Page 85 of Soft
It was the perfect start to what I hoped to be a perfect day.
CHAPTER 28
Grizzly
After getting all cleaned up, I threw on the comfiest non-pajamas I had—a bright, impossibly soft button-down with stripes in different colors and a pair of sweatpants. Daddy put on a t-shirt and a pair of gray sweatpants, which was a crime, honestly. The man was too good-looking. His shirt was an old NRU baseball shirt, which made me smile. I loved seeing him in any of his sports-related stuff. It was a reminder of how we had come to this point, how the two of us had met and found one another. I'd be forever thankful to baseball. Even though my heart had always been impartial, I knew there would be some favoritism moving forward.
"What do you want to do now?" he asked me when we were back in the living room.
I glanced around, wondering what felt right. There wasn't any work to be done. We'd already had breakfast. Normally by this time of day, I'd be knee deep on a project or trying to get in touch with someone about a brand deal for a client. There were a million other things that occasionally came up.
But work could wait. I didn't want to think about it at all. I shrugged, not quite sure how to answer him.
Without missing a beat, Daddy took my hand and led me to the couch. "Have a seat here. I'm going to go get something." He walked down the hall towards my playroom, his stride confident. I watched him leave and wondered what he was up to.
When he came back, he had a book I was quite familiar with in hand. It was solid blue with no title or author name at all, yet inside its pages was a host of fairy tale stories and little tales I'd collected through the years. I'd had the book custom-bound because I had read the individual pieces so much that the binding had broken on them.
Daddy sat down beside me, then adjusted the pillows until he was happy with them and motioned me over.
"Come lean against me. I'm going to read some stories."
I blinked at him for a moment before my body got the message and did as he asked. With my back propped up on a pillow and my head leaning against him, he slipped his arm behind me and started thumbing through the pages.
"Here we go. This one's good."
He dove into a tale about magic and forests that came alive at night. It was one of my favorites. I had no clue how he would know that, but it seemed like with everything else between us, it just happened. Daddy could read me like he read this book.
Even with my glasses on it was hard to see the print, so I was happy to have him taking the time to remind me of something I loved so dearly but could no longer do on my own. For a moment, sadness etched its way into my soul, thinking about thelimitations that were headed my way. My future was unknown. So many adaptations would need to be made simply to live the life I'd had before—accommodation after accommodation—to the point that I was frustrated by it, and I knew others would be as well.
As if he could sense my frustration, Daddy paused his reading to look my way.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"I dunno," I grumbled as words failed me.
How could I explain to him that this was something that came so easily to him but was a struggle for me? That reading something I loved so much was now a challenge and would become even more so with time? The unknown of it all was just as frustrating as the reality I did understand.
He closed the book and set it down on the table as he turned to face me. "I can see you're in your head about something, and I don't like that." He booped me on the nose with his fingertip. "So let's play a game. You can ask me a question, any question, and I’ll answer honestly. Same goes for you."
When I didn't immediately jump to ask a question, he hummed. "Well, since you have to go first because you'remy precious boy, I'm gonna change the rules. How about I tell you one completely random and slightly unbelievable fact about me that’s true, and then you can comment on it? The only rule is you can't be mean."
"I no mean!" I scowled at him.
His encouraging voice and kind words had eased my spirit enough that the smaller side of me came through. He didn'tcomment on it. Instead, he curled up his legs on the couch and put his arm on the back as he faced me.
"Are you ready for the fact?"
I nodded, biting my lip before easing my thumb up and putting it there instead, since my lip was already tender. He watched me closely, then shut his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. When he opened them again, I could sense that whatever he was about to say was going to amuse me greatly.
"Here's my confession," he said solemnly. "Once upon a time, I had a secret dream. It was one I kept close to the chest—so much so that my father had no clue what was going on until it was too late. He got a call one day that I was down at the mall by myself, unaccompanied, which wasn’t okay in the town I grew up in. When he got there, it was to discover I was at an audition to become a member of a boy band."
I snorted before I could help it, then slapped my hand over my mouth. I winced at the pain that came. Only a second later, my eyes widened because I felt the familiar gush of a nosebleed. I pulled my hand back and yelped when I saw my fingers covered in blood.
Daddy, to his credit, sprang into action, jumping over the back of the couch and grabbing napkins. He came over to me and pressed them against my nose. "Hold this," he said. I pressed my other hand to the side of the napkins as he left. I could hear him clanging around in the kitchen, opening drawers and the refrigerator. When he came back he had a bag of ice, which he gently pressed to the top of my nose over where my hand held the tissues underneath.
"You've got to be more careful," he said, staring at me intensely. "I won't have you hurting yourself just because I told you a silly story. Is it really that unbelievable?"
I shook my head as much as I could, given the limited movement from him holding the ice and me trying to stop the nosebleed. Still, he smiled in understanding.
