Page 3 of Between Now and Forever

“Fuck.” I pull out of her and stuff myself back into my jeans while she pulls her shorts back up. We’re both barely decent when the door swings open and our daughter, Ella, walks in with her book over her face.

“Mommy, why did Ariel have to give up everything for Prince Eric?” she asks in a pained, frustrated voice, oblivious to our flushed faces and heaving chests.

“What? Who are Ariel and Eric?” I snap, confused as fuck because most of the blood in my body has drained to my dick.

She holds up the book and thrusts it up at me. I take it from her. “Oh. Are you talking about book characters??” I can’t believe she interrupted us.

“They’re people too, Daddy.” She says and plucks the book out of my hands as if she’s just decided I’m not worthy to hold it.

“Yeah, Daddy,” Beth says in mock disapproval and I give her a dirty look that morphs to a smile when our daughter turns her questions to her.

“She’s being a total doormat. Why?” The full strength of her disgust is on display in her sage green eyes, and a smile tugs at my lips, but I bite it back.

She looks like she’s searching for the meaning to life, and I don’t dare make light of it.

She’s been readingHans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Talesand it’s revealed that unusual pragmatism extends to her views on love.

“What do you think she should have done instead?” Beth asks.

She purses her lips and looks up at the ceiling while she contemplates her answer. Beth and I exchange a glance full of amusement and promise.

“I got it!” Ella crows and we look back to find her eyes alight with discovery.

“Let’s hear it,” I say and make myself comfortable. When she looks like that, it means we’re in for one of her lessons.

She drops down next to me and waves her mother over. She doesn’t blink at the paint now dried and smeared on her mother’s body. She’s used to finding us like this.

Beth sits on Ella’s other side, and we let her hold court.

“Well… since they can use their magic to turn Ariel into a human, they could have turned Eric into a merman.Thenthey could have spent some time with her family and some with his. But, she’s never going to see her daddy again. Do you think that’s fair?” she asks looking back and forth at us with genuine horror. I give Beth a ‘this is all you’ look. I haven’t even read these stories.

Beth scowls at me before she looks at Ella and contemplates her for a second.

“Well, sweetie, I think if Ariel hadn’t wanted her legs so badly and didn’t love the prince so much, then maybe it would feel like giving up those things was unfair. But she found her true love,” Beth says.

Ella nods thoughtfully.

“So, you mean losing her voice, him almost marrying someone else, all of that is okay because in the end they get to be with their true love?”

I laugh at the incredulity in her voice and lean back waiting for Beth to answer. That earns me a glare from my wife. Then she grimaces and taps her chin like she’s thinking.

“Okay, think of it like this. Remember how I loved pomegranate?”

Ella nods.

“Yes. But they stopped selling it, right?”

“Nope, they stopped selling it ready to eat. I could still buy the pomegranate, but it would have meant that I had to get all those seeds out myself. And I didn’t love it enough to do all that work. So, not all love is the same. Not all love is worth the work. Now, if they stopped selling mangoes ready to eat, I’d buy those. Because they are worth the work.”

“So…Daddy is like a mango?”

“Yes. Daddy is my mango,” she says, beaming down at our daughter like she just solved a quantum physics equation.

“Mango cheesecake,” I amend. Beth smiles at me over our daughter’s head just as the inside joke sails right over it, too.

“Well, when I fall in love, I’ll just skip to the part where we kiss and get married.”

I laugh.

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