Tea Parties in Boston

39 - A First Peek

November 11th, 2022

Since Rory was now trying to show herself at her best behavior at work, Logan had been faced with the opportunity to cover some of her errands for her. On that Friday night, one of them included picking up Em from her school and walking her home.

He'd been to pick her up a few times by now, so climbing up the few steps into the house that was a very typical red-brick for the neighborhood was already familiar for him.

The first time he'd come here, and been greeted with a pleasant, "You must be Emma's father, right? Nice to finally meet you. Her mother told us you'd be picking her up today," had deeply warmed his heart. Naturally they'd checked for ID too, and he was happy they had, feeling deeply protective of his daughter now that he had the chance.

"Hey!" Logan greeted the teacher's aid as he entered.

"Good evening!" he was greeted with. "Em, your dad's here. Time to get going!" she called out towards the playroom. The kids usually had a couple of classes in the mornings and the afternoon was pretty much storyhour, arts and free play or for some naptime.

While he waited, he looked over the information board casually, noting what the kids had had for menu this week. He was glad to read the place served pretty decent food, again feeling utterly lucky to have Rory as the mother of his child who'd already made a lot of choises he agreed with raising her. She really had had everything under control, hadn't she? And that almost made him feel a little redundant.

He also noticed a poster that the school was collecting donations for a non-profit group that was helping those less fortunate around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Since Logan had been thinking about possibly giving something back to his new community over the holidays, feeling like he needed that extra dimension in his life. He'd gotten his second chance - now he genuinely believed he needed to repay the universe for this with something.

He snapped a photo of the poster, wanting to look the non-profit up. He had a few excess things the movers had shipped over that he didn't really need, but he also knew that if he found them trustworthy he could easily just donate them some money or see what other specific kind of help they required.

Em hopped towards him.

"Hey, Logan," Em said, not being quite ready to call him anything else.

"Hey, Em," Logan replied, happy to see her, but still a little hesitant to actually refer to her as 'kid' like it sometimes wanted to slip over his lips. He still didn't feel like he hadn't quite earned that privilege just yet. And since Em hadn't still really commented on the whole development of him suddenly turning up in their lives like this, besides showing no reluctance to spending time with him. And he wasn't exactly eager to push her by saying the wrong thing, especially not when Rory wasn't around, even if it was perhaps a little cowardice.

They made it out to the street and enjoyed the fairly pleasant late autumn weather, the sun having set about half-an-hour ago.

"So how was your day?" Logan inquired.

"Same old," Em replied, almost sounding like an old person.

"You had music class today, didn't you?" he continued.

"Yeah, I did," she replied.

"Hey, I never really asked... if you even liked the class. I guess most kids do, right?" Logan pondered.

"It's okay. But it's not so nice to do something I'm not really that good at," Em replied.

"Yeah, I know that feeling," Logan replied with a friendly chuckle. "I guess neither me or your mom had much of a musical streak either," he added.