Page 48 of The Best Bad Decision

Amie looks exhausted, and I promised I’d be there for her. I promised I’d be strong. So I do what I’m good at and I compartmentalise. And then, I begin to make a plan.

“Have you eaten anything today?” I ask. Amie shakes her head sheepishly.

“I haven’t been able to put her down,” she says. “I don’t think I’ve even brushed my teeth.”

“Okay.” I square my shoulders and reach for my phone. “What do you want? Pizza? Chicken? Let me order something.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she whispers. Her smile has dropped and she looks from her phone to Maisy with sad, exhausted eyes.

“Let me, Amie,” I say. I’m dangerously close to begging. I’ve never begged for anything before, but for Amie and Maisy, I’ll start right now. “Let me take care of you, baby.”

If I hadn’t been focused so intently on her image on my tablet screen, I might have missed the way her eyes widened and her lips formed a tinyOwhenbabyslipped out. But I’m done pretending I haven’t been completely head over ass for this woman for four years. She’s the mother of my child, she’s become my best friend, and right now, the woman who is always looking after everyone else needs someone to look after her. And I’m happy to do it.

“Fine,” she sighs, trying on a slightly pained smile. “Pizza sounds good. Sausage, olives and mushrooms, please.”

“Heathen,” I laugh, scrunching my nose as I tap and swipe at my phone until the order is placed. “Done. I also ordered a mini cheesepizza in case Maisy wakes up hungry. I know it’s not finger-shaped but she needs to eat something.”

“You remembered,” she says softly. “She loves pizza fingers. Pizza in all shapes, but pizza fingers especially.”

“Of course I remember her favourite food,” I say. “She’s my daughter.”

A soft smile blooms on her face then, a real one with a hint of that sparkle back in her eyes. She shifts in place and I hear Maisy whimper, then see her arms sneak out from beneath her yellow blanket to tighten their hold on Amie.

“Maisy Mouse, Daddy’s on the phone,” she whispers softly, dropping a kiss to our little girl’s head. My heart jumps in my chest. I want so badly to hold them both. “Do you want to say hi?”

“Daddy?”

Fuck, I’m a goner the moment I hear my little girl’s voice. She sounds exhausted, so sad and pained and I feel like I’ve had my heart ripped out through my throat.

“I’m right here, Maisy Girl,” I say. “Are you feeling sick?”

She nods, pressing her face into the space between Amie’s neck and shoulder. I remember kissing that space in Singapore, losing myself in the warm, salty tang of her skin. I rub a hand down my face. This is definitely not the time.

“Miss you, Daddy,” she says softly. She turns her head away from Amie’s neck to face the camera and I finally catch sight of her green eyes, sad and hollow and nothing at all like my little livewire girl.

“I miss you too, sweetheart,” I say through the lump in my throat. It takes everything in me not to throw on some clothes, head to the airport and jump on the next flight to London.

The truth is, since leaving them at the airport two weeks ago, I’ve been coasting, merely existing and going through the motions. Spending another week with my girls over Thanksgiving gave me a little taste of what life might be like if I could truly spend it with them, and I fell even more in love with them both. My kind, sweet, funny little girl and the woman who stole my heart four years ago: her smart-mouthed, brilliant-brained mother.

“I think the food is here.” Amie breaks me from my daze as she juggles her phone, Maisy, and her toys, standing and carefully making her way down the stairs to her front door. The screen goes dark, but I can still hear her as she thanks the delivery driver and then murmurs quietly to Maisy. When she reappears, they’re sitting on the sofa, each holding a slice of pizza.

Maisy’s eyes are still sad, but Daddy Bear and Roger are tucked under a blanket on either side of her, and when she smiles at me and shows her teeth, a little piece of my heart begins to heal.

Two days later, it’s a cool but sunny afternoon in San Francisco. I’m waiting around in a quiet crew lounge to fly to Miami for the night after commuting in from Phoenix when an alert pops up on my screen. It’s Maisy’s bedtime, and I slip my earbuds into my ears and pull up Amie’s name. She answers on the first ring, and when the image buffers on my phone, I see my girls lying in Maisy’s bed, with Daddy Bear and Roger tucked between them.

“Hey Maisy Girl, are you feeling better?” I ask. Her sore ears had been the result of a nasty ear infection, and she’d been given some medicine which, according to Maisy, tasted yucky, but Amie and I both promised it would help. She’s been taking it religiously, squeezing Roger and crying every time she swallows the neon yellow liquid witha grimace. She nods and turns her face into Daddy Bear, snatching him into her arms and giving him a good squeeze.

I feel the squeeze in my stomach, missing her just as much as she misses me. I’m desperate to hold my sweet girl in my arms again, to hear that laugh in person instead of through a video call.Fuck,I miss her so much it aches through my entire body. I miss her like I never imagined I could miss anyone before.

I recite Maisy’s favourite bedtime story from memory, embellishing a little with some extra animal voices, and once she’s snoring softly, Amie creeps out of the room.

“I just got my January schedule,” she tells me, pulling a mug from the cupboard and flipping on the electric kettle. The concept of it still blows my mind, but I’ve managed to source one for my studio in Phoenix for their Christmas visit, as well as some of Amie’s favourite tea and I can’t wait to surprise her with it.

“That’s early,” I comment. Our schedules don’t usually come out until a week or so before the month begins, but we’re barely a week into December.

“Yeah… it is, I guess.” She shrugs. I hear the whistle of the water boiling and watch as she scans her tea collection, eventually selecting something with a purple label and wrapping the string of the tea bag around the handle of an orange mug. “I have a Phoenix flight in the last week of the month.”

“Can you bring Maisy with you?”

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