Tony is still just trying to navigate the ways of being a better dad, and she seems to be his compass.
Some fluffy Tony as a single dad because I am all up in my feels this week, and a picture inspired me to write this.
I don’t notice him at first.
It’s Isabelle I see—tiny, pin-straight-haired, clutching a stuffed black cat by one ear like it’s the only thing tethering her to earth. Her pink backpack is way too big for her, with little stars on it. She stands in the doorway to my classroom like she’s arrived at the edge of a cliff and is still deciding whether to jump.
I crouch automatically, the way I always do with new little ones.
“Hey there,” I say, softly. “You must be Isabelle.”
Her fingers tighten around the cat, and she half-hides behind a pair of dark jeans. That’s when I finally look up.
He’s taller than I expected. Dark hair pulled back, a few strands escaping around his face. Tattoos climbing up his neck, sneaking out from under the cuff of his hoodie, ink decorating his fingers where they’re resting gently on Isabelle’s shoulder. He’s wearing a black hoodie that’s seen better days and a jean jacket on top, and he looks… tired. Not just “didn’t sleep well” tired. The kind of tired that has roots.
“Yeah,” he says, with a little half-smile like he’s bracing for judgment. “This is Izzy. Say hi, Bug.”
Izzy peeks around his leg and says, barely above a whisper, “Hi,” before retreating again.
“Hi, Izzy,” I say, smiling. “I’m really happy you’re here.”
My tone is easy, light. It always is with the kids. With adults, my brain likes to short-circuit, but four-year-olds don’t expect me to be cool or clever. They just need me to be safe. That, at least, I know how to do.
“First day?” I ask, glancing up at him again.
He nods. His eyes are warm brown, but there are shadows underneath, like he lost a fight with a month of bad sleep. “Yeah. She was in a different daycare before, but… this one’s closer to home. And, uh.” He clears his throat. “Everyone said you were good with the little ones.”
I flush at that, ridiculous heat creeping up my neck. “I try,” I say, because ‘thank you’ feels too big. I turn back to Isabelle. “Do you want to come see our classroom, Izzy? We have a reading corner with a big beanbag, and there’s a dollhouse, a kitchen set with fake cookies. The really important stuff, obviously.”
A little smile tugs at her mouth. “Cookies?”
“Fake ones,” I whisper, widening my eyes. “But if we imagine really hard, sometimes they taste almost real.”
She considers this seriously, then peeks up at her dad. “Daddy?”
He crouches to her level in one smooth motion, his hand sliding from her shoulder to take her small hand in his. Up close like this, I notice the ring of a healed piercing in his lip, the tiny scars on his knuckles, the faint sprinkle of gray threading through his hair. He looks like he belongs backstage at a show, not in a pastel-bright daycare lobby. But when he looks at his daughter, everything else falls away. It’s ridiculous how soft his face goes.
“Whaddya think, Bug?” he asks. “You wanna check out the fake cookies? You can tell me if they’re any good.”
She chews her lip. “You stay?”
His throat works. He glances at me, and I shake my head gently.
“Only kids in the classroom,” I say, apologetic. “Grown-ups have to say goodbye at the door. But—” I look at Isabelle again. “You can draw him a picture, and then when he comes back, you can show him everything, okay?”
She looks like she’s considering a contract. “You come back?”
“Of course I’ll come back,” he says immediately. “I’d never leave you somewhere without coming back. I gotta go to work, but then I’ll be right here, like—” He taps the floor. “Boom. Okay?”
I can almost see the fear behind his eyes, the way he searches her face, desperate for her to believe him.
He exhales, like he’s been holding his breath all morning. “Okay.”
I hold out my hand to her. “We can go put your backpack in your cubby together, if you want. Yours is the one with the little blue star.”
Izzy hesitates, then slips her small hand into mine. Her skin is warm and a little sweaty. She takes one step, then stops and looks back, big eyes suddenly wet.
“Hey,” he says quickly, voice soft but urgent, like he’s talking someone down from a ledge. “Hey, Bug, look at me.”
“You know what?” he says, lips twitching into a crooked smile. “I think you’re braver than I. When I was your age, I cried when my mom left me at school. Like big, snotty tears. I bet you won’t.”
She sniffles. “You cried?”
“Totally,” he says solemnly. “I was a wreck. You’re way tougher than me. And your teacher?” He glances at me, then back to her. “She looks pretty cool, right?”
My heart does something weird. No one ever calls me ‘cool.’ Not even ironically.
Isabelle looks at me. Looks at him. Then nods, once.
“Okay,” she says. “No crying.”
“There you go,” he murmurs. “I’m proud of you already.”
He presses a quick kiss to the top of her hair, then straightens. For a moment, he looks like he might say something to me, but instead, he just offers a brief, tight smile.
“Uh. If she needs… anything,” he says, scratching the back of his neck. “You can call. I put my number on the form. She’s, um.” His voice lowers. “It’s just the two of us. So she’s kinda… clingy.”
There’s no judgment in the word. Just a fact, and a thread of guilt he probably thinks he’s hiding.
“We’ll take good care of her,” I say, and I mean it more than he knows.
His shoulders seem to ease a fraction. “Thanks.”
He walks toward the door, then pauses, half-turning back.
“Oh. I’m Tony, by the way,” he says. “Perry.”
The name pings somewhere in the back of my mind—like I’ve heard it before, maybe on a playlist or in the background of someone’s conversation—but the thought floats away as Izzy tightens her grip on my hand.
“It was nice to meet you,” I say, hoping I sound normal and not like my stomach is doing Olympic-level gymnastics.
“You too,” he says, and smiles properly this time—quick and surprisingly shy, like he’s out of practice—and then he’s gone.
Isabelle’s fingers twitch in mine.
“Okay,” I whisper, leaning down so she can hear only me. “Want to see the fake cookies now?”
She nods, and we take our first steps into her new classroom together.
Transition weeks always are, but Isabelle clings like her spine has fused to my leg. She cries at drop-off three of the five days, silent tears sliding down her cheeks even when she’s trying really hard to do the “no crying” thing for her dad.
The first time she melts down, it’s over something small—a crayon she wanted that another child grabbed first. She crumples, body folding in on itself, and sobs that sound bigger than the moment, bigger than the classroom, bigger than anything a four-year-old should carry.
“Hey, hey,” I murmur, scooping her up and carrying her to the reading corner. I sit us down in the big beanbag, her body pressed fully against mine, her face buried in my shoulder. I sway gently, slow back-and-forth, carding my fingers through her curls. “You’re okay. You’re allowed to cry. It’s a lot, huh? New place, lots of kids, lots of crayons. Feels like too much.”
She hiccups against my neck. “Want Daddy,” she whispers.
I press my cheek to her hair. “I know.”
She smells like crayons and applesauce and the faintest trace of her dad’s cologne from the morning. It hits me, unexpectedly, how much she must be carrying—new routines, old fears, the weight of being someone’s whole world because he’s hers and she’s his.
“We’ll make a plan,” I tell her, because plans help. “What if we make a special picture just for Daddy? And then when he comes to pick you up, you can show him how brave you were. We’ll put so many colors on it he won’t even know what to do.”
Her fingers clutch the fabric of my shirt. “Pink?”
“Definitely pink. Maybe even glitter.”
She pulls back a little, sniffling, eyes still damp but curious through the tears. “Glitter?”
“We’ll break out the good stuff,” I whisper conspiratorially.
She hiccups again, but this time it almost sounds like a laugh.
By the time Tony comes that afternoon, the glitter picture is dry, and Izzy is buzzing with impatient pride. She hears his voice in the hallway and bolts for the door before I can stop her, slamming into his legs with all the force her little body can manage.
“Daddy!” she shouts. “Look, look, look, look!”
He staggers a step, laughing, and reaches down to scoop her up. The sound that leaves him is half-laugh, half-exhale, like his day doesn’t really start until this moment.
“Whoa, hey, Bug,” he says, hoisting her up onto his hip like she weighs nothing. “You miss me or something?”
She waves the glitter painting in his face. “Look!”
He takes it carefully. Glitter dusts his fingers, catching the light on inked knuckles. The picture is mostly pink scribbles with a few swirls of blue and gold. In the corner, where she demanded “words,” I helped her write DADDY in big, careful letters.
His features soften as he reads it.
“Whoa,” he murmurs. “Is this for me?”
She nods, “I cried, but then I didn’t, and we made a plan, and I painted and I didn’t even throw up at nap time.”
“That’s… that’s a lot of wins,” he says, voice husky with something I pretend not to notice. “I love it, Bug. I’m gonna put it on our fridge, front and center. Nobody will be able to miss it. Not even the cat.”
“You don’t have a cat,” she points out gravely.
“That’s how good this picture is,” he counters. “We’re gonna have to get one just to show it off.”
He chuckles, glancing over her head at me. Our eyes meet for half a second, and I swear I can feel the exact moment his breath catches.
“Hey,” he says softly. “Thank you. For… the plan. And the glitter. And… all of it.”
He looks wrecked in a different way than that first morning. Less panicked, more like he’s been fighting back emotion all day, and now that he’s here, it’s winning.
“It’s okay,” I say, voice gentle. “She did all the hard work.”
He glances at Isabelle, who is now enthusiastically telling him about the fake cookies and how Jenna tried to eat one, and “Teacher said it’s yucky, you can’t poop pretend food out,” and his mouth tilts into a lopsided grin.
“Sounds like you had a big day,” he tells her. Then, quieter, to me: “Is she… okay? Really?”
I’ve been asked versions of that question before. Parents with new babies, parents going through divorce, parents who don’t have the words for their own fear. But something in the way he asks makes my chest ache. Like, whatever my answer is will be the verdict on his entire life.
“She’s doing exactly what she’s supposed to be doing,” I say honestly. “She misses you, but she’s curious. She’s cautious… but she’s trying anyway. She’s brave.”
His eyes shine, just for a second.
“Yeah,” he murmurs, kissing the side of her head. “She’s the bravest person I know.”
He hugs her closer. For a moment, I wonder what it would feel like to have both of them in my arms, to be the soft landing instead of the observer. The thought rattles me so badly I straighten a stack of already-straight papers just to have something to do.
“You guys have a good evening,” I say, forcing my voice back into neutral.
“You too,” he replies, and for half a heartbeat, it feels like he means it in a way that isn’t just polite.
I don’t realize I’ve started to look forward to drop-offs until the morning he’s late.
It’s small things, at first.
The way Isabelle’s hand always reaches automatically for mine as soon as she steps through the door.
The way Tony’s eyes crinkle at the corners, even on the days when you can tell the rest of him is barely holding it together.
The way he always crouches to her height to say goodbye, like he refuses to speak down to her, the way he repeats “I’ll come back” like a prayer he’s trying to tattoo into her bones.
In the late morning, the classroom is already buzzing. Blocks clatter, someone’s crying because someone else touched their dinosaur, the usual symphony of small chaos. But Isabelle is not there.
I glance at the time. Five minutes past opening. Then ten.
I tell myself not to worry. Traffic exists. Mornings are hard. Kids get sick. I’m overthinking. I always overthink.
Still, my chest only unclenches when the door finally swings open and they stumble in like they’ve been chasing the clock since sunrise.
Tony looks like he slept in his clothes. His hair is pulled into a beanie, bits sticking out in rebellion. His t-shirt has a small smear of what might be toothpaste or might be yogurt. Isabelle’s hair is doing its own thing, wild and frizzy around her face, and she’s wearing a dress with strawberries on it and two completely different socks.
“We’re so late,” Tony groans under his breath, scooping her up as she drags her heels. “I know, I know, we’re here. I’m sorry, Bug, I shouldn’t have yelled. I’m just tired and I lost my keys and—”
He trails off, noticing me watching from the cubby area. He straightens instinctively, like he’s been caught breaking some rule. His gaze drops briefly to my lanyard, my soft cardigan, my colorful shoes, and I see the thought flash across his face: together. Unlike him. I want to shake him and tell him I forgot to eat breakfast, and my socks don’t match either.
“Morning,” he says, a little too briskly. “Sorry, she’s late. We had a… rough start.”
Isabelle’s arms are locked around his neck, face buried in his shoulder. I can see one eye, big and miserable.
“It’s okay,” I say, automatically. “Happens to everyone. You’re here. That’s what matters.”
I step a little closer, slowly. “Hey, Izzy,” I say softly. “We saved you a spot at the table. The kids are drawing pets. One of them is drawing a dragon. I think it might also be a potato.”
She doesn’t move. Her grip tightens.
“Bug,” Tony murmurs. “You good?”
She shakes her head, her little body hiding further behind him.
“She threw up in the car,” he explains quietly, guilt written all over his face. “I think it was nerves, not a bug, but she… I got frustrated. I shouldn’t have. I’m just… not great at this sometimes.”
The words land heavily between us. Not great at this. As if there is some perfect manual somewhere, and he missed the first ten chapters.
“You’re here,” I repeat, meeting his eyes. “You cleaned her up. You brought her anyway. That sounds pretty great to me.”
He looks at me like he doesn’t quite know what to do with that.
Izzy whimpers into his neck. I instinctively reach out and brush a curl away from her damp forehead.
“Hey, sweetheart,” I say, voice low. “It’s a lot of feeling, huh? Big morning. Big stomach. Lots of stuff all at once.”
She nods into his shoulder.
“How about this?” I suggest. “You and Daddy can come sit in the reading corner with me for a few minutes. We’ll take some deep breaths. Then, if you feel okay, you can stay. If you don’t, Daddy can take you home. Deal?”
Her grip loosens just enough for her to peer at me. “Daddy stays?”
“Just for a few minutes,” he says quickly, shooting me an apologetic look like he’s begging me not to kick him out on policy alone. “If that’s okay.”
Officially, parents aren’t supposed to linger. It makes separation harder. But there are rules, and then there are four-year-olds with vomit-wet hair and dads trying not to fall apart in front of them.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Just a little bit.”
We settle into the beanbag—me on one side, Tony on the other, Isabelle wedged like a little comma between us, still clinging to his arm. The three of us are close enough that I can feel the warmth from his body. It’s disorienting, sitting this close to him in the soft light of the classroom, his tattoos peeking from under his sleeve as he runs his fingers through Isabelle’s hair.
“Can we do breathing?” I ask her.
“Okay. Smell the flowers.” I inhale slowly, making a dramatic show of it, lifting my hands like rising balloons. “Blow out the candles.” I exhale, puffing my cheeks, pushing my hands gently down.
She copies me, inhaling with a shudder. Tony does, too, just quietly enough that she doesn’t notice he’s borrowing the trick.
After a few rounds, her shoulders drop half an inch. Her cheeks regain a little color.
“My tummy’s weird,” she mumbles.
“Yeah,” I say. “Sometimes tummies get nervous before brains do. But you know what tummies like?” I lower my voice. “Reading about dragons that look like potatoes.”
A tiny giggle escapes her. Victory.
“Okay.” She turns to Tony, fingers still twisted in his sleeve. “You come back?”
“I’ll always come back,” he says, voice rough. “You know that, Bug.”
She studies his face, like she’s verifying the truth of it. Then she nods, slowly.
“Okay,” she says. “You can go.”
It sounds like a benediction.
He kisses her forehead and stands, pausing to look at me.
“Thanks,” he murmurs. “For… being better at this than I am.”
“You’re pretty good at it too,” I say quietly, surprising myself.
His eyes search my face for a beat, like he’s trying to decide if I mean it. Whatever he sees there makes something about his posture soften.
“I’ll be back at three,” he says.
He leaves. Isabelle watches the door for a long moment, then leans into my side with a sigh.
“Potato dragon now?” she asks.
I find out who he is by accident.
It’s a Friday afternoon. The kids are wild with end-of-week energy, and I’m almost feral with exhaustion. Glitter is in my hair. There is dried paint on my arm. Someone has stuck a sticker that says GREAT JOB on my back, and I only find it when I sit down and feel the crinkle.
The kids are getting picked up one by one, a slow trickle of reunions and chatter and grabbed backpacks. Isabelle is playing with blocks in the corner, humming under her breath to some song I don’t quite recognize.
When the door opens, she looks up. Her whole face lights.
“Daddy!” she shrieks, abandoning the block tower and sprinting across the room.
He scoops her up, laughing. “Whoa, hey, careful, you’re gonna take someone out at the knees.”
“Look,” she demands, wiggling in his arms until he turns toward the blocks. “I built a castle. With a dragon. It’s you.”
“Excuse me, I am not a dragon,” he says. “I am a majestic, misunderstood… okay, yeah, I’m a dragon.”
I’m stacking crayons back into their box, pretending not to watch them too closely.
“Hey,” he says after a minute, walking over. “How was she today?”
“Good,” I say, smiling at Isabelle, who is now eating her own curls absentmindedly. “We had a full crisis over whether the dragon should be green or purple, but she recovered.”
“Important choices,” he says gravely. “Character-defining.”
He seems lighter today. Hair loose around his shoulders, hoodie pushed up over tattooed forearms. There’s a brightness in his eyes that wasn’t there that first week—fatigue still clinging at the edges, but buoyed by… something. Maybe just surviving.
As we talk, another parent walks past the open classroom door. She does a double-take.
“Oh my God,” she blurts, then claps a hand over her mouth. “Sorry. Are you—”
Tony stiffens almost imperceptibly.
“Nope,” he says lightly. “Definitely not.”
But the parent is already excited, fumbling for her phone. “You’re Tony Perry, right? My husband used to listen to your band in college. Oh my God, I have to tell him—”
My brain catches up. The name. Perry. The vague memory of eyeliner and guitar riffs and YouTube recommendations from years ago. It clicks into place like a puzzle piece being jammed home.
I look between him and the mom, and he catches my eye.
His expression is a mix of resignation and apology. Like he’s saying, without words: Yeah. That. Sorry.
Izzy is oblivious, tracing shapes on his chest with one finger.
He shifts the diaper bag higher on his shoulder. “We should, uh. Get going,” he says, offering the other parent a tight-but-polite smile. “Nice to meet you.”
“Can I get a picture?” she asks eagerly.
He hesitates, eyes flicking to Isabelle, then to me. For a second, I see the conflict flash across his face. The old life, colliding with this new, fragile one he’s made. The part of him that knows how to pose and smile and be a story in someone else’s mouth, and the part that just wants to get his kid home for dinner.
“Maybe another time,” he says gently. “I gotta get this one fed before she turns into an actual dragon.”
The mom looks disappointed but nods, retreating.
When they’re gone, he glances at me. I’m still holding a handful of crayons. My mind feels like it’s been shaken like a snow globe.
“I, uh,” he says. “We can talk about it later. If you want. Or not. I just… didn’t want you to find out from some random YouTube rabbit hole.”
I realize, abruptly, that he thought I didn’t know. That I was just treating him like… a person. A tired, worried dad with a clingy four-year-old and dried yogurt on his shirt. And now there’s this layer of old noise over it.
“I’m not gonna, like, ask for an autograph or anything,” I blurt, then immediately want to crawl into a cabinet and live there forever. “That sounded— I just meant— You’re Izzy’s dad. That’s… that’s who you are here.”
He stares at me for a beat, long enough that my stomach drops.
Then his shoulders drop, too.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I kinda like that.”
The moment passes when Isabelle demands to know what’s for dinner and if dragons can have pasta. They leave, and the classroom hums back into its usual end-of-day silence.
But something has shifted.
Now, when I think about him, there’s a soundtrack.
The first time he cries in front of me, it’s because of a painting.
It’s a Tuesday. The air outside is cold enough that the kids come in with pink noses and cold fingers. We do an art project I call “All the Feelings”—messy watercolors where they’re allowed to use any colors they want to show a “big feeling.”
Some kids scribble chaotic rainbows. Some do angry red storms or soft blue swirls.
She makes big, heavy strokes across her paper. Concentrated. Determined. A smear of blue in one corner. A streak of yellow that she immediately scratches over.
“What feeling is this?” I ask her when she’s done.
She thinks about it seriously. “It’s… when Daddy goes away,” she says.
My heart stutters. “When he leaves you here?”
“No.” She looks at me like it’s obvious. “When he goes on tour.”
I blink. “He goes on tour?”
She nods, dragging her paintbrush through the wash water. The water turns dark. “With guitars. And lots of noise. And lights.” Her eyes go a little distant, unfocused. “And then he comes back.”
Something in her voice tells me this routine is an old wound, not a new one.
“Do you go with him?” I ask gently.
She shakes her head. “I stay with Nana. Daddy says it’s too loud for my ears and he doesn’t want me to get squished.”
“That’s thoughtful of him,” I say.
“It’s okay,” she adds. “We FaceTime. I show him my drawings, and he sings me songs, and I show him my missing teeth.” She points to the tiny gap where one of her bottom teeth has recently vacated. “But I like it when he’s home better.”
“Yeah,” I murmur. “That makes sense.”
When Tony arrives that afternoon, hair still damp from a shower, keys jangling in his tattooed fingers, Isabelle runs to him, waving the painting like a flag.
“Daddy, look!” she shouts. “I painted when you go on tour!”
He freezes, coat half-off, blinking down at the paper she’s thrust against his chest. His jaw works.
“See?” she says, pointing. “This is when you leave. This is when you’re far. This is when you come back.” The black, the dark blue, the small streak of yellow she almost covered.
“Bug,” he says, voice rough. “That’s… wow. That’s… really good.”
Izzy beams, unaware of the way his hands are shaking.
“Teacher says I can take it home,” she announces. “We can put it next to the glitter one. On the fridge. For the cat.”
“We still don’t have a cat,” he says automatically, but the words are shaky.
I step in because it feels like he needs an exit ramp.
“She did great today,” I say. “She explained it really clearly. She understands you always come back.”
He looks at me like I’ve just handed him something fragile and priceless.
“Does she?” he asks, so quietly I almost don’t hear it.
“She said it,” I say. “In her own way.”
He nods slowly, like he’s trying to absorb that. His eyes shine again, that glassy sheen he keeps trying to blink away.
“Can I…” He clears his throat. “Can I talk to you for a second? ”
He orders Izzy to go sit back at the table and draw him another picture, and then comes back where she cannot hear us. When he steps in front of me, he looks stripped of something. The performance, maybe. The public face.
He holds the painting carefully, as if it might disintegrate.
“For…” He gestures vaguely. “All of it. Dropping my life in your classroom like a bomb. Making you deal with my kid’s feelings about my job on top of all the other kids with all their other feelings about everything else.”
His laugh is short. Humorless.
“That’s my job,” I say gently. “The feelings. That’s… literally why I’m here.”
“I know, I just.” He exhales sharply, rubbing a hand over his face. “I didn’t realize how much she… noticed it. The leaving. The coming back. I thought I was hiding it better.”
“She’s four,” I say softly. “They always notice more than we think.”
His mouth twists. “I keep thinking I’m screwing this up.”
There it is. The thing I’ve been hearing under every question, every nervous drop-off, every tired joke. The constant hum of dad-guilt.
“You love her,” I say simply. “You show up. You come back. That’s… That’s not nothing, Tony.”
He laughs, but it’s more of a half-sob. He sets the painting down on a low table with exaggerated care, then braces his hands on the back of one of the little chairs like he needs to hold onto something.
“Sorry,” he mutters, voice breaking. “I don’t usually cry in tiny chairs.”
“It’s okay,” I say, a gentle joke layered over genuine reassurance. “They see worse.”
He huffs out a breath that might be a laugh, might be one step away from completely losing it.
“Can I—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head. “No, never mind. That’s… weird.”
“What?” I ask, before I can overthink it.
He looks up at me. His eyes are bright. “Just,” he says. “Can I say thank you without sounding like a creep? I know I’m just some guy who drops his kid off and occasionally melts down in your classroom, but you’ve… you’ve made this easier. For her. For me. And I don’t know how to repay that.”
“You don’t have to repay it,” I say. “That’s… not how this works. You don’t owe me anything.”
He studies me. It feels… intense. His attention is like a spotlight I’m not used to standing in.
“I kinda feel like I do,” he murmurs.
There’s a beat where we’re both just breathing in the soft hum of the empty classroom. The tiny chairs, the scattered crayons, the watercolor paintings drying on the rack. It feels like a strange little pocket in time where the rest of the world is muted.
“I’m just… doing my job,” I say quietly, because anything else feels too big.
“Yeah,” he says. “You’re really good at it.”
My face heats. “Thank you.”
He glances at the clock and clears his throat. “I should, uh. Get her home. Before she decides, the table is a better place for paint than paper.”
“She definitely has opinions,” I agree, smiling.
He smiles back. It’s soft, this one. Unarmored.
“Yeah,” he says. “Wonder where she gets those from.”
He leaves with the painting tucked under his arm like a fragile piece of his heart he’s finally acknowledging exists.
I stay in the tiny chairs a little longer than I need to.
The shift from “Isabelle’s dad” to “Tony” is so gradual, I almost don’t notice it until it’s already done.
It’s in the small things.
He starts staying an extra five minutes at pick-up, lingering by the cubbies while Isabelle tells him every single detail about her day—what color cup she had, who sat next to her at lunch, how many times Leo said “poop” and got in trouble. He asks follow-up questions, real ones, listening like this is the most important briefing he’ll ever get.
He starts bringing coffee sometimes. “They messed up my order and gave me two,” he lies badly the first time, cheeks a little pink as he offers me the second cup. After that, he stops pretending.
“Thought you might need this,” he says on a Tuesday when I look particularly wrecked. “You have glitter in your hair.”
“I always have glitter in my hair,” I say, but I take the cup. It’s exactly how I like it.
“Huh,” he says. “Weird coincidence.”
He leans against the doorframe sometimes, arms crossed, tattoos on display, while I help Isabelle put on her jacket. We talk about little things—how he used to hate mornings even before he had a kid, how I once fell asleep during a movie in a theater and woke up to a completely different film because I’d slept through the credits and the cleaning break.
One rainy afternoon, when the pick-up rush is over and the last kids are gone except Isabelle, who’s sitting at the table drawing Very Serious Cats, he runs a hand through his damp hair and says, almost shyly:
“You ever… get used to this?”
“Being the person,” he says. “The one they look at for… everything. Every answer. Every hug. Every meltdown. Everywhere’s my sock at six a.m.”
He laughs, but it’s brittle at the edges.
I think about it. “I don’t know if you get used to it,” I say slowly. “But you get… more practiced at surviving it. At not taking every moment as a verdict on your entire soul.”
“That sounds… nice,” he says dryly. “I’d love to stop feeling like I’m one tantrum away from permanent emotional scarring.”
“You already are,” I say absently.
His head snaps up. “What?”
“You’re already emotionally scarred,” I repeat, realizing how that sounded. “I mean—we all are. That’s just… childhood. And adulthood, honestly. You can’t protect her from everything. You can just… make sure she knows you’ll be there while she feels it.”
He stares at me, then laughs. A real one, this time. “Do you give out therapy for parents as a side hustle, or is that just a bonus with tuition?”
“Comes free with the glitter,” I say, hiding my flustered smile behind a sip of coffee.
He watches me for a second, something thoughtful in his gaze.
“What about you?” he asks.
My heart skips. “What about me?”
“Do you have someone to come back to?” he says. “After you deal with everyone else’s socks and meltdowns and art projects and dragons?”
The question hits me in a place I didn’t expect. I open my mouth, then close it again. My life outside this room has always felt like a blank space compared to the messy, technicolor chaos inside it.
“Not really,” I admit. “It’s mostly just me. And my couch. And Netflix is asking me if I’m still watching.”
He winces. “That’s brutal. They should at least phrase it nicer. Like, ‘hey, champ, still going?’”
I laugh, surprised. “That might actually be worse.”
“You might be right,” he concedes. Then, quietly: “They’re missing out.”
“Anyone who doesn’t get to come home to you after a day like this,” he says, like it’s obvious. “Seems like they’re making poor life choices.”
My pulse stutters. I busy myself wiping an imaginary smudge off the table.
“You’re very good at this, you know,” he adds, gentler now. “Not just with Izzy. With all of them. And with… me, I guess.”
“You’re not one of my kids,” I blurt.
He smirks. “No, thank God. That would make the thoughts I have highly inappropriate.”
I stare at him. He realizes what he’s said half a second after I do. His eyes widen, and he rubs a hand over his face.
“Sorry,” he says quickly. “That was— That came out wrong. I meant— I didn’t mean— Actually, I did, but I shouldn’t have said it. I’m gonna stop talking now.”
My heart is pounding so loudly, I’m amazed Isabelle doesn’t look up from her cats and ask what’s wrong with me.
“It’s okay,” I say, which is objectively a lie because my brain is doing cartwheels. “We’re both tired.”
He chuckles weakly. “Yeah. That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it.”
We leave it there. On the surface, anyway.
But later, when I’m lying on my couch, Netflix asks if I’m still watching, the scene replays over and over in my head. The way his voice dropped. The way his eyes flicked to my mouth for half a second before he caught himself.
I don’t know what to do with that.
So, like a true anxious person, I… do nothing.
The thing that finally pushes us over whatever line we’ve been circling isn’t big or dramatic.
It’s a Thursday. Isabelle has had a terrible day.
She’s clingy from the start, tearful at drop-off, refusing to let go of my hand for the first hour. She cries when someone takes the crayon she wanted, cries when someone bumps her arm by accident, and cries when she can’t make her block tower stand up the way she wants.
By nap time, she’s exhausted. So am I.
She won’t lie down on her cot unless I sit next to her. I do, rubbing her back in slow circles.
“Daddy’s leaving,” she whispers, eyes wide in the dim light.
My hand stills. “What do you mean?”
“He has suitcases,” she says. “He’s going on tour. He told me last night. He has to go on a big bus again. With boys.” She wrinkles her nose like this is the worst part. “And guitars. And lots of noise. Nana’s coming to stay with me. But I miss him already.”
I swallow. “Did you tell him that?”
She nods. A tear slides down her cheek. “He said he’ll always come back. But my tummy feels sad.”
Of course it does, I think.
I stay with her until her breathing evens out and her fist relaxes from where it’s been gripping my sleeve.
All afternoon, I feel a simmering ache of protective anger on her behalf. Not at him, exactly. In the situation. The fact that love can be messy and imperfect, even when everyone is trying their best.
When he comes at three, he looks… wrecked. Like he’s been up all night, pacing around the idea of leaving.
“Hey,” he says, voice rough. “How was she?”
“Sensitive,” I say honestly. “But very clear about her feelings. She told me you’re going on tour.”
He winces. “Yeah. It’s only for a couple of weeks this time. West Coast run. Back before you know it. That’s what I keep telling her, anyway.”
“And yourself,” I say quietly.
He exhales. “And myself.”
Isabelle runs into his arms the second she sees him. She clings to his neck like she’s trying to fuse them.
“You came back,” she says, like she’d been holding her breath all day.
“Always,” he murmurs into her hair. “Always, Bug.”
He holds her for a long time. I busy myself straightening art supplies, giving them a bubble of privacy.
“Hey,” he says eventually, shifting her on his hip. “Can I… ask you for a favor?”
He looks almost embarrassed. It’s strange, seeing this rockstar-turned-dad—tattoos, piercings, history of thousands of screaming fans—look like a shy teenager.
“I’m gonna be gone for, you know, a bit,” he says. “And I know she’s… attached to you. to… this. I was wondering if you’d be okay with…”
He trails off, grimacing. “God, this sounds creepy.”
“It’s okay,” I say, fighting a smile. “Just say it.”
“Would you be okay if I… called? Sometimes?” he blurts. “So I can say hi.. So she knows this doesn’t disappear when I’m not here. Only during normal human hours,” he adds quickly. “I promise I won’t, like, FaceTime you at 3 a.m. from a parking lot in Boise or something.”
The images his words conjure—him somewhere far away, lit by stage lights, calling us from the back of a tour bus—make my stomach twist.
“You don’t have to,” he says hastily. “You’re on the clock. I just—I thought it might help her. But if it’s weird, forget I asked.”
“It’s not weird,” I say. “FaceTime is… fine. As long as it’s not during nap time.”
His shoulders sag in relief. “Right. Yeah. Of course. Thank you.”
Izzy perks up. “I can call when you’re gone?” she asks.
“If she says it’s okay,” he says.
She looks at me, eyes hopeful. “You say it’s okay?”
I smile. “I say it’s okay.”
Her whole face brightens.
He laughs, kissing her cheek. Then he looks at me.
“Thanks,” he says again. There’s a weight to it now. A different kind of intimacy. “For… everything. I know I keep saying that, but…”
“It’s okay,” I interrupt gently. “I don’t mind hearing it.”
His gaze drags over my face, lingering on my mouth. The air between us hums.
“Okay,” he says softly. “Good to know.”
When he calls the first time, I’m on my desk, grading curriculum notes with a cat video playing in the background that I keep forgetting to pause.
The screen lights up with an unknown number. I hesitate, then answer.
The screen shifts. There’s a blur of motion, and then Tony’s face fills the frame.
“Hey,” he smiles shyly. “How is Isabelle doing?”
“She’s coping better than expected,” I reassure him, calling Isabelle over so she can talk to him.
The three of us talk for a few minutes. Isabelle shows him the dragon she’s drawn (it does, in fact, look like a potato). She shows him the band-aid on her knee (“I fell, but I didn’t die, so it’s okay”). I hover in the corner of the frame, occasionally chiming in, occasionally just watching the two of them with a soft, tired fondness that does strange things to my breathing.
When they finally say goodbye, Isabelle blows a kiss at the screen.
“Bye, Daddy,” she says. “Don’t forget me.”
She grins and disappears, leaving Tony filling the screen now. The background shifts; he must have moved to somewhere quieter.
“Hey,” he says, voice lowering. “Thanks for taking the call.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “She looked happy.”
There’s a pause. The noise behind him dips, then swells again. He runs a hand over his face, the beanie shifting slightly.
“How are you?” he asks. It feels different, coming from him. More pointed.
“I’m good,” I say automatically, then amend, “Tired. Long day. We had a sand incident.”
“A sand incident,” he repeats. “Sounds ominous.”
“It was,” I say gravely. “There was sand in the shoes. Sand in hair. Sand on the ceiling. I’m still not sure how that happened.”
He winces. “My condolences.”
“What about you?” I ask, surprising myself. “How’s the tour?”
He hesitates. For a second, his eyes flick away, like he’s looking at something off-screen.
“It’s loud,” he says finally. “And weird. And kinda… hollow. Without her.”
The vulnerability in his voice makes my chest ache.
“She misses you,” I say. “But she also seems… secure. Like she knows you’re coming back.”
He nods slowly. “Trying to make that true.”
“It already is,” I say quietly.
He smiles, small and lopsided. “You always say the exact thing I didn’t know I needed to hear. It’s freaky.”
“Hazard of the job,” I say, a little flustered.
There’s another pause. It stretches, but doesn’t snap.
“I should let you go,” he says eventually. “You probably have, like, lesson plans to write and kids to drool on you and kids to put to bed.”
“Yeah. I should probably go too. You have a whole arena to conquer.”
He snorts. “Something like that.” Then, softer: “Goodbye.”
His name feels heavier in my mouth than it should.
We hang up. I stare at my dark screen for a long time.
He comes back two weeks later.
The morning he returns, I know before I see him. Isabelle is vibrating. She can’t sit still, can’t focus on the story I’m reading. Every sound from the hallway makes her head snap up.
“Do you think he forgot?” she asks me quietly, at one point, when the clock hits 9:15 and he’s still not there.
“No,” I say firmly. “I don’t think he forgot.”
Five minutes later, there’s a shadow in the doorway.
Isabelle bolts. She hits him so hard he stumbles back against the doorframe, laughing through a sound that is dangerously close to a sob.
“Daddy!” she yells. “You came back!”
“Of course I came back,” he manages, voice thick. He’s hugging her so tightly, I wonder how she’s still breathing. He’s in a hoodie and sweatpants, hair pulled back, eyes ringed with exhaustion, but there’s a brightness in him I haven’t seen before. Like something finally clicked into place.
I give them a moment, busying myself with the morning song, gathering the other kids in a loose circle. After a few minutes, Tony sets Isabelle down, crouching so they’re eye-to-eye.
“Okay, Bug,” he says. “I gotta go home and sleep for a thousand years. You gonna be okay?”
She nods solemnly. “I have a Teacher. And dragons.”
“That’s a solid support system,” he says.
He stands, glancing at me. Our eyes meet, and for a second, the room feels smaller.
“Hey,” he says. It’s a single syllable, but there’s so much packed into it—gratitude, relief, something that feels dangerously like longing.
He clears his throat. “Can I uh—talk to you later? When it’s not—” he gestures around at the chaos of morning circle “—all this.”
“Sure,” I say, heart doing something complicated.
He nods, like he’s made some private decision. Then he ruffles Isabelle’s hair one more time and leaves.
All day, my brain alternates between overanalyzing that one look and telling itself to calm down.
By the time three o’clock rolls around, my stomach is a knot.
Izzy is one of the last to leave that day. When Tony arrives, he looks like he’s slept but not enough. There’s a nervousness about him I haven’t seen before.
“Hey,” he says, hovering in the doorway. “You got a second?”
“Of course,” I say. My hands are suddenly very interested in tidying the already-tidy block shelf.
Isabelle is packing her backpack, narrating every item she puts inside. “Lunch box, water bottle, art, potato dragon…”
Tony waits until she’s distracted, zipping her bag, then steps closer to me. Not too close. Just… closer than usual.
“So,” he says quietly. “I, uh. Thought a lot. On tour. About… stuff.”
“Stuff,” I repeat, trying to sound casual while my pulse hammers.
“Yeah,” he says. “About how my life is basically three things right now: Izzy, music, and… this room.”
He gestures vaguely to the classroom. “Which, don’t get me wrong, is a solid top three. But it made me realize there’s kind of a you-shaped… space in there too. And I wasn’t sure if I was just… losing it in a hotel room or if that was… real.”
My brain short-circuits. “A… me-shaped space?”
He winces. “That sounded better in my head. What I mean is—”
“Daddy!” Isabelle cuts in, running over to him. She thrusts a new drawing into his hand. “Look! It’s you and me, and Teacher and a dragon. We’re all holding hands.”
I stare at the paper. It’s a swirl of bright colors and uneven stick figures, but the shapes are clear. Three figures: one tall, one small, one somewhere in between. A dragon next to us, smiling. All our hands are linked.
Tony looks at the drawing. Then at me. Then back to the drawing board.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “Exactly that.”
He crouches to Isabelle’s level. “Hey, Bug. Can you go put your lunch box back in your backpack for me? I think it fell out.”
“It didn’t,” she says skeptically.
“Can you check anyway?” he asks, pleading with his eyes.
She rolls her eyes in a very dramatic way, but obeys.
He straightens and looks at me again.
“I know this is… complicated,” he says quietly. “I’m a single dad. I have a weird job. I have, like, five million air miles and zero idea how to be a normal human being in a relationship. But I also know that when I’m here, watching you with her, or when I’m out there, wishing I was here… you’re always… there. In my head. In a good way. And I was wondering if maybe, when I’m not just Isabelle’s dad and you’re not just her teacher, if you’d ever… want to get coffee. With me. Like two adults who are allowed to talk about things that aren’t snack time and dragons.”
My heart is pounding so hard it’s almost painful.
“Tony,” I say, because it feels too impersonal to just nod at him when he’s being this open.
“I know the rules,” he adds quickly. “I’m not asking to cross any lines while she’s in your class. I’d never… I don’t want to mess this up for her. Or for you. I just… wanted you to know that when the time is right, whenever that is… I’d like a chance. To show up. For more than just drop-off and pick-up.”
There’s a long moment where the sounds of the classroom fade into a dull hum. It’s just his eyes, earnest and scared and hopeful all at once, and my own heart doing its best impression of a drum solo.
I think about all of it. His soft voice at drop-off. The way he looks at his daughter is like she hung the moon. The way he brings me coffee without making a big deal out of it. The way he cries over her paintings in tiny chairs. The way my day feels different when I know I’ll see him, even for two minutes.
I think about my couch, and Netflix, and the ache I didn’t want to name.
“Okay,” I say quietly. “When the time is right… I’d like that too.”
Relief floods his face, bright and unguarded.
“Yeah?” he asks, like he needs to hear it twice.
We both smile. It feels like standing at the edge of something, but for once, I’m not terrified of falling.
“Daddy, there’s no lunch box,” Isabelle announces, marching back over. “It was a trick.”
“You caught me,” he says, scooping her up. He looks at me over her shoulder, something warm and steady in his gaze.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I tell them.
“See you tomorrow,” he replies.
As they leave, Isabelle waves her dragon painting over her head. “Bye, Teacher!” she calls. “Don’t forget us!”
And for the first time, I realize it’s not just a promise to her.
It’s a promise to myself, too.
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