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Probably not. With my luck, I’d more likely end up falling through a sewer grate and getting hit by a train. I wondered which was technically faster. The ground racing up to meet you or a speeding subway train.
“Hello?” Damon asked. “Do you care to explain this?”
Luna angled her phone toward him. “That’s Gibblet. He gets into all kinds of trouble because he is always breaking things. See?” She let out an adorable little chuckle as the hairy creature in her show started to disassemble the car of a pig who was waiting for a red light. “He wants to know how it works,” she added, still laughing.
To my surprise, Damon was smirking. “I took apart my dad’s watch once. My brother told me there were little people in there who kept track of the time, and I wanted to see them.”
“What were they like?” Luna asked.
I smiled, forgetting everything except that my daughter was looking at her father and he was smiling back at her. Of course, neither of them knew it. They were just talking, and my heart hurt because it felt so painfully right.
“They were super small and very cute. You should take apart one of your mommy’s watches when she isn’t looking to meet them for yourself.”
Damon straightened, then focused back on me. “Do you have the food yet?”
Was he not going to mention Luna? He wasn’t even going to ask about it?
“Um, not quite yet. I just needed to—”
“You need someone to keep an eye on her while you go get it? We’ll figure it out. But you need to go now if you want to be back in time.”
“You’re sure?”
“Go, Tinkerbell.”
“I love Tinkerbell!” Luna squealed. “Have you seen the one where she makes the whole fairy village tree grow huge?”
“I haven’t,” Damon said. “Is that one good?”
Luna laughed like he’d just asked the dumbest question imaginable. “If you like fairies.”
“Sounds like I’d really enjoy it.” Damon’s focus shifted to me for a split second, and my stupid brain decided to take that as some sort of secret message.
I was Tinkerbell to him, and he said he’d really enjoy a movie about fairies? Okay, yeah. I was overthinking it. “You’re really sure it’s okay? And you’ll make sure she’s okay?”
“Go, Chelsea. And yeah, this is a multi-million-dollar company. Somehow, I think we’ll manage to handle keeping a little kid alive for a few hours.”
“I’m not little. I can see over the kitchen counter,” Luna said crossly.
“Impressive,” Damon said. “But how high is the counter in your house? Two feet?”
“I bet I could see over your counter.”
“You absolutely couldn’t. My counter is this high. You won’t be able to see over it for years.” He held his hand up way above her head.
I watched the two of them argue in a mild state of shock. Even though they were bickering now, it was hilarious. Damon, a full-grown man, was debating whether my daughter was a grown up. He also appeared to be taking the argument completely seriously, just like Luna was.
With a quick prayer that I really could trust a building full of adults to keep Luna alive, I rushed out the door to start on my hopeless task of finding the things Damon asked for.
I had nothing to be smiling about, but I found myself beaming from ear to ear as I half ran out of the building.19DamonI waited with my fingers threaded together in an inverted “V.” Across my desk, a very small, very angry person was testing my patience.
“I won’t break it.”
“You will.”
Luna crossed her arms and stuck her lip out in a pathetic attempt to draw sympathy from me. Ridiculous. Sure, she looked cute, but so did bunnies on the side of the road. I wasn’t about to let a bunny handle the handmade glass paperweight one of my clients had given me as a gift a few years back. It was an intricately carved sculpture of an athlete winding up to throw a baseball, and I happened to enjoy looking at it.
“You might as well give up. You won’t win this,” I said.
“I held a snow globe once,” Luna said.
“And?”
“Snow globes are glass. I didn’t break it.”
“If you had petted a tiger once without getting bit, it doesn’t mean I’d be enthused about letting you try again.”
“You’ve petted a tiger?” Luna’s eyes lit up, and it was clear she’d completely moved on from the idea of holding my paperweight.
I decided to seize the opportunity and divert her, just to avoid circling back to her touching my things. It seemed that negotiating with small people was very similar to bargaining with high power athletes, multi-million-dollar teams, and huge corporations.
It also happened that I was damn good at it.
“I didn’t just pet a tiger. I held a baby one and fed it milk from a bottle.”
