"That's what we all say."
Poppy has recovered enough to sit upright. Her mascara is smudged and she looks delighted with herself and with me and with the general chaos of the evening.
"For what it's worth," she announces, lifting her wine glass, "this is the best birthday of my life."
"It isn't your birthday," Callahan mutters.
"Details." She clinks her glass against mine. "Happy birthday, Lil."
"Happy birthday to me," I grin.
33
CAL
We decide on a walk after I park outside her place.
She's still buzzing from the wine and the night and the look on Rome's face, which she's replayed for me twice now with increasing theatrical detail.
Her cheeks are pink from the cold, her nose is red and she keeps laughing into my shoulder, and every time she does I feel it in my ribs like a bruise I never want to heal.
She kicks her boots off at the door and I catch her by the waist before she gets two steps in, pulling her back against me. She turns in my arms, and I kiss her because I've been sitting beside her for hours without being able to do this and I'm done waiting.
She kisses me back lazily and slowly, her fingers curling into the front of my shirt, pulling me with her as she walks backward into the apartment. My hands find her hips as her back hits the hallway wall and she laughs bright and delighted, and completely unrepentant.
"You're a menace," I tell her.
"I'm a delight, and you know it."
I chuckle against her mouth. Yeah, she fucking is.
"I can't believe you called me Daddy in front of your brother."
She giggles into the kiss and I swallow the sound, let the lightness spread inside me. She eases everything heavy in me. I don't think I'll ever get used to it.
"I sure did."
"He just started to not be a miserable grump." I kiss her jaw. Her neck. The spot below her ear where I've learned she loves to be touched.
"Weeks of measured, fragile progress. And you blew it up because you thought it would be funny."
"It was very funny."
She's pulling at my shirt, tugging it up, and I let her. She runs her hands up my stomach, across my chest, her palms warm from being tucked in her pockets.
"You should have seen your face."
"I was there. I felt my face."
She giggles again and fondness moves through me, helpless and warm.
”I’m glad you enjoyed it," I say as sternly as I can. I pull her sweater over her head and she raises her arms to help, her hair falling everywhere.
When she emerges she's grinning at me like a woman who has absolutely no plans to behave herself in this lifetime or the next.
"You know what I think?" She starts on my belt, her fingers nimble and confident, knowing their way around this particular buckle by now.
"I think you loved the Daddy comment."
