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When she’d seen it on the rack, Nonna had insisted she try it on. And when she had the first person she’d wanted to see her in it, the only person she’d wanted to see her in it was Glenn.
It looked like now she had her chance.
* * *
Glenn only hadhimself to blame for this. He was the one who told Bree that she could do anything she wanted for a reward. He should have known that would include Vivien. His daughter practically worshipped her. He stood in the kitchen washing dishes and tried to erase the past three hours from his mind. He wished he had one of those Men in Black neuralyzers. He wanted to forget everything.
Vivien had come over and after a very controlled dance party with Bree sitting on a chair and Vivien spinning her around they’d all grubbed down on pizza. Then at the request of his daughter, who he thought might be milking her injuries just a little. Viv had painted her fingernails and toenails. After she was appropriately pampered, Bree asked if they could all watch a movie.
Which they did because he was a pushover and apparently so was Vivien and neither of them could say no to any request Bree made even though she hadn’t even broken any bones.
This time they went with Inside Out, which Vivien had never seen. The girls snuggled up under the throw blanket and he handed Vivien tissues. She informed him she would not be needing them because she didn’t cry at movies, but she was eating those words. When Riley was crying in the middle of class while she is introducing herself, he clocked that she used not one but two tissues.
He smiled thinking about how adorable she’d looked when she got caught. He knew she knew that he saw because without taking her eyes off the screen she said, “Shut. Up.”
Once the movie was over, Bree used her puppy dog eyes to guilt Vivien into reading her a bedtime story. Which was exactly where she was now.
His phone rang in his pocket and he pulled it out and saw that it was Zoe Facetiming him. He’d tried to get in touch with her when they were in urgent care, but it had gone straight to her voicemail.
“Hey,” he answered.
“Is she okay?” He could see the panic in her face.
“She’s fine,” he assured her.
““I was on a plane and didn’t have reception. What happened?”
“Did you listen to my message?”
“Yeah, I listened up until you said, ‘Bree’s in urgent care’ then I stopped listening and called you.”
He grinned. He would do the same thing. “She fell out of a tree at the park. She didn’t break anything. She just sprained her ankle and her wrist.”
“Both?” Zoe asked.
“She’s my kid. She doesn’t half-ass things,” he teased.
“Oh good.” She let out a sigh of relief and put her hand on her chest. “If you’re joking that means she’s okay. Can I talk to her?”
“Um…” He glanced down the hall at the doorway. He could go in and give her the phone but the excitement of talking to her mom about what happened would probably get her all amped up again and then it would take forever to get her to sleep. And what she really needed now was sleep.
“Is she asleep?” Zoe asked.
“No, she’s um, Vivien’s here and she’s reading her a story—”
“She is, is she? Well, that’s fun! Is it going to be a sleepover?”
“No, Vivien’s not staying with her—”
“I meant is she having a sleepover with daddy?”
“That sounds all kinds of wrong.”
“It does actually.” Zoe agreed as she nodded. “As soon as the words were coming out of my mouth, I knew it sounded bad.”
“Do you want me to go give the phone to her?” He knew that if he was in Zoe’s shoes and not the parent with her, he’d want to talk to her and see her face to know that she was okay.
“No, that’s okay. I don’t want to interrupt their time. Plus, she’d probably get fired up from regaling the harrowing story of her fall from the tree and visit to the emergency room.”
