Possessive Baby Daddy

“Uh, yeah.” He looks disappointed. “Do you have any, uh, questions?”

“Nope,” I say, dumping out the bag. “Looks pretty straightforward.”

“Okay, sure, cool, cool, cool.” He nods and sits down in a little folding chair. “I’ll just sit here and officiate.”

“Officiate what?” I ask.

“You. Doing the puzzle.”

“I mean, how? I can’t cheat. It’s building a puzzle.”

“Yeah, but you know. I gotta, like, make sure it’s all good.”

“Right. You do that.”

I turn to the puzzle on the ground and start organizing the pieces. I have no clue what the image is, but I start to get a better idea as I line out the edges. Once those are done, I put them up on the board, and start in on the middle.

Another car pulls into the lot as I start building the image out. It parks and Klara jumps out. She runs over, cursing as she stares at me. “How’d you get here so fast?” she asks.

“I ran,” I say.

“Shut up.”

“I did. Ran down the road.”

“He’s lying,” Ryan says. “Hey, Klara.”

“Hi, Ryan.” She glares at me. She’s wearing tight yoga pants and a low-cut tank top. My heart flutters ever so slightly at the sight of her. She looks fucking gorgeous, even just wearing some basic outfit. She was probably in bed before this, based on her messy hair. She gathers it up and pulls it back, and I can’t help losing precious time watching her. “Looks like you’re playing now.”

“Looks like it,” I say with a shrug.

“Couldn’t have tried harder with the sandcastle thing?”

“Eh,” I say. “Wasn’t ready.”

“And now you’re ready. Great.”

“Hey, so, Klara,” Ryan says, walking over to her. “The rules of the game are—”

“I get it,” she says. “Build the puzzle. Whoever finishes first wins.”

“Right, but—”

“I got this.” She walks over to the bag and dumps it. “I was born for this.”

Ryan sighs and walks over to his chair again. I almost feel bad for him, but then Klara starts rapidly finding edge pieces, and the game is on.

I try to focus on my own shit, but it’s hard. Klara moves fast and efficiently, grabbing edges, trying them out, moving on. She sorts the rest as she goes and I think she has a better idea of what the final picture is than I do. From what I can tell, it’s some kind of home Polaroid, maybe pretty old. I think there are two people in it, but I’m not totally sure yet.

“You suck at puzzles,” she says as she gets her edges in. I’ve barely made progress on the middle and we’re nearly tied again.

“You suck at banter.”

“Please. This isn’t banter. This is shit talk.”

“Okay, and you suck at that, too.”

She snorts. “Come on. What are you even doing here, Shaun?”

“Building a puzzle.” I find a few lucky pieces and get some solid work done in a corner. “You?”

“Beating your sorry ass.”

“Oh, burn. I walked right into that.”

She grins at me. “You sure did.”

“Come on. You really think you can beat me? I had a head start.”

“Maye. But I’m catching up.”

I frown at her board. Sure enough, she’s actually catching up.

I start moving faster.

“Let me ask you something,” I say.

“Go for it.” She doesn’t even glance over as she slots a piece and moves on.

“You keep saying you want to turn Truth Hurts into something good. What, exactly, does that mean?”

She frowns. “You know what I mean.”

“I don’t think I do. You mean, not a reality TV production studio?”

“No,” she says. “I mean, not necessarily. We’d still do that, I guess.”

“Oh, so you’d make like shitty documentaries about whales or whatever.”

She laughs. “I was thinking dolphins, but sure.”

“The dolphin doc was already done. You’re a few years behind.”

“Wow, was that a reference to The Cove? I didn’t know rich guys cared about the environment.”

“We don’t. I had my butler watch it.”

She laughs and I grin at her, but she slots another piece, so I get moving again. I’m still ahead, but not by much, and I need to work hard to match her pace.

“I thought about it,” she says, more to herself than anything. “And I’m, like, why can’t there be reality TV that isn’t just a bunch of young kids getting wasted and having sex with each other?”

“The Divas aren’t all young.”

“Yeah, because I pushed for that.” She sighs and hesitates, frowning at her pieces. “I just mean, there are other shows out there, really good reality shows that are more… real. You know what I mean?”

“Sort of,” I admit. “Isn’t there that Japanese show?”

“Terrace House,” she says. “Exactly. That’s a show where the major drama has to do with someone eating someone else’s food.”

“I think it was beef,” I say absently. I slot a few pieces and glance at her canvas. I’m still ahead, but barely.

“I want interesting characters,” she says. “Not these egotistical, outsized assholes. I want real people, like what The Real World used to be.”