Room for More (17 page)

“Kacie—”

“Don’t,” I interrupted. “Don’t apologize. I know you’re sorry. You’ve already said that.” I finally turned and looked him in the eye. “What I need from you now is for you not to act like I owe you something for all the time you’ve missed out on. That was your fault, not mine. What’s done is done and I want the girls to know you and to build a relationship with you slowly, but you have
no
right to give me your opinion on what you feel I should do with
my
life.”

“Understood.” He nodded.

“I mean it, Zach,” I continued, not sure my warning had hit home just yet. “I will date who I want, go where I want, and do what I want and it’s none of your business. If you try to make it your business, we’ll put a stop to all this and do it the ugly way. Got it?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Good. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to clock in.” I turned on my heel and walked away, knowing damn well that he was staring at me as I went.

“What are we looking for again?”

Kacie stood up from behind a pile of boxes and a piece of her hair fell in between her eyes. She blew it out of her face. “A can of clear, sparkly spray paint.”

I looked around the garage at the stacks of boxes and odd tools laying around. “You’re sure it’s in here?”

“Yes. At least, I think it is.” She walked in front of me and bent over to make sure it hadn’t rolled under the shelf.

Tilting my head to the side, my eyes traveled Kacie’s entire backside all the way to the floor and back up again. She sighed in frustration and spun around quickly, totally catching me.

“Were you just staring at me?”

“Me? No. Why would I stare at you? You’re hideous with your perfect round ass and pouty, pink lips. I mean, come on. Ew.”

She stomped her foot and punched me in my arm. “Come on. This is serious.”

“What do you need it for again?”

Empty boxes went flying as she started flinging them off the top of the workbench. “For Piper. She lost her first tooth today at school.”

“I can’t believe this shit. I missed her first day of school the other day and now I missed her losing her first tooth.”

“You didn’t really miss much with the tooth thing,” she disagreed. “The real excitement comes in the morning when she wakes up and realizes that the tooth fairy came to her house. There isn’t going to be any excitement, though, if I can’t find the damn spray paint.”

I ducked as a box narrowly missed hitting me in the head. “Obviously I’m an idiot, but what does spray paint have to do with the tooth fairy anyway?”

“You take the dollar you’re going to leave under their pillow and spray it with the glitter spray paint. It’s clear so they can still use it if they want, but it’s covered in sparkles so they think the tooth fairy really touched it.” A tiny smile appeared on her face as she shrugged. “My mom used to do it with me and I wanted to continue the tradition with my girls. I still have all of my glitter dollars. I never spent a single one.”

“Wow. Your mom has some pretty awesome ideas.”

“She does, but none of it’s going to matter if I don’t find that damn can.” She threw her hands up in the air and turned back to the row of metal shelves that lined the side of the garage.

“What time is it?”

She pulled her phone out of her pocket. “Eight forty-five.”

“The hardware store closes at nine, correct?” I grabbed my keys and headed toward the door.

“Yeah, but it’s a fifteen-minute drive to town. You’ll never make it.”

I laughed. “Challenge accepted.”

Forty-five minutes later, I walked back into the garage to see Kacie sitting on the floor with a bunch of boxes scattered all around her, none of which appeared to contain spray paint.

“I can’t believe you made it!” Kacie jumped up and threw her arms around my neck when she saw the plastic bag filled with glitter spray cans in my hand.

“Barely. I called when I was five minutes away and begged the manager to wait for me. He was grumpy about it until I showed up and he saw it was me.” I hugged her back and set the bag on the workbench. “He asked for a picture, but I did him one better and gave him a signed puck. Thank God I always have extras in my truck.”

Her eyes softened as she looked at me and gently squeezed my forearm. “Thank you for going to get these. You didn’t have to do that.”

“Hell yeah, I did. Piper needs glitter dollars.” I looked down at the stuff all over the floor. “What the hell do you got going on here?”

“Oh, I found a couple of my old boxes, so I was going through them.” She sat back down in the middle of the clutter and I followed suit. “Some pictures, some drawings, old toys, stuff like that.”

I reached into a box and pulled out an old crayon drawing of what looked like dogs and cats. “Uh, did you do this?”

“Yeah.” Her cheeks turned an adorable shade of pink.

“Wow. This is amazing. I mean, except for the fact that every one of these animals appears to have a penis.”

“Shut up.” She giggled. “Stop teasing me.”

“No, really. You were drawing anatomically correct animals at a very young age. I’m impressed.” I turned the paper toward her and pointed to a particularly well-endowed dog in the upper right hand corner. “This guy up here, he’s very, uh, gifted in the penis department. His name must be Brody, huh?”

“Gimme that!” She snatched the paper out of my hands and laughed as she put it in another box.

“What’s in this one?”

She tried to peek over the top of the box off to the side of me. “Not sure. Haven’t gotten that far.”

“Let’s take a look, shall we?” I pulled another stack of drawings out and set them off to the side. “Well, we have Barbies. Lots of Barbies. Apparently you don’t like blondes, though, because you cut all their hair off and left the brunettes alone.” I pushed them off to the side and pulled out a very familiar toy. “I remember this!”

“My View-Master!” she squealed and grabbed it out of my hands. She held it up to her eyes and found the light, frantically pulling the lever on the right down to switch the slide. “
Smurfs
!” Setting it down, she crawled over to the box I was rummaging through. “Are there any other slides in here?”

“Tons.” I grabbed the stack of slides and handed them to her. She shoved them in the View-Master, one after another, clicking through to see what they were.

“
Wizard of Oz
!
Lady and the Tramp
!
Rugrats
!”

She set the giant red binocular-looking things in her lap and looked at me, taking a deep, satisfied breath. “I’m over-the-moon that you found this. I had no idea Mom still had it. I can’t wait to show Lucy and Piper.”

“You really liked your View-Master, huh? On a scale from one to finding a run-down barn, how excited does this make you?”

She stuck her tongue out at me. “I loved this thing, took it everywhere with me. If any one toy represented my childhood, it was this. I loved that I could just pick it up and immediately be transported somewhere else.”

“I had one, but I never played with it. Actually, I think I broke it when I hit it with a hockey stick.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Help me clean this stuff up real quick and let’s head in. I have a dollar to spray.”

“A dollar?” I asked, surprised. “Just one?”

“Yes, just one. And no, you may not put more under there.”

“You know me so well.” I leaned over and kissed the tip of her cute, crinkled nose.

The next morning, I went downstairs and Kacie and the girls were already in the kitchen.

“Brody! Look!” Piper squealed when she saw me, waving a glitter dollar around in the air.

“What’s that?” I played along.

“My dollar. From the tooth fairy!” She looked down at it like it was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen. “She really came. Can you believe it?”

I took the dollar from her and looked closely at it. “Wow, did you see her?”

Piper shook her head, looking a little disappointed. “No.”

“I did!” Lucy bragged.

Kacie turned from the fridge to face her. “You did?”

Lucy nodded furiously. “She had yellow hair and white, sparkly wings and a green dress. She was so pretty.”

“That’s Tinkerbell, Lucy!” Piper argued.

“No! It was the tooth fairy, Piper!” Lucy’s little head shook back and forth in anger as she yelled.

Kacie stepped in between them. “Okay, you two, relax. It’s too early in the morning for this and I haven’t had nearly enough coffee yet.”

“Hey.” I walked over to the fridge and pulled out a mason jar of Sophia’s homemade cinnamon applesauce. “Anyone want some of this with me?”

“I do,” Piper said.

“No.” Lucy scowled.

Kacie looked at her skeptically. “Since when do you not like Gigi’s applesauce?”

“I like built apples, Mom, not squished ones,” Lucy snarled.

Kacie and I looked at each other for a brief second and tried to hold our laughs in, but we were unsuccessful. Piper joined in shortly after us and within a minute, Lucy was laughing too. All tension had evaporated from the room and it turned into the perfect morning.

We all sat together at the island, shoving our faces with pancakes and cinnamon applesauce, while the girls told stories about their first week at school.

“Brody, does the tooth fairy come to your house a lot?” Lucy asked.

I frowned at her in confusion. “Not since I was a little kid. Why?”

She shoved her hands onto her tiny hips. “Connor Gerjol said if you’re a hockey player, your teeth fall out a lot.”

Kacie let out a good laugh, trying to cover her mouth with her hands.

“Well, Conno is right, sort of. Hockey players sometimes have missing teeth from getting hit in the face with a puck or a stick, but I’m a goalie. I wear lots of protection when I’m on the ice, so I’ve never lost any teeth.”

Lucy nodded, content with the answer I’d just given her.

“Connor also said you’re our dad.” Piper added nonchalantly, looking down at her pancakes.

My eyes shot over to Kacie who sat straight up, her eyes as big as dinner plates.

“Uh…” was all she squeaked out.

Lucy and Piper both looked up at their mom, innocently waiting for the answer to a question that had unknowingly just rocked her whole world.