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Zak’s P.O.V

I was watching Avaya again while Lily went out to grab some groceries. It was noon but it was way too hot out in Vegas to take Av out anywhere fun. So we stayed inside making Play-Doh people and animals on the kitchen table placemats.

“Whatcha makin’ there, Av?” I asked, leaning over to peer at her work.

“Dolphins!” she exclaimed happily. “They’re my favourite. They’re nice sharks.”

I chuckled. “I guess you could call them that.”

“What are you making, Zak?”

“Uh,” I looked at my mess on the table, trying to will it into something worthwhile. “It’s a secret. I’ll show you when I’m done.”

“Oh. ‘Kay,” she grabbed the little rolling pin and started flattening out her blue dough. “Where’s Nick?”

I smirked at her random inquiry. “Oh, he’s at work today. Do you miss him?”

“Yeah,” she answered shyly. “Aaron’s funny too.”

“Mhm,”

“Are they your best friends?”

“Yeah, they kinda are.”

“But mommy’s your girlfriend,”

“That’s right, she is.”

“How do you know where to be?”

I furrowed my brow. “What do you mean, sweetie?”

“Well Nick ‘n Aaron are your best friends but my mommy’s your girlfriend. What if Nick ‘n Aaron miss you when you’re with my mommy?” she asked.

I chuckled. “What makes you ask that?”

“You’re here a lot,” she answered idly.

“Is that okay with you?”

“Yeah, I like it when you’re here.”

“You do?”

“Yeah you make mommy smile. I see you more than my dad; he never comes here.”

“He better not,” I muttered under my breath.

“Zak, you’re like my other daddy,” Av speculated.

That made me freeze up. I liked hearing it; it made me feel special. But at the same time, I didn’t know if it was a good thing for her to be saying out loud or not. If the wrong pair of ears heard it…

“Is that right?” I asked carefully.

“Yeah, it’s like a game of house,” she said excitedly. “I play that game all the time in kindergarten. We have a playhouse in our classroom. I’m always the mommy or the baby, and Dylan is the daddy and Kendra…”

She rambled on about playing house for awhile but I ended up fading in and out of conversation. I was stuck on her previous words that she’d seemed to have forgotten. You’re like my other daddy. The meaning of the words hit me like a ton of bricks. I could tell Avaya didn’t really understand how serious they were; she was just a kid after all. She thought it was a game. But it wasn’t a game, and if the wrong person heard her calling me that, there’d be a huge problem…

Just then Lily made her way through the apartment door with grocery bags hanging off of her arms all the way to her shoulders; she was even holding one with her teeth. I jumped up and immediately rushed over to relieve her of the bag in her mouth and the ones in her hands.

“Are you nuts?” I asked her. “You could’ve tripped and killed yourself!”

She smiled proudly, blowing a chunk of hair out of her eyes. “I didn’t want to make a hundred trips,” she said. “I did it all at once.”

“Yeah well you’re insane,” I muttered. “You could’ve called; I would’ve come down to help.”

“No, no; you were busy over here with your, uh, Play-Doh,” She smirked at our colourful creations on the table.

“Hi, mommy,” Avaya said as she put the finishing touches on her dolphin pool.

“Hey, sweetie,” Lily cooed. “Did you have fun with Zak or was he a big meanie?”

I huffed and hip-bumped her on my way to put some soup cans away.

Avaya giggled. “I had lots of fun. Zak can’t play Play-Doh very well.”

Lily laughed and I turned to shoot her a dark look. “I can so!” I retorted. “I just didn’t want to make Avaya’s work pale in comparison to mine, that’s all.”

Avaya looked at Lily. “What’s that mean?”

Lily leaned in close. “Basically, it means Zak’s lying.”

Avaya and her mother giggled. I just rolled my eyes and finished helping her put groceries away. The entire time Avaya’s words were lingering in the back of my mind and if I didn’t say something about them to Lily I was going to explode. So when she went to her room to put her purse and things away I followed her. I knocked on her doorframe and she turned around, smiling brightly.

“Hey! Thanks again for watching her for me,” She kissed me quickly. “I’m glad you practically live here. You’re handy.”

I chuckled. “I’m glad to be of service to you, slave-driver.”

“Hey, I pay you! Not with money, but in other ways…”

“I know baby, I know. Hey, listen, I wanna talk to you about something,”

“Sure, what’s up?”

I bit my lip. “Well i-it’s actually something Avaya said…”

Lily looked shocked. “She didn’t swear did she?”

“No, no, no, it was nothing like that,”

“Okay, well then what was it?” She folded her arms across her chest and gazed curiously at me.

“Well she—she told me I was like her other daddy,” I said quietly. “Don’t get me wrong, I liked it, I mean…I feel like she’s my kid, y’know? We’ve been together for awhile now, so…anyway, that’s not the point. I guess I’m just worried that she might repeat that in the presence of the wrong people. Do you catch my drift?”

Lily nodded slowly as she comprehended what I meant. “She’s said that to me before,” she said. “She’s said it’s like a game of house to her. Y’know…I’m the mom, you’re the dad, she’s the baby. I don’t think it should be anything to worry about.”

“But I think it is,” I retorted. “Lily, if she called me daddy around Matt that would be the spark that’d light the bomb, you know that don’t you?”

She sighed, pulling her ponytail elastic out. “Yeah…I just don’t think she’d mention it around him,” she said. “I mean, it’s not like she’ll really have an excuse to.”

“But what if she does?”

“I don’t know, Zak.”

“Part of me wouldn’t care if she did, y’know. I’d love to kick Matt’s ass to Canada and back. But I don’t want Avaya to have to have any part in that.”

“She’s going to have a part of it no matter when or why it happens.”

“I know but I just—I don’t want to risk her witnessing it.”

Lily sighed. “I’ll talk to her about it.”

“Thank you sweetie,” I kissed her hair, holding her close to me for a moment. “Someday I’ll kick his ass, trust me, I just don’t want Avaya to be there for it.”

Lily chuckled softly. “He does need a good ass-kicking.”

“He just—the way he treats you makes me so mad. He acts like he has some sort of entitlement to you just because you’re the mother to his kid. He acts like you’re still his and you’re not! You’re…you’re…”

“Whose am I, Zak?” she asked, looking up at me with the kind of face that made me stop talking because it meant I made a mistake somewhere. “Hm? Am I yours?”

“W-well…yeah,” I muttered.

“No, I don’t like that,” She shook her head. “I don’t belong to anyone. I’m not property you can buy and sell.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I’m your girlfriend, yeah, and I love you very much but I’m not—”

She froze as the realization of what she’d just said drifted across her face. I watched her blink and stutter for a minute. My stomach was doing weird things; good things, but weird things. I could tell she almost regretted saying it but there were no take-backs. She’d said it. It was out there. She said she loved me. It’d shocked me because I was sure I was going to be the first person to say it. I know Lily has trust issues after everything that happened to her so I assumed she’d be slow to pick up on the love stuff. Honestly I’d been thinking about it a lot the past few weeks. I was positive I was in love with her. We’d been dating long enough for my feelings to be acceptable. So I really wasn’t expecting it when the words came falling out of her mouth first.

“Lily—” I whispered.

“No,” she interjected, waving her hands dismissively in front of her. “No, I didn’t just say that. I can’t say that. The last time I said that I ended up so damn hurt—”

She tried to walk past me but I grabbed her lightly by the elbow. She snapped back and looked at my hand on her. I let her go instantly and her eyes flicked up to mine. I captured her chin very gently with my fingers so she couldn’t look away.

“I love you,” I said softly.

Her eyes fluttered and her chest rose with the sudden intake of air as my words hit her. She smiled a tiny embarrassed smile and spoke in a small voice.

“You’re just saying that ’cause I slipped up,”

I chuckled. “No, I’m saying it because I’m in love with you. Are you going to tell me I’m not?”

She shook her head, moving my hand with her. A blush coloured her face and her eyes twinkled with excitement. “Are you really though?” she whispered.

I smiled. “Yes, is that okay?”

She nodded and used my arm to pull herself up to kiss me. “That’s more than okay.”

“Good,” I let her go and slipped my hand in hers. “Now come help me with Play-Doh so I don’t look like a total loser in front of your child.”

She giggled. “Correction: our child.”

I paused and when I unfroze from the initial shock of those words coming from her I smiled. No, Avaya wasn’t my biological daughter, but I saw her as mine nonetheless. And the fact that both Avaya and Lily seemed to see me the same way meant a lot to me. I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders that afternoon and I soon stopped worrying about Matt. We all had fun together and forgot about him completely. I floated in the dreamy sensation of family for the rest of the night until Lily and I fell asleep watching The Munsters. Even in my dreams the word kept coming back to me; my new title:

Daddy.