Magpie Shiny, Ch. 6
This story is posted weekly in draft form. Need to catch up? Here are links to the previous chapters:
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5
“Last time I saw you, you were wearing that same faded-flag tank top. Only tied up to show your belly, if I remember right.”
The last time Lauren Tate had heard that voice purring in her ear was the night before she’d left Magpie for good, or so she’d thought. It still made her palms sweaty and her heart beat faster. Probably always would, dammit.
“It was one of the few things still in my closet at the homestead. I’m just glad it still fits.” She turned around to look at her high school crush. “Sorry, the daisy dukes don’t fit anymore. So you’ll have to ogle someone else’s ass… not that you weren’t doing that back then, anyway. How’s Christy, by the way?”
Colter put his hands on his hips and stepped back, shaking his head with a sardonic smile and looking off over her shoulder. He’d always made her five-foot-four-inches feel short, and his wavy black hair still curled at the nape of his neck under the black baseball cap on his head. She wasn’t sure, but that Godsmack t-shirt might be nearly as old as her tank top.
“If you’d stuck around long enough,” he said, “I could have told you Christy wasn’t a thing. She was setting me up, and you fell for it like she knew you would. As soon as you left town, she never looked my way again. I’m surprised Beth or Vinnie didn’t pass that along. Unless you ghosted them, too.”
Her best friends had passed the message along, but she hadn’t believed it. Hadn’t wanted to, really, because she’d needed to get out, and believing Colter didn’t want her was the only thing that made it easier to stay away.
Things had changed, though, and Maddie needed to know her dad. Hopefully Colter was interested in that roll, no matter how he felt after she came clean.
“There’s something you need to know,” she said, waiting for him to look her in the eyes. “Something I should have told you a while back.”
He nodded and stepped forward, lowering his voice as he moved into her personal space. “I heard you came back with a kid. I used a condom, Lauren – or did you forget that too?”
“Thing is, they don’t always work.” He stepped back at that, and she shook her head and rolled her eyes. “I don’t expect anything from you. I never did, or you’d have heard from me long before now. But it’s not something we can hide, so yeah. She’s yours. I just wanted to tell you before someone else did.”
“You’re gonna have to get a paternity test to prove that.”
Lauren grinned. “I don’t think so. See for yourself.” She looked over her shoulder and called out, “Maddie! Come over here, sweetheart!”
Maddie turned away from the clown making balloon animals, and Lauren swore she heard Colter’s breath hitch as their daughter ran up, the same dark waves spilling down her back that dusted his neck, those same pointed cheekbones, and the same sapphire eyes sparkling under long black lashes.”
Even if Lauren had wanted to erase him from memory, she couldn’t. Every time she looked at Madeline Magpie Tate, she saw her daughter’s father.
She was small, and always had been, but what she lacked in stature, she made up for in personality. She stopped in front of Colter and gave him a big smile.
“Is this him?” She looked at Lauren, who nodded, and then back at Colter. “Mom’s right – we do look alike.”
Lauren put her hands on Maddie’s shoulders. “Colter Brennigan, meet Madeleine Magpie Tate. She prefers Maddie, or if she really likes you, Magpie.” She smiled down at their beautiful girl, amazed that they’d made something so special.
“Magpie, this is your daddy. You can call him Colter.”
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