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“Ryleigh,” I managed to say, my duffle dropping and hitting the floor by my feet with a thud.
“Hi.” She visibly swallowed, uncrossing her arms and shifting uneasily in her spot. She wore a loose tank top. It was starting to near the seventies during the day, but was still chilly at night. She was going to get cold. I was about to offer her a sweatshirt when her stumbled words continued. “I’m. Um.” She swallowed again and pointed to the door behind me. “I’m just going to go. You have a spare key. Um. Jason…” She fidgeted again. “Jason got me your key and I made a copy, and now you have a spare. It’s on the kitchen counter. I’m sorry.”
I heard none of it.
Well, I did, but I didn’t care.
She was here, but she was leaving?
Ryleigh moved toward me, trying to leave, but I had to stop her. “Where are you going so fast? We should talk.” It sounded awkward to my own ears, but I was on uneven ground with her right now. I screwed up. She overheard me spouting bullshit about not getting married when, in reality, all I wanted to do was change her name to mine.
I wanted Ryleigh with a fierceness I’d never experienced before.
But I knew if I let her walk out that door…
It was done.
She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “You had a rough night. Maybe tomorrow.”
“I—” But she didn’t let me finish.
Ryleigh slipped right past me, leaving me alone in my big-ass empty apartment.
“Fuck.” I started after her, getting as far as swinging the door open and calling out her name, but then the house phone was ringing, and the oven timer was going off—which left me momentarily confused—and I couldn’t leave the apartment in the state that it was.
The phone stopped before I reached it, and when I got to the oven, the timer was at zero, but nothing was inside. I looked around the counter, eventually noticing a cake pan.
Why was Ryleigh baking in my apartment?
I walked over and peered under the foil.
It was a brownie with the words Congrats & Happy Birthday piped out in blue frosting, but there was a chunk missing. Did she really eat my brownie?
There was something comical about the moment, but I was having a hard time mustering up the laugh. Instead, I went to work cleaning up the kitchen; not that Ryleigh left a mess. The only things left over that said she was here, was a box from the brownie mix and an unused napkin.
As I went to toss them into the garbage, my world stopped spinning.
On top, was the missing piece of brownie.
And, in the same blue piping, the rest of the birthday wish spelled out—
Daddy.
