“Me! Me! Me!” She jumped on her toes beside me. “I want kettle corn!”
“After dinner,” I told her.
Baz mouthed, “You’re no fun.”
I jostled into him with my shoulder.
He laughed and promised her, “After dinner.”
Taking my hand, he led us toward the delicious smell traveling on the wind. We rounded the corner to the food vendors set up along the perimeter of the large square area of lawn in front of the stage, where we ordered plates full of deep-fried chicken and grilled corn-on-the-cob, sat on the grassy, damp ground, and ate together as if we’d done it since the beginning of time. My daughter laughed and Sebastian smiled and played and teased and my heart pressed so full.
“Be right back.” Sebastian hopped up and strode across the field. Minutes later, he returned, a huge bag stuffed full of kettle corn crooked in his elbow. “Here you go, sweetheart,” he said quietly as he passed the bag to my daughter, and this time it was Kallie’s turn to beam up at him. I was praying my daughter wasn’t falling for this man as quickly as me, because I couldn’t stand to put her heart on the line, not when it was me who had chosen to allow Sebastian into our lives, allowed this distraction to distort our reality.
“Thank you,” was uttered with a little contented squeal.
Sebastian stretched out his hand, helped me to stand, tore me up more with the lingering kiss that was far from crude and much too tender. Kallie swayed beside us. Sebastian’s hand was at my back, my daughter at my side. We headed back down another row of crafts as we made our way out, the Sunday evening growing late.
Sebastian suddenly stopped at a tent that was crammed with handmade quilted bags and blankets and stuffed animals, a patch-work style of mismatched colors and patterns. “Look at that, Kallie. It’s a butterfly.”
It was strung up from a top metal beam, hanging down amongst a bevy of birds, the super soft stuffed animal nearly half the size of my dainty daughter.
“It’s a Monarch kind,” she said quietly in awe, even though this butterfly was bright colors, mismatched prints, and didn’t come close to depicting a single one of the butterflies Kallie loved to pretend she was, but neither Sebastian nor I were going to correct her.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
Apparently so by the little happy dance she was doing at my side, her eyes wide and so sweet. My heart was beating wildly because I couldn’t stop this man from slipping deeper.
Taking hold.
Sebastian caught the woman’s attention who was working the tent. “Can we get that butterfly there, please?”
“Of course.” She climbed a ladder and was quick to unhook it while Baz was digging out his wallet from his back pocket and, once again, pulling out a small stack of large bills.
“You don’t need to do that, Baz. You already took care of us all day. I’ll get it.”
He frowned at me. “I want to, Shea. Let me do this.”
And I saw that same thing there, the same awareness I felt constantly, that time was stealing away, that he too was rushing to fill up these days with memories, because as hard and rough as he was, I saw the softness, too. Saw that even though I knew he would never admit it, my daughter was impossible not to love.
He knelt down and passed Kallie the butterfly. “There. Right where she belongs.”
Excited, thankful noises flew from her mouth as she squeezed and hugged it tight. She sidled up to his side and slipped her hand into his, and something passed through his expression that stole my breath, something dark and hard and sad.
Silently, we traipsed back through the grasses, passing by people still milling around. Many vendors were beginning to tear down their displays as the show wound down and moved onto whatever city called to them next.