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“Yup!” Maddie yells as she runs back over to the TV to watch her movie.
When Bridget turns her back, I pinch her waist and wrap my arms around her from behind. I bite her neck and whisper, “We need to work on your Fahrenheit conversions, Little Bird.”
“You need to behave yourself, Maddie’s—”
“Never.” She turns and glares at me, trying to suppress a smile.
God, I love this girl. It’s just a figure of speech. It’s notlove-love. Right? I give her a peck on her lips so she doesn’t question the way I’m staring at her.
Maddie is having a sleepover at our condo tonight, and Bridg and I have everything planned out from finger paints to fruit snacks. Well, she did most of the work. Hell, she even had dino nuggets locked and loaded. But Maddie wants to surprise her Aunt Birdie with something special, so I told her we could send her out on an errand while we bake her cupcakes. Okay, it’s not so much baking them as it is scraping frosting off a twelve-pack of store-bought ones and re-decorating them with new frosting and sprinkles. I can’t bake for shit.
I sent Bridget out to buy more ketchup. She swears up and down we had some in the fridge, and she’s right. It was in the fridge, right before I stuffed it under the sink.
I nod to Maddie as soon as Bridget steps into the elevator.
“Ready for cupcakes? We gotta move fast.”
“Let’s go!” She tears through the kitchen on her little feet, grabbing all her things.
I bust out the new frosting—at least it’s the good stuff you get from the bakery and not the shit from a can. Maddie does her best to frost the cupcakes, but between the two of us, we probably get more on our hands than we do on the cupcakes. It’s the thought that counts. I’ll blame mine on the four-year-old.
I look over at how she’s doing and find her adding sprinkles to a cupcake heaped with an absolutely disgusting amount of frosting. My pancreas is stressed out just looking at it. I tried to make a bird on mine with pink icing. At least, I hope she thinks it’s a bird. It could also pass as a trailer hitch. It’s either a shitty bird or a really good trailer hitch. Whatever.
When Birdie arrives with the ketchup, I’m wiping up the last of the frosting from Mads’s fingers.
“Maddie! What is this? Did you make cupcakes? They are beautiful!” She’s so good with her.
“Lo-Lo helped me,” she announces, chin held high.
She shows off her cupcake piled with enough frosting to choke a horse.
“Wow!”
“This one is for you!” She thrusts the monstrosity at Bridget, and I stand there trying not to cringe as she takes a big bite out of it.Fucking yuck.
“Do you like it?!” Maddie squeaks.
She can’t speak with her mouth full, so she deflects her wince and puts two thumbs up.
Best. Aunt. Ever.
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing at her well-disguised suffering.
“Lonan, this tastesamazinnngg, you have to try it!” she says before shoving it in my mouth. Jesus Christ. My teeth are ringing.
“Yap. So good,” I say between chews.
“I’m really super at cupcakes, huh?” Maddie hops up on the chair and swings her legs back and forth while happily peeling off a polka-dot liner from her sugary creation.
This time, Bridget is trying not to laugh, and she finally swallows her last bite of frosting. I use my thumb to wipe away the frosting smeared on the corner of her mouth, then bring it to my mouth to suck the sugar from my finger.
“You taste so damn good.” She spins around to see if Maddie heard me. The Kool-Aid man could smash through the wall right now and that little girl wouldn’t blink. She’s far too infatuated with her cupcake to care about what’s going on around her. Bouncing and chattering as she tries to count all the sprinkles.
“How come you don’t wear rings?” Maddie asks.
Huh?
“What do you mean, kiddo?” she asks her.
