I laughed again, which seemed to be something I would be doing a lot around this kid, and said, “Yeah, that would be pretty gross.” She dug around in one of the kitchen cabinets and pulled out two small, pink, plastic plates. She pretended to take a pizza out of the oven and slice it before putting fake slices on the plates. She handed one to me and climbed up on the bed beside me, looking at my face expectantly. I acted like I was taking a bite before I fell back on the bed dramatically and said, “Oh, Carrie! That is the best pizza in the history of the world!”

She giggled, and I thought it was just about the best sound I had ever heard in my life. “You’re silly, Daddy.” My heart swelled at the easy way Daddy rolled off her tongue, and I sat back up and “finished” my pizza.

“Hey, would you like to go out with me for mushroom pizza one night?” I asked her on a whim. “We can order a large and eat the whole thing by ourselves.”

“Like a date?”

“Heck yeah, like a date,” I said, getting excited about the idea.

“Can we go to Chuck E. Cheese?” she asked, and my excitement waned just a bit. Wasn’t that the place with the big singing rat and lots of games and shit? Hmmmm. I had never been there, but it could be something fun we could do together.

“Sure thing, baby girl. Chuck E. Cheese, it is.” I held out my fist, and she tapped it with her tiny one, and then it was official. I had a date with my daughter. “So, I was thinking that maybe you and me and Mommy could do something fun together today. Would that be okay?”

She clapped her hands and said, “Oh, can we go to the zoo?” Her eyes were bright and animated, and if she had asked me to take her to the moon, I would have been on the phone with Elon Musk booking a goddamn spaceship for the weekend. “I’ve been to the zoo in California, but not here. Mommy said there’s a good one in Fort Somethinnnnnng?”

“Fort Worth?” I supplied, and she nodded eagerly. “Okay, Fort Worth Zoo, here we come!”

“Coolness!” Carrie said, hopping off the bed and putting our plates in the sink. “Let’s go tell Mommy.” She hauled ass down the stairs at a speed that almost gave me a stroke. “Mom!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Daddy says we can go to the zoo. Is that okay, huh? Can we, pleeeease?”

Blaire looked at me, amused, and asked, “You want to go to the zoo?”

“Sure,” I said, shrugging easily. “I was thinking I might feed Carrie to the giraffes.”

The kid gave me a long-suffering sigh and said, “Giraffes don’t eat meat, Daddy. They’re hermivores.”