Telling Me, Love [Normila]

Chapter Six

Camila and Allyson picked McDonalds, I apparently, had no say on where we go, and I was just the driver.

Camila had actually decided to sit in the back of my car with Ally and spoke to her excitedly, it was so easy and so soft the way she spoke to her, Camila also spoke with her hands making everything seem bigger and brighter. Every time I stopped the car I was turning around to look at them talk to each other.

When we finally got to Mickey Ds, I actually wasn’t surprised when Camila got two kids meals. One for Ally and one for herself, but I quickly decided to order for myself and got a burger and fries, when I tried to pay for my food Camila fought me on it.

“I said my treat remember?” Camila said not backing down

“I remember!” Ally cried from my hip, I gave her a mock-frown

“Traitor” I said and Ally just smiled at me

When we got our food Ally begged for us to eat inside, closer to the play area. Camila and I both surrendered after one pout.

We sat down eating in silence, mainly because Ally and I were both too busy stuffing our faces to do anything else, all the food we ate was homemade, or for Ally mainly baby food, her teeth were still sensitive and was still teething so when we could sink our teeth into burgers and French fries that weren’t good for us we hopped on the opportunity, since it didn’t happen much.

Camila just sat, eating slowly and quietly watching us, and when she wasn’t she was making funny faces at Ally who laughed at everyone, spraying half chewed food everywhere but we didn’t really care. When Ally finished she threw off her shoes and ran to the play area slide.

“Be careful!” I yelled after her, but she wasn’t paying enough attention to listen to me, just running wildly on her chubby legs. I smiled after her then turned to Camila.

“So, how are you so good with kids?” I asked before picking up another fry.

“Well, I have a younger sister, she’s sixteen now, but with the five year age difference she was always pretty small, and I would treat her more like she was my daughter more than my sister. I love her, she’s great.”

I nodded my head as she went on about her sister, sofi, she sounds like a sweetie

“So… can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” I say

“Where’s Ally’s dad?”

I stiffened but forced myself to relax “He left, when she was about six months old, she doesn’t even remember him, no phone calls, no messages, just a lousy check every few months… he was my husband.”

“Oh my god…” Camila said “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine now; it’s been a year and a half, I’m OK. We hadn’t been together for long time before Allyson; it wasn’t some deep connection we had, just a short relationship and too much sex, to be honest.” My voice was hard, rough it wasn’t that I wasn’t over Arin, but he had disappeared and I had no idea where he was for a while, but the thing that hurt me the most was that he hadn’t seen his daughter once since he left.

Camila put her head in her hands “god, I feel awful I’m so sorry I brought it up.”

I nodded and tried to smile “It’s okay, Camila, I should probably should talk about it anyway.”

She nodded and went back to being silent sipping on her chocolate shake.

Ally came running back to us a few minutes later, cheeks pink and huffing out breath but smiling brightly “Fun slide!” she yelled up at us I smiled at her