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Maybe I was there so we could help each other.
After three days of coming home and finding the apartment and the girls mostly calm, I suggested we order pizza for dinner. I was helping Poppy with her homework at the kitchen island when the doorbell rang for the delivery.
“I’ll get it,” Dakota said. She went and opened the door. “Oh, hi.”
Her voice sounded friendly for a pizza guy. I turned and was surprised to see the doorman, Liam, an Irish kid, delivering the pizza.
Then I realized why he was delivering instead of letting the pizza guy bring it up. He was asking Dakota for her phone number. He was making no secret of looking at her legs in her shorts as he fumbled his way through a request to hang out sometime.
For some insane reason, the whole exchange annoyed me. I wasn’t jealous. That kid was just that—a kid. But I didn’t want him looking at her like that. Like she was sexy as hell. Which she was. But she was living with me. She was having sex with me. He had no right to be looking at her.
Which was insane, given we had a completely secret and primarily sexual relationship.
I strained to hear her response to him. Her voice was low.
“Dad!” Poppy shoved my arm. “You’re not even listening to me.”
“What?” I glanced at her, then back to Dakota.
“Exactly.” She waved her pencil in my face to get my attention.
“Stop.” I grabbed the pencil out of her hand. “I’m paying attention.”
I couldn’t hear anything from the doorway anyway. All I knew was that it was taking way too long to tell Liam to go fuck himself. She must be giving him her phone number. Which made my fists clench. She had every right to, of course. But it still made me want to chew glass.
I forced myself to focus on what Poppy was saying and ignore the fact that it took forever for Dakota to come to the kitchen with the pizza box. “What was that all about?” I asked, before I could stop myself.
She looked at me blankly. “What was what about?”
“Was the doorman asking you out?”
Dakota just shrugged. “Yes.?
?
“Oooh, Dakota has a boyfriend,” Poppy said.
She waved her pencil in my face again. I yanked it out of her hand and barely managed to restrain myself from snapping it in half. “I told you to stop waving that in my face.”
Dakota set the box down on the island and went in the cabinet for plates. She didn’t say anything else and it was making me crazy. I texted her.
Come to my room tonight.
It had been days since the post-bath sex and I missed the feel of her.
She pulled her phone out of the back pocket of those tiny-ass shorts she constantly wore and glanced at my text. She put her phone back without responding. She didn’t look at me either.
What the hell was that?
Instead she just put slices of pizza on plates and passed them around.
“Put your homework away for now so you don’t get grease on it,” I told Poppy.
“Why are you so grumpy?” she asked, though she did comply, sliding her papers into her backpack and dropping it to the floor.
“I’m not grumpy.” I was actually very grumpy.
She was making a weird voice and stretching her mouth open as wide as possible. “You sound grumpy.” She closed her hands into fists. “What if you lived inside my hand?” She opened one again. “Tiny Dad, come out.”
