Hello and welcome to my very first story. Thank you for giving me and it a chance.
Lester's Happily Ever After
Prologue
If you'd asked me right then, I wouldn't have been able to explain exactly how I'd gotten to that point. Sitting at the table in the kitchen of my modest town house, hot gluing diamantes onto a leotard while using the text to speech feature on my iPad to go over files for the latest FTA we'd been issued. I couldn't quite remember all the details. But no matter how I looked at it, I couldn't bring myself to make it important. Did it really matter what events transpired if the result was that I was happy?
No. It didn't.
What really mattered was that I get this leotard done in time for Saturday's dance recital.
Oh, and that I dragged myself up to date on this new Mr. Rebel-Without-A-Cause. Pretty sure Ranger wouldn't be too happy with me if I let game drop off anymore than it already had. My life had changed a lot recently. I'd taken more time off and rearranged my work schedule to work around the little bumps in the road that had suddenly sprung up. But things were finally starting to get back on track.
I hoped.
"Daddy?" came a voice from down the hall. There was one of the road bumps now.
"Yes, sweet pea?" I replied, managing to not shoot hot glue all over the iPad as I hit pause on the screen – score one to Lester.
"I'm ready for bed!"
I set the leotard aside and unplugged the hot glue gun, making my way down the hall to my daughter's bedroom. When I arrived she was sitting cross-legged on top of the covers, her wavy blonde hair hang in its customary tangles around her shoulders. She wore pink pyjamas with her purple dress up tutu, the same outfit as her teddy, which was already tucked into bed in her place. God bless Ella for sewing teddy bear clothes to match the majority of her wardrobe.
"What are we reading tonight?" I asked, squatting down in front of her book case. I'd found early on, that my little girl loved to be read to, so I made a point of reading to her at least once a day. It was our night ritual as much as I could possibly manage with my work schedule. "Peppa Pig?" I suggested, glancing over and noticing the smear of chocolate pudding still decorating her chin from dessert.
She screwed up her nose, a reaction I'd anticipated. Last month she had decided she was too old for Peppa Pig, so we'd been discussing what to do with all the related items she owned. Currently it was all in a box in the hall, where I tripped on it every morning without fail.
"How about Cinderella then?" I asked.
Again, she didn't seem all that enthused.
I flopped down into a cross legged position on the floor, thinking I was in for another long, indecisive exercise of listing every book in the shelf before she decided that she wanted to read one of the first stories I'd suggested. "What are we gonna read, muffin-head?" I questioned, giving her the look I told her was the one I used on the 'bad men', but was really just manufactured to make her giggle. Which she did now. I started listing the books from top to bottom, waiting for her to stop me. The next thing I knew, she'd pulled Teddy out of bed and was crossing the toy pocked floor to climb into my lap.
"Daddy," she said quietly. Almost timidly, reaching up to touch my cheek. "Teddy wants to hear about how you met Mommy."
It was only from years of arduous training that I managed not to blanch at her question. She was only five. I thought I had at least another couple of years before she'd sprout of questions like this! I thought I had more time to formulate a believable lie.
To buy myself some time, I bent my head and licked the chocolate pudding off her chin, resulting in a torrent of giggles, which I used as a springboard to distract her further with a tickle attack. Probably, it wasn't the best idea to rile her up like this before bed, but I needed time to think, to plan, to get my ducks all in a row. Ideally, I would have liked to discuss the dilemma with someone who would know instinctively how to handle such a conversation with tact – my mother, Ella, hell, even Steph had a knack for spinning just the right amount of truth into a lie to make it believable when it counted – but I couldn't blow my daughter off right now to go make a phone call. I had to deal with it by myself.
After a long moment, her giggles turned to pleads of mercy, asking me to stop, holding up her hands. So I relented, picking her up and dumping her onto the bed instead. Hoping against all odds that she had forgotten her question. "Shall we read Cat in the Hat, then?" I asked, retrieving it from the top of the bookshelf as she scooted under the covers.
"Tell me about Mommy," she implored, sending me the most devastating puppy dog eyes I'd ever seen. I swear, she was even whimpering. Steph has clearly been schooling her in the ways of manipulation again.
A heavy sigh fell from my lips and I lowered myself down onto the pillow beside her, lifting my arm to allow her to snuggle into my chest. "Once upon a time, there was a very headstrong woman," I began.