“The yoga thing?”
“The yoga thing.” I take a sip. “Fair warning though—she’s going to make your life very uncomfortable. Lots of stretching. Lots of breathing exercises.”
Maisie tugs on my shirt. “Is Winnie your best friend?”
“She is.”
“Is she nice?”
“She’s very nice. She’s going to teach the hockey players how to do yoga.”
Maisie wrinkles her nose. “Daddy can’t do yoga. He’s too big and clunky.”
“Hey.” Zayden sounds genuinely offended. “I’m not clunky.”
“You knocked over the lamp last week with your elbow,” she reminds him.
I bite back a laugh as Zayden sputters. He’s got no defense, and he knows it. Maisie just watches him with those big brown eyes, completely unimpressed with her father’s athletic credentials.
“I could do yoga if I wanted to,” he mutters.
“Sure you could.” I pat his arm consolingly.
Once the pancakes are ready, we settle at the table with an ease that still surprises me. Maisie chatters about her friend Sophie’s new puppy, about the book they’re reading in class, and about whether mermaids are real (she’s convinced they are, just very good at hiding). Zayden listens to every word, asking follow-up questions, nodding seriously at her theories.
After breakfast, Maisie announces that we’re building a blanket fort. This is apparently non-negotiable.
“It has to be big enough for all three of us,” she instructs, already pulling cushions off the couch. “And it needs a door. And windows. And maybe a chimney?”
“How would a blanket fort have a chimney?” Zayden asks.
“I don’t know. You’re the adult. Figure it out.”
Twenty minutes later, we’ve constructed something that looks less like a fort and more like a fabric explosion in the middle of the living room. But Maisie’s delighted, crawling inside with her stuffed dinosaur and a flashlight, and that’s all that matters.
“Come in, come in!” She waves us through the “door”—a gap between two couch cushions. “There’s room!”
There is not room. Not for two adults, anyway. Especially not when one of them is as large as Zayden, but we squeeze in anyway, and suddenly I’m pressed against Zayden’s side in a tiny space that smells like laundry detergent and maple syrup, with a six-year-old shining a flashlight directly in my face.
“This is cozy,” I manage.
Zayden chuckles beside me, flashing me a conspiratorial grin.
“Isn’t it?” Maisie beams. “Okay, now we tell secrets. That’s what you do in forts.”
“It is?”
Maisie nods. “Sophie told me. She knows everything about forts.”
“Sophie sounds like an expert.”
“She really is.” She settles cross-legged, looking between us expectantly. “Daddy, you go first.”
Zayden shifts, trying to find a position where his shoulder isn’t jammed against a dining chair. “Uh. Okay. My secret is... I sometimes eat cereal for dinner when you’re at your grandma’s.”
“That’s not a secret. I knew that already.” She turns to me. “Tori’s turn.”
I think for a second. “My secret is that I’m thinking about starting my own business. A sports medicine clinic where I’d be the boss.”
