“That’s because you are a princess,” he says, displaying the dress in front of her in a shimmering waterfall of magenta, pink and gold. “And this is your princess dress.”

Her mouth makes an O and her eyes widen comically. “What?” She looks at me, almost begging for it to be true. I wipe away a tear with my hand and nod.

“It’s all yours, angel.”

She carefully takes the dress from Bram’s hands and examines it. “It must be made out of cotton candy,” she muses, absolutely dazzled by it.

“Can you go try it on yourself or do you need my help?” I ask her, knowing full well she needs my help.

“I can do it!” She runs off to her bedroom.

“Say thank you to Bram!” I yell after her.

“Thank you, Bram!” I hear her say from the other room.

A half an hour later the three of us – with Ava dressed as a princess – are in Bram’s car and we’re making our way down the 101, lucky that the traffic jam is on the other side. The three of us can’t stop smiling and the day is full of such promise that it almost makes me dizzy.

Six hours later, after countless toilet breaks and pit stops and the never ending, “Are we there yet?” we pull off the freeway and onto Katella Avenue. This is Ava’s first glimpse at Disneyland and I’m pointing out the top of the Matterhorn and Space Mountain, the Monorail and the Ferris Wheel and California Screaming Coaster in the distance. She looks absolutely terrified at those rides but I assure her there are many of them that she’ll love and at that she starts boogying in her seat.

Bram didn’t spare any expense and got us a suite at the Disney Grand Californian Lodge, located right in Disney’s California Adventure Park. When I was young the park didn’t even exist, so it was as much fun for me as it was for Ava to step inside the hotel and have everything be brand new. And let’s face it, even if the park was here when I was younger, there was no way we could have afforded to stay there. The same goes for the Disneyland Hotel. Though it’s dated now, it’s still an arm and a leg for a room and when I was young, my parents believed in spending as little on the hotels as possible. Who cares if you were sleeping in a Super 8, as long as you were spending all day and evening at the park.

But Bram cares, and in turn, I care. The beds are clean, fresh and comfortable, the room tastefully decorated in the style of some grand lodge near Yosemite or Mammoth Lakes and we have a view through ponderosa pine and over the bear-shaped rock peak of the Grizzly River Rapids.

I’m pretty much exhausted because I’ve been on a six-hour road trip that has drained me like nothing else but Ava slept for a lot of the drive and now she’s bouncing around the room, losing her goddamn mind.

“No rest for the weary,” I say to Bram, feeling bad since he had to drive the whole way.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, sweetheart, but I have stamina for days.”

That he does. I go about making a day pack for Ava including the right snacks, water, her insulin kit, floppy hat, a spare pair of shoes and, of course, sunscreen. Then we head on out to enjoy the park.

Because we’re tired, we plan on only spending the day in California Adventure. Ava doesn’t know the difference between the two parks, plus there, she got to head into A Bug’s Land and go nuts for hours.

As she does just that, Bram and I hold hands and watch as she plays in the different areas, pretending to be bug-sized, darting in and out of water fountains. When it’s time to go on a ride, she grabs my hand and pulls me onto a Chinese take-out box that zooms around in a circle. Though these aren’t the rides I ever dreamed of riding, she’s having the time of her life. If it was up to me, of course, we’d be hitting up California Screaming and The Tower of Terror, but seeing everything through my little girl’s eyes makes it that much more fun.

We end the day with Bram and I grabbing a beer and wine in the faux vineyard before we hop on the Cars Mater’s tractor ride (which, in hindsight, isn’t the best idea after a drink). Bram and I have been taking turns on and off riding with Ava and though she’s less likely to shriek like a banshee around him, you can still tell she’s having a lot of fun. Scratch that – she’s having the time of her life.

The first two days at Disneyland and California Adventure are pretty much the same. We wake up early and head to the parks, breathing in the smell of churros, popcorn and turkey legs all while the tinkling music fills the air. We hit up all the kiddie rides – for some reason they have the longest lines – and then gorge on whatever food we can find. Somehow we manage to convince Ava to ride the Grizzly River Rapids with us and we all got so completely soaked that she was the only one who ended up loving it. Thankfully, the hot SoCal heat dried us off in minutes.

And of course she meets all her favorite characters including Eyeore and Sleeping Beauty. Bram and I both posed in some of the photos with her, though that wasn’t my doing. He volunteered to be in the pictures and Ava looked like she was over the moon about his wanting to be a part of it.

The truth is, I’m still a bit uneasy about the whole thing and I’m glad that there are pictures of her on her own as well. As much as I’m falling for Bram – and I know I am, I mean how can any woman worth her salt not love this man? – I don’t know what the future brings. I would hate to have us break up, break apart, or whatever it’s called, and then be stuck with these photographs. At least now if that happens, I can burn them, pretend he never existed, and still have photos of Ava left over.

I think Bram can kind of sense my train of thought though, because he’s being extra attentive and yet distant at the same time. I don’t want to bring it up with him the whole, “what is this, what are we?” talk because that tends to ruin the very carefree and fun thing you have, so I don’t.

But that night, as we’re lying in bed together after some slow, passionate love-making, Bram says, “I know why you’re hesitant with me.”

I stiffen, not sure what direction this is going to take. “What do you mean?”

“Oh come on,” he says. “You think I haven’t noticed the way you practically flinched when I asked to be in the photos.”

I take in a deep breath, wishing he didn’t bring it up. “Look, it doesn’t mean anything so don’t take it personally.”

“Well, I am going to take it personally,” he says. He turns over to look at me, propping his head up with his hand. “You don’t want me in the pictures because you still think I’m going to up and leave you, that this is just a bloody fling.”

“No, not exactly,” I say feebly. “It’s just that…okay, maybe it’s a bit of that. But you have to understand that it’s just been me and Ava for a long time.”

“Steph had said you were dating someone else for a while between Phil and…well, this.”

Did she now? It had me wondering how often Steph and him talked.

I sigh. “His name was Ben. He was a nice guy and that was that. Neither of us were really into the relationship.”

“But Ava liked him, didn’t she?”

I give him a steady look. “What makes you say that?”

He shrugs with one shoulder. “Because you seem scared that the same thing will happen again. That Ava will grow attached to me – that even you, yourself, with your damn heart in a cage – will grow attached to me too.”

I feel my skin go hot. “My heart is not in a cage,” I say, defensive. “And Ava has been attached to you from that moment we first went in your car. The damage with her has already been done.”

“But what about the damage with you?” he asks gruffly, peering at me even closer. “And how can what we have be called anything close to damaging?”

He really doesn’t understand, does he?

“Because….” I grapple for words. “Because, when you invite someone in and they leave, they take a part of you with them. It ruins the foundation. Don’t you see? It’s damaging when you pull the bricks out and the whole building collapses.”