Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 63601 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63601 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
“Oh yeah.” Hoping the groceries wouldn’t thaw too much more, I knelt down and patted the floor. “Help me, please.”
He couldn’t do it for himself, but he was a master at helping me with anything and everything. He also had opinions on everything, and he usually had me fighting to keep a straight face. “Yes. Helper.”
My method was to pick them up randomly, working my way across the mess, but Chipmunk groaned. “No, Daddy. Red. Blue. Green.”
Good fucking grief.
There were five different colors of red.
“Show me, Chipmunk.” I was not going to guess the best way to pick up fucking crayons. I would however pretend to be interested and not curse.
I was a good Daddy no matter what he liked to say when he was fucking with me to get his way.
“Red. Red. Red.” His words and actions didn’t match in the slightest but did show me that I was supposed to start with the lightest shade and move to the deeper ones. “Good boy, Daddy.”
Brat.
The way his eyes sparkled said he knew it too.
“Good Daddy, Chipmunk.” Repeating myself got a giggle from him and distracted him enough that I managed to pick up the greens in a completely random order.
As soon as his laughter stopped, though, he looked down at the floor and frowned. “Gone? Red. Blue. Green.”
I played dumb and cocked my head as I ignored the blues and reached for the yellow. “Yes, well, they’re not gone, we’re putting them away in your box.”
The decorative box looked like something he found at one of those big craft stores and held what seemed to be a thousand crayons. “Once we get these picked up, I’ll start making dinner.”
He wanted to let me distract him with dinner, that was clear as he sighed, but he winced as my random crayon sorting drove him too crazy to ignore. “Nuggets…Daddy…colors…”
Chipmunk wasn’t an especially chatty little in his deepest headspace and had mostly descended into looking cute and giving me short responses to questions or just random chatter as we’d colored and watched TV, but he was incredibly easy to read because his face showed everything he was thinking.
And at the moment he was thinking about how to fix my chaos.
I was curious to see what he’d do, but I should’ve known to expect the unexpected when it came to my soup bandit.
“Daddy.” He gave me a big, clearly forced smile and leaned over to kiss my cheek. “Good helper.”
Well, that was one way to get what he wanted.
“Thank you.” Brat. “I think that’s cheating, though.”
He managed not to laugh out loud, but his whole body jerked as he attempted to give me wide eyes and look innocent. “Good boy.”
Chipmunk’s shrug wasn’t believable either and became even less so when he reached for my hand and slowly moved it to a blue crayon. “Thank you, Daddy. Good Daddy.”
And I got another peck.
“Fine.” I wouldn’t be lectured but I’d let him bribe me. “Blue.”
His ridiculously dramatic sigh of relief had me trying not to laugh, but I decided not to fuck with him about the crayons when he started picking them up too.
The overly organized cleanup added time but made him happy, so we eventually got through it and made it to the table with his loot. “There we go.”
“Thank you.” Doing a little wiggle, he sat up straighter and started setting out his toys. “Nugget time.”
“That’s right.” The groceries had to be put away first, but I got the oven preheating as I figured out where everything was and got it organized. “Nuggets and tater tots and…hmm…green beans or cucumbers?”
Thankfully, he had other things he liked to eat that weren’t soup and had been very willing to tell me all the best vegetables to go with chicken nuggets.
“Green.” The way he held up a matching crayon didn’t answer my question, but he didn’t let that stop him from changing the subject. “Dessert?”
Playing dumb, I frowned and started putting away the first bag. “Dessert? I don’t think you have anything.”
Pretending to go over and look in the freezer to search for dessert, I ignored the bags on the table and shrugged. “I don’t see anything.”
He tried to groan and sound like a frustrated old man, but his giggles kept sneaking out. “Brownies, Daddy. Brownies.”
Since he thought I was a few crayons short of a box, he held up the brown one. “Like brown. Brownies.”
“I’m not eating crayons, Chipmunk.” My dry response and eye roll had the giggles escaping. “That’s yucky.”
Collapsing into the table, he laughed like I was hilarious and didn’t stop until I pulled out the box of brownie mix I’d added to the cart…clearly not as secretly as I’d thought. “How did you know I bought dessert?”
Nearly climbing on the table to see the box, his grin was ear to ear. “Sneaky.”