, they’ll probably just find trees,” Eloise explained pragmatically.
“That makes sense,” Diana agreed.
Eloise then covered which of the lessons that day she had liked (learning about prisms) and which ones she had not enjoyed at all (fractions).
