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“Only, I don’t like that bunny head. Can you take it off?”
Nodding, he lifted it over his head with some effort. The result smeared the eye-black up his forehead, and made the red whiskers on his cheek look more like really heavily applied cherry-red blush.
“Better?” he asked.
She nodded, wrapping her thin arms around his right leg, her voice muffled. “This is the biggest hug emergency ever.”
Then Cecily staggered over, saying nothing but hugging Ryker around his pink bunny waist.
Finally, although she was snickering the whole time, when Ryker motioned to her, June shuffled over in frosting-covered boots, accepting a one-arm hug around her shoulders.
The three kids most important in her life were in the arms of the demented Easter Bunny. Bryce had wanted to cry. But the longer she stared, the more the tears receded, and in their place was…laughter? A giggle bubbled inside of her at the sight of Ryker and her nieces looking like they’d win the prize for worst Easter picture ever. It was too freaking funny.
She snorted a watery laugh. “This moment should be captioned, ‘People who are having a worse Easter than you.’”
Ryker extended his left arm to her, hand beckoning her in.
“C’mon, Aunt Beamer,” June said. “I know you need a hug from the Easter Bunny, too.”
Surprised that it was June—not the little girls—speaking and smiling kindly at her, Bryce moved to them. Her eyes locked with Ryker’s as she joined her nieces for a hug from Goth Bunny. She pulled her cell from her pocket.
“C’mon. Everyone lean in. There’s no way in hell we’ll ever beat this new low, and I feel we need to record it.”
June barked a laugh, but she reached out to squeeze her aunt’s arm in a gesture that was almost a hug, showing she meant her words to be funny and not snarky as she spoke. “Yeah. It’ll be one of those memes. We might go viral. It’s too bad Drake Matthews left already, or it definitely would. Let’s all look extra miserable, and you can take one picture, and then I’ll do one with my phone, Aunt Beamer. It’ll be awesome.”
It wasn’t some overt “it’s okay you failed” acknowledgment from June, but it wasn’t hostility. Bryce’s heart soared. Progress.
They took the pictures, working hard to look miserable. Something about the situation—despite how awful this last hour had been—struck them all as funny. Or maybe it was Ryker, who was doing his level best to look menacing as the Goth Bunny, even putting on his head for a couple pictures. Afterward, Addison screamed in delight when he pulled a white floppy-eared stuffed bunny from a hidden pocket and presented it to her, and before Cecily could squawk, he magically produced another one, in a grassy-green color. Bryce felt like her face was a giant heart-eyed emoji as she watched both girls hoot with happiness at the unexpected gift. Then he pulled a third gray one from his pocket, tossing it to June.
“Tried to find a black rabbit, but this was the darkest stuffed animal the gas station had this morning,” Ryker explained.
Bryce inwardly braced for the tween’s derision. To her surprise, instead of a sarcasm-grenade, June’s face softened.
“It’s cool. Thanks for…thinking of me.”
Bryce’s insides went as gooey as warm caramel. The guy said he was rusty at relationships—had made it seem like his PTSD made him emotionally unavailable—yet here he was, doing the most to bring them smiles.
They were posing for their last shot with their new stuffed animals when Cecily said, “Is it me, or does it smell like stinky broccoli?”
Bryce, who’d been leaning against Ryker, his woodsy cologne and spicy yumminess filling her nose, picked her head up from his pink bunny shoulder and sniffed.
“Oh, no! The eggs.” Bryce sprinted to the kitchen.
Most of the water had boiled off, and they sat in a half inch of foaming liquid. Their shells had burst, and they were nothing but white blobs of sulfurous mess.
She flicked off the burner, shaking her head. Thanks to the gesture from June, and the giggles from Cecily and Addison—not to mention the amazing gift of bunny awesomeness from Ryker—her urge to cry was gone. As the large pink bunny made his way into the kitchen, she tipped the pot to show him the contents before dumping it into the trash.
“No eggs to decorate or hunt. No chocolate bunnies or cupcakes for the girls’ baskets.” She set the pot down and came over to touch him on his red-stained cheeks. “But we have a bunny whose kindness saved the day, and your family who decorated this place to look like a spring garden. Thank you, Ryker. For everything.”
His mouth twisted into a wince as he made a circle motion around his face. “Sorry about this. Zan gave me the face makeup and told me how to apply it. But art is not my thing. Or makeup. I didn’t mean to make Addison cry.”
Either because she’d heard her name, or by coincidence, Addison appeared in the kitchen in her Tink underclothes, her white bunny tucked under an arm as she held out her ruined dress.
“Aunt Beamer, can I take a tub? I’ve got yuck-o on my legs, an’ can you fix my dress?”
Bryce nodded. It was time to be the mom-like creature again.
“Yep. You and Cici both are hopping in the tub. Help your sister up the stairs, and tell June I’m closing down the kitchen.” She thought quickly about the supplies she had upstairs. “Tell you what: you two get in the tub and don’t make an unholy mess of the bathroom, and when you’re all squeaky clean, I’ll have a surprise snack waiting for you, okay?”
