LITMIR.BIZ

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      * * *

      “Don’t tell your mom. She’ll kill me for letting you eat that for breakfast.” Jesse pointed at the small cup of chocolate mousse he’d brought home from work last night. Hey, he’d paid for it. He wasn’t going to toss it in the trash just because his friendly gesture had been thrown back in his face, as if he’d been some kind of dick instead of a guy trying to be nice.

      Laila rolled her eyes. “Duh.”

      “Hey, kid, I thought we had an agreement. You don’t tell your mom when I let you stay up too late or eat crap for breakfast, and you don’t bring me any of that vegetarian business she tries to send over this way.” Jesse scrubbed at his face, bleary-eyed. The coffee couldn’t brew fast enough. Six-thirty in the morning was too damned early when he’d only gone to bed at four.

      Laila kicked her feet against the rungs of her stool and licked chocolate from her spoon. “Mom says next year I can stay home by myself until it’s time for school.”

      Jesse, who’d decided he couldn’t wait for the rest of the pot to fill and had begun to pour coffee into his mug, looked up. The coffeemaker hissed and spit on the hot plate until he put the carafe back. “What? Are you kidding?”

      “I’ll be twelve, Dad.” The weight of tween scorn should’ve burned him worse, but Laila added such a sweet smile that Jesse was only a tiny bit stung.

      “Twelve’s old enough to stay home alone?”

      “Mom says if I prove to her I can get up on my own with the alarm and not need her to wake me up, sure. I got up on my own today,” Laila said proudly.

      It would make his mornings a lot less groggy, that was for sure. But it would also mean a lot less time with his daughter. Jesse frowned. “So...she’s going to stop dropping you off on the way to work?”

      “Dad,” Laila said, exasperated. “Pay attention! Yes, that’s what I mean!”

      “But not until next year.”

      “Yeah, when I’m in sixth grade.” Laila finished the last of the mousse and dumped the container in the garbage, then rinsed the spoon before putting it in the dishwasher. That was a trick her mother had taught her, that was for sure.

      “Let’s worry about it when you’re in the sixth grade, then, okay?” Jesse yawned and finished pouring his coffee.

      He added sugar and cream from the fridge, peering inside with an internal sigh. Empty. He needed to get to the store in the worst way, something he could easily do after dropping Laila at school, if he could stay awake long enough.

      “Can I watch The Little Mermaid again?”

      Jesse put the cream back in the fridge and yawned again until his jaw popped. Plopping his kid in front of cartoons was definitely a no-no according to her mother, who didn’t even have cable television or the internet at home. But it would buy him another hour of sleep and a shower before they had to leave for school.

      “Dad?”

      “Yeah. Sure. Go ahead.” Too much planning to do on less than three hours of sleep. He could mainline this coffee and it still wouldn’t wake him up enough.

      He ended up snoozing on the couch while Laila watched the movie, waking only in time to get her out the door. No shower first, so he pulled a knit cap over the mess of his hair and headed out into the world looking like, as his kid said, a hobo.

      The drive to school was both eternal and too short. It took forever because he was tired and wanted to get back home so he could slide back into bed and get a few hours’ sleep before he had to get up again. But it was not long enough, because it was time with his daughter, who filled it with stories about school and her friends and her thoughts on life. Always entertaining, usually surprising.

      “And that,” she told him as she opened the car door, “is why me and her aren’t friends anymore.”

      “She and I,” Jesse corrected automatically. He hadn’t really followed the story of Laila and her no-longer-best friend Maddy, but understood enough to realize that whatever had gone down had been the fifth-grade equivalent of World War III. “And listen, she’s your friend. Can’t you work it out?”

      Laila gave him a heavy sigh and paused, the backpack he couldn’t believe she was strong enough to carry still on her lap. “Dad, you don’t get it. She took my favorite pen! And lied about it!”

      It was the lie that had made the crime unforgivable. He could see that. Still... “People make mistakes, kiddo.”

      “If she lies about a pen, what else would she lie to me about?”

      She was too smart for him, the best of both her parents multiplied by ten. “True. But that doesn’t mean you can’t forgive her.”

      “I can forgive her,” Laila said darkly, her brow furrowed. “That doesn’t mean she can still be my friend.”

      With that, she got out of the car. Ignoring the impatient moms in minivans behind him who barely stopped to let their kids roll out before they sped off to Pilates or hot yoga or whatever the hell they were in such a rush to get to, Jesse watched her until she got through the school doors. Then he gave each of the scowling minivan moms a cheery salute, using all his fingers when he really wanted to use only one.

      He still needed food. An egg sandwich and another tall coffee tried to woo him into the local 7-Eleven, but he reminded himself of his credit card bill, due next week, and the upcoming tuition bill for Laila, due sometime next month. The rattle under his car’s dashboard helped remind him, too, that his baby had just over a hundred thousand miles on her, and she had to last him another year or so before he could think about replacing her.

      It was going to get better, he reminded himself. Private school for his kid was important to her future, and sacrificing for her was worth it. At home, a few more hours of sleep and a shower put some lightness into the day. So did the dogs in the shelter where he volunteered. Playing with them never failed to brighten his outlook. His time there finished, Jesse headed back to his car, pausing to look at the gray sky. It looked like snow. Smelled like it, too. He was looking forward to a good winter storm. Which meant he definitely had to get something in his fridge.

      He didn’t usually shop at this market, but this place was conveniently close to the Angel. Armed with his reusable bags from the trunk, the list he kept updated on his phone and the small accordion file of coupons he collected from the bar’s Sunday paper every week, Jesse grabbed a cart and hit the aisles.

      And there she was.

      The woman from the bar. Colleen, last name unknown. Today, as usual, her pale hair was pulled back at the base of her neck in a sleek bun. She wore a tailored black wool coat that came to her knees, a hint of crimson liner at the throat and sleeves, and below it a pair of black-stockinged legs and librarian pumps with a strap across the top of her foot that, no kidding, left his throat a little dry. She carried a paper cup of coffee in one hand and pushed her cart, one of the little ones, with the other.

      She wasn’t watching where she was going. It was easy enough for him to let his cart bump hers, gently enough not to even slop her coffee. It was easy, but stupid, Jesse thought at the last second as she turned, frowning. Now he’d pissed her off.

      Again.

      “Sorry,” she said, though it was clear she knew it was his fault. “Oh. It’s you.”

      “It’s me. Jesse,” he added.

      “I know your name. You work at The Fallen Angel.” She inched her cart, containing a carton of eggs and a loaf of rye bread, away from his.

      “And you’re Colleen.”

      “Yes.” She could’ve pulled her cart away and stalked off down the aisle without looking at him again, but instead she cleared her throat. “So...you shop here?”

      Jesse looked at his own cart, empty at the moment. “Nah. I just come in, push

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