Page 43 of The Love Interest

“Will you get out of here, then?”

“Shit. Where’s my purse?”

“In your hand.”

“Right. Text you when we’re on our way back. Love you.”

“Love you.”

Christ, it’s good to hear those words and it’s good to say them.

I feel a little better now, and I know I’m about to feel a lot better as soon as I see my favorite person. I walk down the hall to Bettina’s room, making sure she can hear my footsteps on the hardwood floors. Her door’s wide open, and when I stop inside the doorway, I find her standing on her bed facing me, ramrod straight, like Hannibal Lecter waiting for Clarice Starling. In unicorn pajamas.

“Yayyyyyy!!!” She starts jumping up and down on the mattress. “You’re here! You’re here! You’re here!”

Here is the only person on Earth who is ever this happy to see me. She’s grown since the last time I saw her, over a month ago. It makes my heart hurt and feel better at the same time.

“Hey, Betts.”

When I’m two feet away from the bed, she leaps into the air and I catch her. “Let’s watchFrozen!”

“Nope. School night. You need to go to sleep.”

“Boooo! It’s not fair!”

“I know. Sucks to be you.”

“It does! It’s so hard.” I place her back down on the bed, and she jabs at my chest with her tiny index finger. “You were supposed to come see me before school started, and you did not!”

“I’m sorry about that. I got really busy. I got a new job. Did your mom tell you?”

“Yes. Teaching like Grandpa used to.”

“Yeah.”

She twists her lips to one side. “You’re not very good at it.”

“No, I’m not. Who told you?”

“Nobody.” She shrugs. “I can just tell. You don’t smile enough. I like teachers who smile a lot. With their eyes and their teeth.”

“You mean like this?” I make a weird scary clown face.

She frowns at me. “No. Don’t do that.”

“Okay. Get under the covers.”

“You are telling me a story.”

“I know.”

This is what we do. When she was old enough to understand that I write stories for a living, like her grandpa, she started insisting that I make up stories for her instead of reading them to her at night. It’s some of my best work, and I’ve never written it down.

I sit cross-legged on the rug by her bed. This is the only instance in life wherein I will ever sit cross-legged–when I’m telling my niece a bedtime story. It gets harder to sit this way every year, but I’ll keep doing it until she gets too old for bedtime stories or when her parents finally decide to put a grown-up chair in this room.

“Okay, start,” she orders, once she’s made herself comfortable.

“Okay. Monster story?”