Kyle was still mentally flogging himself as he turned the van onto Ben’s street. The scene in the parking lot with Adam had been embarrassing. He’d been on edge since Adam had first shown up at the gym, and the humiliation of Ben’s so-called casual basketball game had not helped. The one bite of food he’d taken had tasted like dirt, as Mr. Hathaway glared at him across the table like Kyle had kicked a puppy. He’d been grateful for the distraction when his phone had rung, although Eva had been hysterical on the other side of the call.
“They’re trying to destroy me!” she’d screeched. Kyle had done his best to calm her down, had promised he’d email the publisher again, as well as her agent when he got off the phone, and see if any of them had any contacts who could help out with the negative publicity.
Somewhere midway into Eva’s ranting, he’d looked around, and what he saw was worse than any one-star review. There was his van, parked in front of the bar where Ben had worked evenings and summers through college, where Kyle had brought Olivia the first time they’d ever come to Red Creek after Caroline was born. Cars drove by on the street in front of him. On one end, the street led to the movie theater where he’d had his first kiss at fourteen, and then his first kiss with a guy at seventeen. At the other end was the site of the old mattress factory where his dad had worked until it had shut down four years ago. Kyle could still picture every gas station, convenience store, and empty storefront along the way, because he’d driven past them a million times before.
Going nowhere.
He’d gone nowhere in the last decade, despite all his hard work.
And then Adam had showed up in the middle of the pity party, and Kyle hadn’t been able to stop himself from reaching out. He couldn’t talk about these things with Ben, wouldn’t make his friend feel guilty for his own comparative success. But Adam. There was no history with him. For a second, Kyle had felt like he could say everything he wanted.
“Kyle, you just drove past my house,” Ben said.
“What?”
“My house. It’s that one.” Ben gestured over his shoulder. “You drove past it.”
“Sorry.” Kyle turned the van around. If Ben wanted to say anything else, Kyle didn’t give him the chance. He’d parked and was halfway up the walk before he heard Ben close the passenger-side door.
“Hello?” Kyle called as he let himself into the house.
“Hi, Dad!” Caroline answered from farther inside.
“Come on, Jelly Bean, it’s time to go!” He was met with a moan of six-year-old despair. Kyle sighed and followed her voice up the hall. He found Caroline in the kitchen with Kirsten and the girls. The girls were all kneeling on chairs around the table while Haley stirred a gooey lump in a large metal bowl.
“Oh my goodness!” Kyle grabbed at his chest. “What happened to my beautiful daughter?”
Caroline’s face was painted in alternating black and orange stripes. She bared straight teeth at him and growled. “I’m a tiger!”
Kyle laughed. It made him feel better.
“I can see that. Come on, Jelly Bean, it’s time to go.” He hooked his hands under Caroline’s armpits and lifted her from the chair.
“But, Da-ad. We’re making marshmallow squares!”
“Can I get you a drink, Kyle?” Kirsten asked. “We’ve got juice and pop, and Ben’s got beer in the garage.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m sorry, but we really do have to go.” He hefted the squirming six-year-old in his arms and tried not to get black and orange all over himself.
“Pleeease,” Caroline said.
“We’ll make them at home.” It was a bribe, but if it meant they could get out of Ben’s house before Kyle resumed sulking, he was okay with that.
“But Haley has sprinkles,” Caroline said.
“And we’ll have sprinkles too,” he said. His daughter opened her mouth to protest, but Kyle cut her off. “Come on, Bean, it’s time to go. Say goodbye to Haley and Lily, and thank Auntie Kirsten for taking you to the fair.” Caroline clamped her mouth shut and glared at him behind her face paint. “Caroline, this is the last warning. Say goodbye and thank you, and let’s get going.”
Caroline sighed and squirmed until he put her down.
“Goodbye, Auntie Kirsten. Thank you for taking me to the fair.” She said it without inflection and then stomped out of the kitchen.
Lily decided that was the ideal moment to rub sticky hands all over her sister’s hair while Haley was occupied with the spoon and the bowl. The kitchen filled with howls and tears, and Kyle took the opportunity to escape.
Thirty minutes and a short detour to buy marshmallows, cereal, and sprinkles later, Kyle pulled the van into his dad’s driveway. Caroline had forgiven him between the store and the house and hummed to herself happily, while squishing the bag of marshmallows to her chest.
“Careful, Bean,” Kyle said. “You don’t want to mush them together too much, or you won’t be able to count them out into the bowl.”
“But then we’ll have to use them all!” Her eyes got big, which was adorable in her tiger makeup.
As they headed into the house, Caroline chattered about all the things she’d seen and done with Haley and Lily while Kyle had been making an ass of himself over basketball and beer.
He let her count the marshmallows. She got stuck in the forties, and there were probably about ten marshmallows in the bowl that weren’t part of the official recipe on the cereal box, but marshmallow squares weren’t an exact science. Kyle put the whole thing in the microwave and moved Caroline’s chair so she could watch the bowl spin around. In another ten years someone would most likely publish a study proving that letting her so close had fried some important part of her brain, but he had always watched the marshmallows melt, and hey, he’d turned out okay. Mostly.
When the microwave stopped, he stirred the marshmallows until they were a soft mess, and poured cereal into a measuring cup and let Caroline pour it into the bowl. He’d learned the hard way that letting her manage the cereal box led to a half-full measuring cup and a kitchen floor covered in crispy cereal bits that he’d find with his feet for months afterward no matter how many times Olivia swept.
Olivia had still been alive the last time they’d done this together. The thought made his chest twist.
“You can take these to school on Monday and share them.” The suggestion was mostly to distract himself while Caroline stirred it all together.
“But I don’t want to share,” she said.
“Bean, what have we said about sharing?”
“I’ll share with you and Grandpa?”
“If we keep them here, Grandpa will eat them all while we’re asleep and you won’t get any.”
Caroline’s face turned tragic. He took the bowl from her and finished mixing, then turned it out into the pan.
“Do you think Mr. Hathaway likes marshmallow squares?” Caroline asked.
Kyle’s brain decided to take that question as an opportunity to produce an image of Adam, naked, licking marshmallow fluff off his fingers. There was a string of white caught on his lower lip, and his tongue darted out to swipe it away. Kyle’s heart stuttered again, for a different reason. He fumbled the jar of sprinkles and dropped it into the pan. Sprinkles spilled out in a multicolored heap.
“Daddy!”
“Sorry, Bean.” Kyle grabbed a spoon and scooped as many as he could back into the jar. He was only moderately successful, and there were a significant number left stuck in one corner of the pan. His hand didn’t tremble too badly as he passed the jar to Caroline so she could shake out the rest.
God, he was such a mess. He’d gone from being a self-loathing and grieving basket case to some sex-crazed fiend coming up with sticky food fantasies about his daughter’s teacher.
“All finished,” Caroline said. Kyle leaned over her shoulder to inspect.
“Good job, Miss Fenton. A very even sprinkle distribution. These squares are Dad Approved!” He kissed her cheek. She giggled, then her eyes widened and she laughed harder.
“Daddy! You’ve got a tiger on your lips!”
The face paint on her cheek was smudged, and a quick check of his reflection in the front of the microwave showed distinct stripes on his mouth.
Perfect. He sighed in frustration. Maybe he should have gone on the kid’s playdate instead of the grown-up one. Face painting would have been better for his battered ego.