Oooof, this'll probably be the closest thing to romance that I'll ever get xDDDD

Mistake number one: Going to Alice's meeting. I shouldn't have done it. It's in our unofficial rules that we're not supposed to be going to school with our younger friends and I should've realized that Alice's workplace was off limits like Peter's school was. I could've kicked myself.

. . . Actually, I did, but Peter thought it looked funny so he started doing it to himself and now both his shins are bruised. So I had to put a stop to that.

After I left the meeting, I walked back to Sam's house to check on Peter. I sat on the grass in the back garden, keeping an eye on them wrestling, hoping it wouldn't end in tears and also doing my favorite mental sport: Thinking.

It was constructive thinking because I realized a few things. One of the things I learned was that I went to the meeting that morning because my gut instincts were telling me to. I couldn't figure out how me being there would help Alice at all, but I had to go with my gut feeling and I just assumed she wouldn't see me.

My first actual meeting with her last night had been so dream-like and unexpected that I started the day feeling that it was all in my imagination. And yes, I can see the irony there.

I was so happy she saw me. When I saw her swinging on that garden bench looking so lost, I knew that if she was ever going to see me, that was going to be the time. I felt it in the air. I knew she needed to see me and I had prepared myself for the fact that one day she would, but I wasn't prepared for the shiver that ran up my spine when our eyes first locked together.

It was weird because I'd been looking at Alice for the past four days and I was used to her face, knew it inside out, could see it clearly even when I shut my eyes, knew that there was a tiny mole on her left temple, that one cheekbone was slightly higher than the other, that her bottom lip was larger than her top, that she had fine baby hair at the edge of her hairline. I knew it so well, but isn't it amazing how different people can look when you actually look them in the eyes?

One minute, you're sure that you know everything about them, and then bam! Suddenly, they seem to be a whole 'nother person. If you ask me, it's true what they say about eyes being windows to the soul.

I've never felt that way before, but I figured that was because I never had a friendship with someone of Alice's age and I guess it was just my nerves getting to me. It was all a whole new experience for me, but definitely one I was willing to take on. After all, challenges are my favorite.

But there are two things that I am almost never. The first is confused and the second is worried, but while I waited in Sam's back garden on that sunny day, I was worried. And that confused me and because I was confused, that worried me even more.

I was hoping I didn't get her in trouble at work, but later that evening, as the sun and I were playing hide-and-seek, I found out about the consequences of my actions. The sun was trying to hide behind Sam's house, covering me in a blanket of shadow. I was moving around the garden, trying to sit in the very last patches of sunny areas before the light disappeared completely.

Sam's mom was taking a shower after following a workout video in her back room that looked out onto the garden, which had been entertaining, so when the doorbell rang, Sam answered it. He was under strict instructions not to answer to anyone except Alice.

"Hello, Sam," I heard her say, stepping into the hall. "Is your dad here?"

"No," Sam replied, "he's at work. Me and Peter are playing in the garden."

I heard footsteps coming down the hall, the sound of heels on wood, and then came an angry familiar voice as she stepped out into the garden. "Oh, he's at work is he?" Alice said, standing at the top of the garden with her hands on her hips, looking down at me.

"Yeah, he is," Sam answered, confused, and ran off to play with Peter.

There was something about the sight of Alice looking so bossy that made me smile.

"Is something funny, Alfred?"

"Lots of things are," I replied, sitting down on the only part of the grass that still had sun on it. I guess I won the hide-and-seek game. "People getting splashed by puddles by passing cars, being tickled right here"—I pointed to my sides—"stand up comedians, cat videos, me—"

"What are you talking about?" She frowned, moving closer.

"Things that are funny."

"What are you doing?" She stepped closer.

"Trying to make a daisy chain. Katya's looked nice." I looked up at her. "Katya's my boss and she had them in her hair," I explained. "The grass is dry, if you want to sit down." I continued pulling daisies from the ground.

It took Alice a moment to settle herself on the grass. She looked uncomfortable and made faces as if she were sitting on needles. After brushing invisible dirt off her trousers and attempting to sit on her hands so her clothes wouldn't get grass stains, she resumed glaring at me.

"Is there something on your mind, Alice? I sense that there is."

"How acutely aware of you."

"Thank you. It's part of my job, but nice of you to compliment me." I also sensed her sarcasm.

"I have a bone to pick with you, Alfred."

"A funny one, I hope." I threaded one stalk through the other. "There's another thing that's funny, funny bones. They hurt, but they also make you laugh. Like lots of things in life, or even life itself. Life is like a funny bone. Hmmm."

She looked at me, confused. "Alfred, I came here to give you a piece of my mind. I spoke to Gilbert today after you left and he told me you were a partner in the company. He also told me about something else, but I won't even get into that," she fumed.

"You've come to give me a piece of your mind," I repeated, looking at her. "You know that phrase is really beautiful. The mind is the most powerful thing in the body, you know, whatever the mind believes, the body can achieve. So to give someone a piece of it . . . well, thank you, Alice."

I sighed, shaking my head at one knot that turned out funny. "Funny how people are always intent on giving it to the people they don't like when it really should be for the ones they love. There's another funny thing. But a piece of your mind . . . what a gift that would be." I looped the last stalk and formed a chain.

"I'll give you a daisy chain for a piece of your mind." I slid the bracelet onto her arm.

She sat on the grass. Didn't move, didn't say anything, just looked at her daisy chain. Then she smiled and when she spoke her voice was soft. "Has anyone ever been mad at you for more than five minutes?"

"Yes." I looked at my watch. "You, from ten o'clock this morning until now."

She laughed. "Why didn't you tell me that you were working with Francis Bonnefoy?"

"Because I don't."

She frowned. "But Gilbert said that you do."

"Who's Gilbert?"

"The project manager. He said you were a silent partner."

I smiled. "I guess I am. He was being ironic, Alice. I have nothing to do with the company. I'm so silent that I don't say anything at all."

"Well, that's one side of you I've never met." She smiled. "So you're not involved with this project at all?"

"I work with people, Alice, not buildings."

"Well then, what on earth was Gilbert talking about?" Alice was confused. She sighed. "He's a strange one, that Gilbert Beilschmidt."

But she wasn't letting me get away without answering her question. "What business were you talking to Francis about? What have children got to do with the hotel?"

"You're very nosy." I laughed. "Francis Bonnefoy and I weren't talking about any business." I smiled. "Anyway, that's a good question, what do you think children should have to do with the hotel?"

"Nothing at all." Alice laughed, and then stopped abruptly, afraid she had offended me. "You think the hotel should be child-friendly."

"Don't you think everything and everyone should be child-friendly?"

"I can think of a few exceptions," Alice said smartly, looking over to Peter. I knew she was thinking of Saoirse and her father, possibly even herself.

"I'll talk to Francis tomorrow about a playroom or something like that then. . . ." She trailed off. "I've never designed a children's room before. What the hell do children want?"

"It will come back to you, Alice. You were a kid once, what did you want?"

Her peridot eyes darkened and she looked away. "It's different now. Children don't want what I wanted then. Times have changed."

"Not that much, they haven't. Children always want the same things, because they all need the same basic things."

"Like what?"

"Well, why don't you tell me what you wanted and I'll let you know if they're the same things?"

Alice laughed lightly. "Do you always play games, Alfred?"

"Always." I smiled. "Tell me."

She studied my eyes, debating with herself about whether to say anything or not, and after a few minutes, she spoke. "When I was a child, my mother and I would sit down at the kitchen table every Saturday night with our crayons and fancy paper and we'd draw out a plan of what we wanted to do the next day."

Her eyes shone with the fondness of remembering. "Every Saturday night I got so excited about how we were going to spend the next day, I'd pin the schedule up on the wall of my bedroom and force myself to go to sleep so that morning would come." Her smile faded and she snapped out of her trance.

"But you can't incorporate those things into a playroom; children these days want phones and switches and things that are eletrontic."

"Why don't you tell me what kinds of things were on the schedule?"

She looked away into the distance.

"They were a collection of hopelessly impossible dreams. My mother promised me we would lie on our backs in the field at night, catch as many falling stars as we could, and then make all the wishes our hearts desired. We talked about lying in great big baths filled up to our chins with cherry blossoms, tasting the sun showers, twirling around in the village sprinklers that watered the grass in the summer, having a moonlit dinner on the beach, and then doing the soft-shoe shuffle in the sand."

Alice laughed at the memory. "It's all so silly, really, when I say it aloud, but that's the way she was. She was playful and adventurous, wild and carefree, if not a bit eccentric. She always wanted to think of new things to see, taste, and discover."

"All those things must have been so much fun," I said, in amazement. Tasting sun showers beat a toilet-roll telescope any day.

"Oh, I don't know." Alice looked away and swallowed hard. "We never actually did any of them."

"But I bet you did them all a million times in your head," I said.

"Well, there was one thing we did together. Just after she had Saoirse, she brought me out to the field, lay down a blanket, and set down a picnic basket. We ate freshly baked brown bread, still piping hot from the oven, with homemade strawberry jam." Alice closed her eyes and breathed in.

"I can still remember the smell and the taste." She shook her head in wonder. "She chose to have the picnic in our cow field, so there we were in the middle of the field, having a picnic surrounded by curious cows."

We both laughed at that. "But that's when she told me she was going away. This small town wasn't big enough for her. It's not what she said aloud, but I know it must have been how she felt."

Alice's voice trembled and she stopped talking. She watched Peter and Sam chasing each other around the garden, but didn't see them; heard their childish squeals of joy, but didn't listen to them. She shut it all out.

"Anyway"—her voice became serious again and she cleared her throat—"that's irrelevant. It's got nothing to do with the hotel; I don't even know why I brought it up."

She was embarrassed. I bet Alice had never said all that aloud, ever in her life, and so I let the long silence sit between us as she worked it all out in her head.

"Do you and Amelia have a good relationship?" she asked, still not looking me in the eye after what she had told me.

"Amelia?"

"Yes, the woman you're not married to." She smiled for the first time and seemed to relax after calming herself down.

"Amelia doesn't talk to me," I replied, confused as to why she still thought I was Sam's dad. I would have to have a chat with Peter about that one. I wasn't comfortable with this case of mistaken identity.

"Did things end badly between you both?"

"They never began to be able to end," I answered honestly.

"I know that feeling." She rolled her eyes and laughed. "At least one good thing came out of it." She looked away and watched Sam and Peter playing together. She had been referring to Sam, but I got the feeling she was looking at Peter and I was happy about that.

Before we left Sam's house, Alice turned to me. "Alfred, I've never spoken to anyone about what I said before." She swallowed. "Ever. I don't know what made me blurt it all out."

I smiled. "Then thank you for giving me a very big piece of your mind. I think that deserves another daisy chain." I held out another bracelet I'd made.

Mistake number two: When sliding it onto her wrist, I felt myself give her a little piece of my heart.