“I got her, I’m taking a break on the bike downstairs. Besides, I’m my own boss.” I plop down on the couch and pick up the bag of Cheetos and start shoving one by one in my mouth. Mom rushes over to the counter and grabs her purse.
“Okay, I’ll um. I’ll call when she actually delivers!”
“You better send pictures!” I shout after her as she rushes down the stairs to her best friend’s side.
Penelope looks behind her, realizing her grandma has left and I’m here now. She smiles, happy to see me, and I see Thane in her face again. I always see him in her face and guilt hits the pit of my stomach that I haven’t told him about her, but I know it’s for her own good. Hell is rising down south and it’s no place for her or me. This is home, and besides, she has more daddies now than she knows what to do with. Bobby, Lip, my dad, Zane, Saint. Every guy of the club watches over her shoulder just like they did mine growing up. Poor thing, she’s going to hate it.
Standing, done with the puzzle, she comes over to me and climbs into my lap.
“What are ya doin’?” I ask around a mouth full of Cheetos. Her mind is always busy figuring things out and lost in a world of make-believe. She makes me see things I used to take for granted.
“I put the puzzle together and then tried to put pieces from another puzzle into it to see if it would fit,” she says, looking into the bag of chips.
“Did any fit?”
“One puzzle did, and I made a ocean with the jungle, it looks cool!”
“Really?” I’m genuinely surprised, I wouldn’t think the pieces from another puzzle would fit but I’ve never tried. I love having her just upstairs when I work, one time she came down and suggested a color I should use on someone’s bike and it was exactly what my piece of art was missing.
She takes my backward hat off my head and puts it on her own before sitting down.
She giggles, and I turn it around just like I was wearing it.
“There you go, now you look like a badass!” I wink.
“Badass?” she repeats and tilts her head to the side with confusion.
I should probably tell her not to say that word but she lives in a life of bikers and is going to hear much worse. Besides, she’s going to be a badass, nobody is going to fuck with her when she goes to school. She’s going to stand up to bullies and be friends with everyone. I’m not sure who she got the friendly part from because I was anything but nice in school.
“Yup. Means nobody will mess with you.” I take a bite of my chip and brush the dust off on my jeans.
She rubs her hands around the top of the hat.
“Can I keep it?”
Her eyes look up at me and I see more of myself in her than I have since the day she got here. She’s going to be a little hell-raiser, like me. Which is a good thing, being a female in this world you have to know when to take shit and when to kick it.
“Yes, you can, and you know why?”
Her wide eyes blink, waiting for me to give her the answers to the world.
“Because you’re a little Devil.”
She makes a crazy face showing off her teeth and pushing up her shoulders and I laugh. She’s so cute and innocent but I see how much trouble lives within her. She’s my daughter of course.
“I want to do my room in Nightmare before Christmas.” She’s talking about her room at Lee’s house.
We’ve been going back and forth on how to decorate it. Right now she sleeps in between Lee and me in a big king-sized bed. I’m not sure we will be able to move her to her own bed when the time comes, and I don’t think I want her across the hall anyway. I love how she snuggles up next to me and plays with my hair. It’s like our hearts and souls know who each other are even though we’ve been apart.
“Ooh, I love that movie. I think that’s a good idea.”
“It’s not scary or bad?” she asks, looking down at her hands and it occurs to me that the world of Timothy Burton might seem ominous and ghoulish to some parents, but the way I grew up, it’s all about perception. Some see Jack as a bad guy in that movie, but he was just trying to offer his world something new and exciting that they hadn’t had before. He was doing something every leader in the world tries to do; better.
“I don’t think so at all. Do you?”