I sucked in a breath. “Maisie, Tessa and I are going to get married.”
Her head looked up at me with her little brows furrowed. “Like a wedding?”
“Yes. We’ll have one of those and Tessa will live with us. What do you think about that?”
“Yay!” Maisie clapped her hands. “Will you be my mommy now?”
“No, honey,” Tessa said gently. “Your mommy will
always be your mommy.”
“But you’ll be here with us?”
“Yes. Like a family, Maisie.” I put my hand on Tessa’s shoulder and this time she didn’t flinch.
“Can we still play together?”
“Yes. I suspect not much will change where that is concerned.” Tessa helped pour syrup on Maisie’s pancakes. Then she looked up at me. “It must be a special day to have pancakes with syrup. That’s a lot of sugar.”
I nodded, again appreciating that she understood how important I felt it was to feed Maisie healthy foods most of the time.
“We have to celebrate. What should we do today, Maisie?”
“Can we go to the park?”
I sat at the table, offering the pancakes to Tessa before taking a stack on my plate. “Sure. Maybe we can have a picnic.”
Once we stopped talking about marriage, and acted like we usually did, the morning felt more comfortable. It was a reminder at how easy this could be since Tessa fit so well with me and Maisie.
I packed us a picnic while Tessa helped Maisie get dressed and ready to go. We drove to the park. As we walked to find a place to set up our picnic, I took Tessa’s hand. She looked down at our linked fingers like it was weird but didn’t pull away. It was weird, and at the same time, it felt nice.
We played with Maisie in the park, pushing her on the swings, kicking her soccer ball around, and later having lunch.
“When you have babies, will they be my brother or sister?” Maisie asked as she took a bite of her sandwich.
Tessa choked, and I reached over to lightly pat her back. “Yes.” I had an image of Tessa all round with my child in her belly. It wasn’t an unpleasant image. The fact that it wasn’t bothered me. This was a fake relationship. There wouldn’t be any children for Tessa and me. “But if that happened, it would be a long time from now.”
Later, we watched as Maisie entertained herself on the jungle gym.
“I should take you out for a date,” I whispered to Tessa. I stood behind her with my hand on her hip. Her scent was sweet and alluring, making it easy to kiss her temple like a man in love would. “I need to get you a ring too.”
“I don’t need all that. This is for Maisie.”
I shifted so I could look at her. “Is this hard for you?”
She shrugged. “I’m uncomfortable about lying, especially to my family. But spending time with Maisie, that isn’t hard.”
“What about with me?” It was weird how much it was important to me that she enjoyed being around me too. I didn’t want this to be repulsive to her.
“That isn’t hard either.”
I moved so that I faced her, pressing my hand to her cheek like a man would if he were in love. “I know this is awkward, and I’m sorry for that. I don’t want to make you feel that way, but if this is to work, people need to believe it’s real.”
She nodded. “It’s okay.” She put her hand on my chest. I flashed back to when she’d done that the night I took her on the couch. For a moment, I wondered if maybe we could include sex in our little farce, but immediately I shook that off. It wouldn’t be fair to her to ask.
Still, we were in public. “If this was real, I’d kiss you.”
Her breath hitched. “If it was real, I’d let you.”