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Ember was quiet for a moment, then she pressed her forehead to mine and let out a small breath.
“That might be the most romantic rejection I’ve ever experienced.”
“It isn’t a rejection,” I said as she climbed off my lap and sat down beside me, pulling her knees to her chest.
“I know.”
We sat there for a bit, our shoulders touching, but neither of us said anything. Eventually she stood, gathered her hair and put it back in the bun, and looked down at me.
“Good night, Everett. Thank you for being honest with me.”
“You’re welcome. Good night.”
After a bit, I got up and went to the kitchen. I probably should have gone up to bed instead. I walked in and there on the counter was her laptop, open. I hit a key on the keyboard, lighting up the screen.
There on the screen was the most recent chapter of Moonlit Mistakes. Immediately, I read what she had written.
“You think holding onto the sadness keeps her alive. I get it. I do. But choosing sadness isn’t loyalty to her…it’s punishment to you. She wouldn’t want this for you. You know that, and even though you know it, you’re choosing it. The question you need to ask yourself isn’t whether you can love someone again. It’s whether you’re brave enough to stop pretending you already don’t.”
My heart beat in my throat, and I closed the laptop. I stood there for a moment, gripping the counter’s edge, realizing how much truth there was in what she’d written. I took a deep breath and then made my way over to the cupboard and poured myself a glass of scotch. Then I leaned against the counter in the dark kitchen and drank the liquid down in three fast gulps.
Chapter Seven
Ember
I’d barely made it through the front door when the smell of something burning hit me. I dropped my bag in the foyer and followed the smell to the kitchen. Already, the worst-case scenarios were running through my mind. Perhaps I’d forgotten to turn the burner off and left a pot on it to boil dry, or perhaps Sophie had climbed up to get something out of the cupboard and turned the burner on.
What I found instead was worse.
Everett stood at the island in low-slung gray pajama pants and a faded Columbia University T-shirt, wielding a spatula. The morning light caught the silver in his dark, messy, unstyled hair.
I’d seen this man in a three-piece suit that cost more than my car every day since I’d arrived. I’d never seen him in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. As I rounded the corner and stepped into the kitchen, I stopped in my tracks. Everett stood there in pajama pants, bare feet on the tile with flour on his jaw, and his hair a complete mess.
“Daddy’s making pancakes!” Sophie shouted from the stool she was sitting on. She had her chin propped on both fists, watching the disaster unfold before her as if it were the best thing in the world. “He’s on batch three.”
“And batch three is going fine,” Everett said through clenched teeth, attempting to flip one pancake that hadn’t quite set on the bottom.
I leaned up against the doorframe, smiling, as I glanced up at the smoke detector. “Is that why the smoke detector is blinking?”
“I disabled it.” Everett said, his shoulders stiffening.
“Yah! It was beeping like a mother fuck….”
Everett spun around and glared at Sophie.
“Hey! I told you not to repeat that.”
I winked at Sophie, and she smiled up at me as I made my way over to Everett.
“You…okay?” I asked, pressing my lips tightly together to keep me from laughing. “How were the first two batches?”
Sophie immediately pointed to the trash can.
“They were a little dark.” Everett shrugged.
“They were black, Daddy.” Sophie corrected, a serious look on her face. “Like really black, Ember. It looked like he colored them with my black crayon,” she said, covering her mouth.
I walked over and peered around Everett’s arm at the griddle.
