…”
“Emily is a really good swimmer, just like you, Daddy!”
She tried to cover her ensuing laugh, but Mark’s exasperated eye roll made it next to impossible.
“Yes, Emily is a good swimmer. But didn’t you also learn that it’s better to look at fish from the beach?”
“But I got to get wet!” Seth exclaimed gleefully. “And so did you, Daddy.”
A playful smile stretched across Mark’s mouth. “Yeah, but so did Emily. And she’d still be dry if we hadn’t commandeered her boat.”
“Pizza might make her feel better.”
She looked questioningly at Mark as the four-year-old rattled on. “Daddy said we’d go to Sam’s for pizza when my castle was all done,” he said. “You can come, too, if you want.”
“I—I think I better head home, sweetheart.” Squatting down in front of him, she pushed a strand of wet hair from his forehead, then tapped the tip of his nose with her finger. “It was very nice to meet you, Seth. You are truly the best sand castle maker I’ve ever met.”
“Please, Emily? The pizza is really yummy. It was my mom’s favorite.”
Emily tipped her head to afford herself a better view of Mark, noting the hint of sadness in his face at the mention of his late wife. So much about his taking her class made sense now. The drive to check things off one’s bucket list always intensified after losing a friend or family member to an early death. It was as if the loss served as a wake-up call about the uncertainty and lack of promises in life. She saw it all the time.
Still, such a loss was hard to rationalize when it came to someone as young as Seth. “That sounds like some extra special pizza if it was your mom’s favorite,” she finally said.
“It is! Especially the pepperoni kind.” Leaning forward, Seth brought his mouth to Emily’s ear as if sharing a secret, the excitement in his voice negating any attempt at whispering. “Sometimes, if I smile really big at the waitress lady, she makes the pizza look like a great big smiley face … with funny hair at the top! So please? Won’t you come, too? Pretty, pretty please?”
Gesturing at her damp bikini top and drenched shorts, she scrunched up her nose. “I don’t think the folks at Sam’s Pizza would be too happy to see me in wet clothes.”
A snort of disagreement from the boy’s father brought a warm flush to her cheeks.
“I’m wet, too. So’s my daddy,” Seth argued.
“And Sam’s has outdoor tables,” Mark added.
Slowly she looked from one to the other and back again, the pull for a moment of normalcy making her relent in the end. “Okay. I’m in. It sounds like fun.”
Twenty minutes later, any residual worry over wet clothes and disapproving pizza eaters was gone, in its place the kind of happy-go-lucky fun she’d been craving for months. Any tension that came from being huddled so close to Mark evaporated as Seth kept them entertained with tales from his summer preschool program, most of which came back to a castle in some way.
“The other day? At lunch? I built a great big castle out of everybody’s milk cartons. And then Liam? He’s my bestest friend. He made one out of Pixy Stix during playtime,” Seth said. “But then Tyler—he’s a meany—he came over and kicked Liam’s castle down!”
Seth widened his eyes expectantly at Emily and waited.
“You’re supposed to gasp at the things Tyler does,” Mark whispered in her ear.
“Oh, sorry,” she whispered back, before giving the desired response.
Satisfied, Seth continued. “It’s okay. Me and Liam, we cast a spell on Tyler.”
She glanced at Mark, then back to Seth. “A spell?”
“Uh-huh. And you know what happened?”
Mark paused from taking a drink and narrowed his eyes on his son. “No-o-o … what happened?”
“He got in trouble with Miss Drake. She said she had eyes in back of her head, which means me and Liam are good at casting spells!”
“Then I guess I’d better watch out,” Emily declared. “I don’t want any eyes in any funny places.”
Seth elevated himself onto his knees. “Oh, I wouldn’t cast a spell on a princess. That would be bad.”
Mark winked at her over the top of his glass before addressing his son once again. “And Emily is a princess, huh?”
“Yupper doodle.”
When the pizza arrived and Seth took a break to eat, Mark took over the conversation, peppering her with questions about Bucket List 101 and the clients she’d encountered since starting the business four years earlier.
“When you drew those pictures I saw on your wall, did you know back then that you wanted to teach people how to do all those things?”
She nibbled at the crust of her first piece and then tossed it on her plate. “Back then, I just knew I wanted to do all those things one day. By the time I was halfway through college, I knew I wanted to do them in conjunction with a business.”
“Who’s your typical client?”
“I’m not sure I have a typical client. People come for all sorts of reasons. Some want to conquer a fear. Some come simply because they love the outdoors. And some, like yourself, are motivated by a personal goal.”
Seth pointed at his dad with his slice of pizza. “My mommy taught my daddy not to wait for tomorrow.”
Mark drew back. “Where did you get that, little man?”
Turning the pizza toward his mouth, Seth shrugged. “I heard you saying that this morning when you were standing in front of the mirror, trying to decide if you should play in the woods or not.”
Emily watched Mark’s eyes close only to reopen mere seconds later. “I was talking to myself.”
“Then you should be more quiet, Daddy.” The little boy took a bite of pizza and started chewing.
“Apparently you’re right.” Mark looked at Emily with an impish grin. “Nothing like getting a behind-the-scenes look at my many shortcomings, eh?” Suddenly uncomfortable, he grabbed a slice of pizza for himself and raised it in the air like a champagne glass. “Next topic, please …”
Story by story, they ate their way through the rest of a pizza that was every bit as good as Seth had promised. But it was the time with Mark and Seth that affected Emily most, temporarily filling a void that had been lurking in her soul for years. It was as if Seth’s sweet stories and Mark’s genuine interest allowed her to pretend, if only for a little bit, that they were her family, sharing the details of their day over dinner.
“You know how to rock climb?” Seth asked around a piece of pizza crust bigger than his face.
