“Ice cream?” Ronnie suggests, her expression entirely serious.
“I think we might need something that’s not dessert,” Jackson says.
Her lips pucker as she thinks about it. “Why?”
I glance at Jackson. “She has you there.” To Ronnie, I say, “How about meat loaf?” I can actually make meat loaf, and according to the notebook that I now consider my personal bible, Ronnie will eat it. Three-year-olds, it turns out, have a rather limited palate.
“With ice cream?” she asks, because she’s clearly inherited her father’s determination.
I glance at Jackson, who is fighting a grin. Then I turn back to the little girl. “Perfect,” I say. “And maybe some green beans, too?”
She sticks her tongue out and wrinkles her nose. Jackson grabs up the dish towel and pretends to sneeze, but it’s very clear to me that he’s laughing.
“Fench fies!” Ronnie says. “Pease, Sylvie?” She makes prayer hands and looks up at me with eyes so blue and familiar it makes my heart squeeze. “Pretty pease?”
I crouch down so that we’re eye to eye and put on my most serious negotiation face. The truth is, I have no idea what I’m doing. For all I know, I should be setting firmer boundaries. Making strict rules about ice cream. Watching out for ways to sing the praises of green vegetables.
But I can only do what I can do, so I tap her nose lightly. “I tell you what. If you promise to eat at least a few green beans, you can have french fries, too. Deal?”
“Deal.” She thrusts out her hand, sticky from the chocolate her father snuck her earlier. We shake gravely, and then I turn to Jackson, waving my soiled palm. He shrugs sheepishly.
“Sooner or later you’ll have to quit indulging her,” I tease.
“I’m well aware. Ten or eleven more years and I’ll be completely over it.”
I laugh. Frankly, I think he’s underestimating. I lean against the counter and watch as she holds her hands up, demanding he lift her. He does, and lets her hang on his hip like a little monkey. He looks happy and engaged. Not to mention competent and completely smitten, and I think it’s about the sexiest I’ve ever seen him.
“Okay, you two. I need to go to the store to get everything for our celebration. I’ll be back soon.”
“Me, too! Me, too!”
I glance at Jackson. “What do you think? Can you come?”
He shakes his head. “I have a call. About your resort,” he adds, his eyes crinkling with amusement. “But you two go on ahead.” He grins. “Your first mommy/daughter outing.”
The thought makes butterflies dance in my stomach, and I’m about to protest. But I look at the little girl, so clearly excited to go out into the world. “All right,” I say after a moment. “Why not.” After all, how hard could it be?
I’m pretty certain that every person in Los Angeles is at the Ralphs on West 9th today. At least that’s how it feels as I try to maneuver through the crowd with one hand on the cart and one hand tight in Ronnie’s little one.
“Come on, kiddo,” I say. “Don’t you want to ride?” I’d tried putting her in the cart when we’d first arrived, but she is absolutely determined to help me, and apparently helping me means walking beside me while I try to navigate the crowd and figure out what we need to buy.
She stubbornly shakes her head. “Wanna walk, Sylvie. Wanna push the cart.”
“You can’t reach the cart,” I counter. “But okay. Walking it is.”
I’ve already grabbed the ground beef, eggs, tomato sauce, and ice cream. So now I need to get some potatoes, onions, and the green beans that we negotiated during our ice cream and vegetable summit.
I know my way around this grocery store pretty well as it’s a short walk from Stark Tower and I come here on occasion to grab something for lunch. So it’s easy enough to get back to the produce section and load up on the vegetables we need for dinner. “That’s all we need,” I tell her. “I’m going to weigh these and put on those little price labels, and then we can go check out, okay?”
She’s staring up at the produce scale, watching a woman in front of us type in a code and get rewarded with a white label.
“Me! Me!” she says as the woman in front of us leaves.
“Do you know your numbers?” I ask, and she dutifully counts to ten, albeit out of order after she passes six. I decide that’s close enough. “Okay,” I say, then put the bag of onions on the scale. I haul her up and balance her on my hip, then slowly tell her, “Three, four, one, two.”
