Ace
I had been nervous, coming over to Harper’s apartment to tell Ava that I was her father. Once we said those words, there was no going back. Sure, Ava was still young. If I shirked my responsibilities and disappeared again, I doubted that she would remember.
But I wasn’t going to do that. Ava deserved better, and so did Harper.
I hadn’t been sure how much Ava would really understand what we were telling her. And I still wondered. She seemed to take it all in stride. Like she didn’t understand what the adults were making such a big fuss about.
To be honest, I had the feeling she was more interested in my dogs than in me. And I was okay with that. I was also glad that I had already okayed dog visits with Harper since it seemed like Ava wasn’t going to let me get away without promising her that she would get to see some of the doggies very soon.
She had me wrapped around her finger already. Something about those bright gray eyes and that beautiful smile.
I could tell that Harper had a hard time seeing me there. She looked scared, honestly. I wondered what she thought was going to happen. Was she afraid that Ava was going to somehow like me better? That was crazy. She and Ava shared a bond I could only dream of having. Eventually, maybe Ava and I would be close like the two of them. But they had a three-year head start over me.
I tried to set both of them at ease.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I suggested once Ava had finished drawing her flowers for the hundredth time.
“Okay!” Ava agreed immediately. I looked at Harper for confirmation, and she nodded. “Okay,” she said.
We wandered toward the park, each of us holding one of Ava’s little hands, letting her swing back and forth. When we got to the park, she dropped our hands and ran off after a cluster of pigeons, giggling and shrieking as they flew up into the sky. I had to smile at that. When I looked over, Harper was smiling as well.
“Thank you for this,” I said quietly.
Harper sighed. “It’s not like I could keep you from having a relationship with your daughter,” she said.
I put an arm around her shoulders, lightly stroking my thumb across the back of her neck. “Still,” I said. “I appreciate it.”
She shivered, leaning toward me. Then, she blushed and stepped away. “We shouldn’t… We’re not…” She trailed off, looking flustered. I raised an eyebrow at her, even though I knew exactly what I was doing.
To be fair, she’d had me turned on for most of the day as well. But I was trying my best to ignore that.
“Daddy, I need you to push me!” Ava suddenly hollered. She was trying to get up on one of the swings, but it was just a little too high for her. I was frozen in my tracks for a minute, though.
“Daddy,” I breathed. “She just called me ‘daddy.’”
“She did,” Harper said, sounding sad.
“If you want to push her, you can,” I said quickly.
“She asked for you,” Harper pointed out. She smirked. “Plus, she probably asked for you because you’re big and strong and she thinks you’ll push her as high as she wants. Be careful, okay?”
“Of course,” I said, heading over to the swing set.
Pushing her on the swing, with Harper sitting at the bottom of a slide off to my left, again felt strangely domestic. But it was also peaceful. I didn’t mind it in the way I had always expected to.
“Let’s go get dinner,” I suggested as it started to get darker. “My treat.”
I expected Harper to protest. I expected her to say that we’d spent enough time together that day and that she was going to just take Ava home. Instead, she agreed.
We went to a burger restaurant and sat in a booth together, Ava and Harper on one side and me on the other. Ava and I worked on a joint coloring project while we waited for our food, talking quietly about giraffes, which were featured in the picture. I realized I knew very little about giraffes.
All my worry about being around kids seemed to fall away with Ava. I hadn’t gotten angry at all. I hadn’t even been mildly frustrated with her over the course of the day. It was partly that she was just a great kid, an absolute delight to be around. And it was also partly that she was smart as a whip.
But there was something more to it than that. Maybe all of my worries had been unfounded. Maybe I was nothing like my dad. There was definitely something to be said for having everything I wanted in life. I had a great job and a great house. Ava was great, and then there was Harper.
I glanced over at Harper. Well, maybe I didn’t have everything I wanted in life. But those things were within my grasp. Or at least close enough that I could dream about them. Maybe if my dad had gotten out of West Virginia, if he hadn’t been stuck in a dead-end life with me there, he wouldn’t have drunk so much, and he wouldn’t have been so violent.
All I knew was that the more time I spent with Harper, the more at ease I was. And the more I was certain that she and I were meant to be together. But I didn’t want to push her on it. I could tell that today was already difficult for her. She was nervous. I didn’t want to make her feel even more uncomfortable.