Free Love of a Rockstar by Nicole Simone

her eyelashes.
    “Go on, tell your dad what you want to know,” I encouraged.
    Luke’s body radiated with joy when he heard the word dad. And if people weren’t around, there was no doubt in my mind, he would have broken out in a jig. He slid into the booth next to her.
    “You want to hear a story?” he asked.
    Our daughter nodded. With the go ahead, Luke launched into a story about the time he visited India and met a real live princess. Whether it was true or not, it didn’t matter. Nil was spellbound.
    “And as my car was about to pull away, the princess handed me a charm in the shape of an elephant, and told me to never forget the life I was destined to live,” Luke finished.
    The shyness now forgotten, Nil lurched forward in her seat. “Do you still have it?” she asked.
    “Of course. Do you want me to show it to you?”
    He pulled a slim chain out from underneath his shirt; the elephant trinket glinted in the light. Nil’s expression of pure awe, matched my own. Luke had been on far greater adventures than I imagined.
    He unclasped it from his neck. “Turn around.”
    With Nil’s back facing him, Luke gently lifted her hair off her shoulders and secured the necklace around her throat. With a glint of wonder in her eye, our daughter laid her hand over the elephant charm.
    “I’ll never take it off,” she whispered.
    To be able to witness the bond forming between Nil and her father turned my heart upside down. There was no doubt it was the right choice letting her meet him but now I had to deal with what would happen if we moved to Paris. A problem for another day, I supposed. My cell phone vibrated in my pocket, and I reached in to answer it.
    “Hello?”
    “Marlene, you need to come into work. We’re short on staff,” my manager barked.
    Robert was a man of few words with a personality that bordered on asshole. The big annual Christmas bonuses he handed out every year were the only reason people tolerated him.
    I sighed, “Now isn’t the best time.”
    “Great, thanks. Be here in fifteen minutes,” he ordered, ignoring what I said.
    The sound of silence on the other end had me shaking my head in disbelief. I wished I were leaving for Paris tomorrow so that I didn’t have work for Robert any longer. Creating wedding cakes in my small Parisian kitchen would be a dream come true.
    Luke’s eyes crinkled with concern. “Everything alright?”
    “It was just my stupid boss. He needs me to come into work.”
    “Mommy works a lot,” Nil piped in.
    I pinched the bridge of my nose. Grandma Doris couldn’t watch Nil until four o’clock, which was five hours from now. I would ask Camille for help, but she was awful with kids. And my mother donated her time at the children’s hospital on Thursdays. Robert hated it when I brought Nil to work, but it looked as if I had no other choice. It wasn’t like I could leave her at the coffee shop by herself.
    “Guess what sweetie?” I said cheerfully. “You’re going to spend a couple of hours with me at work.”
    My optimistic tone didn’t fool her.
    “I don’t want to.” Frowning, she fiddled with her necklace. “It’s so boring there.”
    Sometimes, I saw glimpses of what the future would hold with a sixteen year old Nil. There would be a whole lot of stubbornness and slammed doors. It exhausted me just thinking about it.
    Luke jumped to the rescue. “I can take her.”
    I turned to him. “Really?”
    “Yeah, I’m free for the rest of the day. We can visit the zoo.”
    Mentioning the zoo in Nil’s presence was never a good idea. . We had an awful experience there last year involving a monkey throwing his poo at her.
    “Nooo, I don’t want to go!” she yelled, burying her head into my stomach. “Monkeys are mean.”
    Baffled at her negative reaction, Luke attempted to put a smile back on Nil’s face. “OK then how about we get ice cream?”
    “It’s too cold outside.”
    He gave me a desperate glance over Nil’s head as if I knew what