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Rae rubs her stomach. “I’m done playing! I’m hungry!”
“I am, too! Landon, are you ready for dinner?”
I’ve been ready since she first agreed to cook me food. “Yeah, whenever you guys are!”
It is agreed that we are all ready to leave the park, so we do. Twenty minutes later, we’re walking through their front door and Rae is telling me to make sure to put my shoes in the corner and not in the doorway, lest Annie trip over them and get crabby.
After Liv and I get a laugh out of that, I ask her, “So, what’s on the menu? Do you need me to help you cook?”
“Oh, oh!” Rae interjects, clasping her hands under her chin as she looks up at me. “Will you color with me? Please?”
Oh, yeah, I remember this whole thing. “Sure, as long as I’m not needed for anything else!”
Rae turns her hopeful eyes on Liv, who tells her, “How about you go wash your hands and we’ll figure out what to do next?”
“Okay, okay, okay!”
Once we’re alone, Liv whispers to me, “I don’t really need any help cooking, but like I said before, if you don’t want to color, that’s totally fine.”
In kind, I say, “Honestly, being a kid for the next half hour would kick ass, but I’ll do whatever you need.”
Amused, she replies in a regular tone, “I just need you to pick between spaghetti and chicken-and-broccoli alfredo.”
I whistle. “You assign me the hardest chores! Do you guys have a preference?”
“Nope. We talked about it in the car on the way home.”
“Well, they both sound great.” I cross my arms and narrow my eyes at her while I think it over. Shortly, I decide, “Spaghetti sounds like the winner to me.”
She gives a nod. “Spaghetti it is, then.”
“Does Rae really eat broccoli, though? I thought all kids hated it.”
“She’ll only eat it if I completely,completelycut off the stalks or whatever. She likes her broccoli dishes to be messes of green specks.”
“You know, that looks really funny in my mind, but it’s probably tedious for you to do.”
She purses her lips together against a smile as color rises in her cheeks. “Well….”
I grin. “What?”
“I…” she covers her mouth with one hand, but I can still tell by her eyes that she’s grinning now, too, “…I don’t mind fixing the broccoli like that for her because….” Laughter bubbles up out of her.
“The suspense,” I groan good-naturedly. “Spit it out!”
“I pretend to be the Broccoli Monster,” she rushes out. “I talk in a deep voice and say things like,‘Me hate broccoli! Me cut off broccoli treetops!’and then I give the stalks to my good friend the trashcan and give the tops to Rae.”
At first, I can only stare at her with my mouth hanging open.
Then I start chortling, and before I know it, I’m laughing so hard my stomach is hurting and my eyes are watering.
She’s laughing, too. Her face is pink and her eyes are bright above her hand.
“Is that stupid?” she barely manages to ask.
“No! It’s freaking amazing!” I hold up a hand and she uncovers her mouth to smack me a high-five. Then I wipe my eyes and fan at my face, which has grown warm. “You know what? I’m changing my mind. I pick alfredo for dinner.”
She gasps. “No! You just want to see all that so you can laugh about it in real time!”
