#FlashFictionMagic: Your childhood toy

Dave knew the Lite Brite on the kitchen counter could only belong to Fern. Who else would take the time to create a colored light display that read, HOT DAD? As he read the words, Dave felt himself blush.Ten months into this marriage, and he still had to pinch himself to believe this was real life.

When the front door opened and Fern came in from teaching her evening class, Dave busied himself wiping down counters. He grinned when his wife came up and hugged him from behind. He tossed his sponge aside and turned around to face her, leaning down for a kiss. “Hot dad, huh?” he said, hands resting on Fern’s hips.

“Very,” she said, returning his kiss with a longer, slower one. “And a good dad, too.”

Was it Father’s Day? Dave mentally checked the calendar. No, that was next weekend. “What’s with you?” he said gently. “I’ve been a dad the entire time you’ve known me.”

“That’s true,” Fern said. She reached for Dave’s hands and took one in each of hers. “But I haven’t always been a mom.”

Absent-mindedly and out of habit, Dave leaned in for another kiss but stopped before his lips made contact. Fern’s words replayed in his mind, and he swore his heart skipped several beats. Did she just say…? But no. Fern was 43! Wasn’t that basically impossible? Wasn’t it?

He opened his mouth to ask what, exactly, was going on here, but the words died on his lips when Fern reached into her pocket and produced a device that looked a lot like a thermometer, only thinner, with pink accents, and a tiny little window showing not one, but two pink lines.

Dave wanted to speak, to tell her that, if he was dreaming right now, to just forget about waking him up, because this was everything he never knew he always wanted. Instead, though, as words failed him, he pulled Fern in close, held her tight, and watched as that ridiculous Lite Brite message melted away behind the sheen of his happy tears.