Finally, he glances at the time, then looks up at Rusty.
“All right, kiddo,” he says. “It’s shower time.”
Rusty makes a face.
“You need me to come start it for you?” he asks, not moving.
“Dad. No,” she says, as though he’s asked if she’d like to lick a beehive. “I can do it.”
“All right,” he says, a little wary. “I’ll be up in fifteen minutes to check your progress.”
“Don’t come in the bathroom without knocking,” she orders, standing from her chair.
“Do I ever?”
“Just don’t, okay?”
Daniel holds up one hand.
“I won’t,” he promises, and Rusty heads back into the house.
“When did she become a teenager?” I ask, and Daniel just sighs.
“She gets mad when I insist on double-checking her shower progress,” he says. “But if I don’t, she’ll just stand under the hot water until the well runs dry, pretending to be a mermaid werewolf or whatever it is this week.”
“You mean a were-maid?”
“That just sounds like she’ll clean the house during a full moon.”
“I’d take it,” I say, and Daniel laughs. He pulls out his phone, sets the timer for ten minutes, and tosses it onto the table in front of us.
“You told her fifteen,” I point out as he stands, our hands still linked.
“She needs a five-minute warning,” he says, and pulls me up, catching me by the waist. “I’ll go knock on the door.”
The sun went down half an hour ago and it’s nearly dark, but not quite, the forest and the house all draped in the indigo of nearly-night. My arms are around Daniel, our bodies pressed together. His fingers find my chin, the rough pads skipping along my jawline.
“I shouldn’t kiss you,” he murmurs.
The words tug at me like a string, a jolt I feel in my chest.
“Why?” I whisper.
If he’s about to tell me we should just be friends, I might punch him.
“Because in ten minutes I have to go hassle Rusty for taking too long in the shower,” he says. “I’m going to have to stop kissing you and go be a responsible father, and I’ve been a responsible father all goddamn day.”
“Language,” I tease. His thumb finds my cheekbone, and I can’t help but lean into his hand, his touch electric.
“Exactly,” he goes on, his voice low, deep, quiet. “When I first saw you this morning, I should have said that you look goddamn amazing, but Rusty was there so I said nice instead of fucking incredible.”
His thumb finds my lower lip, traces it, and my eyes stutter closed.
“Now we’ve got nine minutes,” I whisper.
He kisses me. It’s gentle, slow, full of barely held restraint, like a horse straining at a harness.
We press our lips together, stop. Separate, millimeters between us. Kiss again, lips at a new angle by a few degrees, then stop. Separate, stop, each new kiss an adventure, an exploration. I want to map his mouth, chart his lips, discover him inch by inch and I’m starting here, now, with this single chaste kiss.
The kiss is glacial, an aeon, because Daniel’s timer is ticking and soon we have to end this and it’s better to not get too far. It’s better to not get too breathless, better to not push my hands under his shirt, better to not straddle him in this chair.
So we’re patient. The minutes tick down. I spent years waiting for this, not knowing that I was waiting; I can last a few more minutes.
Finally, the timer goes off. Daniel’s hand knots in his hair, his forehead held against mine. We’re both breathing hard and trying not to. I relax my hand when I realize I’ve got his shirt tight in my fist.
“I gotta go wrangle the merwolf,” he murmurs. “Charlie, you’re staying, aren’t you?”
“Here?”
“Until she’s asleep,” Daniel says. His alarm is still going off, quiet beeping on the table below us.
“She can’t put herself to bed?”
“I don’t even fully trust her to rinse shampoo out of her hair,” he says. “Just say you’ll stay.”
“Of course,” I tell him, and he gives me one last, light kiss, then releases me. He grabs his phone off the table, shuts off the alarm, and vanishes back into the house.
I take a deep, deep breath of the twilight air. It even feels purple in my lungs, and I rub my hands together, calluses skipping along each other, trying to quell the rising wave in my body, the feeling that I’m buzzing like a high-tension powerline.
I grab the plates we used for our sandwiches, the glasses we drank lemonade from. I take them inside, decide not to bother with the dishwasher, and wash them by hand. I can hear Daniel and Rusty upstairs, the old wooden floor creaking above my head, occasional snippets of conversation — pajamas, did you get your molars, I need the tortoise pillow.
I can’t hold still. When Daniel’s voice leaks down to me it’s low, steady, calm, just like always. I bite my lip and remind myself to breathe.