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Adrien leans down and kisses the top of my hand, careful not to smudge anything. “My princess looks so beautiful.”
My eyes fill instantly.
17
Adrien
I learn quickly that there is a difference between showing Kammie a door and expecting him to walk through every one of them in the same afternoon.
The nail polish is enough.
More than enough, if I’m paying attention to anything other than the part of myself that wants to gather every soft thing he was ever denied and bury him beneath the entire fucking pile until nobody can reach him again.
After I finish the second coat of lavender, Kamden sits beside me for nearly twenty minutes without speaking, his hands suspended delicately in front of him because he’s afraid of smudging them, his eyes fixed on the color as though those ten painted nails have become something far more complicated than they have any right to be.
Maybe they have.
His eyes keep filling and clearing, then filling again.
He doesn’t cry outright, which I suspect is mostly stubbornness, but every time his lashes get wet I have to restrain the urge to pull him into my lap and promise him the entire fucking world.
Instead, I let him look.
Let him flex his fingers and turn his hands beneath the light.
Let him realize, one minute at a time, that the polish is on and nothing else has happened.
Nobody shouts.
Nobody hits him.
No one tells him he has made himself ugly or wrong or shameful.
Eventually he leans into my side and rests his head against my shoulder, careful to keep his drying nails elevated.
That is when I decide the diapers can stay in the package.
And so can the rest of it, because there’s no reason to turn one good day into an endurance test.
He spent enough of his childhood learning that softness came with consequences. The last thing I want is to teach him that accepting one gentle thing from me means he has to accept ten more before I am satisfied.
So I leave the unopened package of pastel diapers where it is, and I put away the other things he isn’t ready for.
That first day ends with three more dresses completed in the fashion coloring book, one failed attempt at painting my prosthetic fingernails before Kamden realizes they’re really fucking far from being actual fingernails and calls me stupid for letting him try, and his cup filled with apple juice despite the ten minutes he spends insisting he’s only using it because the handles are practical.
Bullshit.
He likes the fucking thing.
By the second day, he carries it into the sitting room without me reminding him. By the third, he asks me to refill it.
He still whispers the request like somebody might hear and judge him, but he asks.
There are crayons on the coffee table now, a half-finished drawing on the kitchen island, and Rabbit—real creative name, I know, but also, I’d shank a bitch for saying that to my sweet angel’s face—appears in rooms Rabbit has never technically been invited into, usually tucked beneath Kamden’s arm or placed with ceremonial care on whatever chair he intends to return to.
The pink rabbit slippers migrate.
One ends up beneath the couch; the other spends half a morning in the bathroom because Kamden apparently kicked it off while brushing his teeth and forgot it existed.
