“Dad, we ate three pizzas. Can we go play now?” Eddie says.
I swing my gaze back to my boys. “Each?”
“Together,” Charlie answers.
“I tried anchovies and didn’t like them,” Eddie informs me.
“I could like them if I tried them two more times.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“It’s true! I didn’t almost puke like you did. I think I like the salt. I just need to grow into it a little more.”
“You don’t have to find gross things to like.”
“Griff, how are your anchovies?” Bea asks.
He turns to stare at her in horror. “Gross. Who eats anchovies?”
“I do, dummy,” Ryker replies.
“I don’t, but I do sneak them onto Griff’s pizza sometimes,” Hudson announces.
Lana makes eye contact with me. “And now I’m glad we only have two.”
“Indeed,” I agree.
Bea giggles.
I glance at Butch, who rises.
He and Pinky have both finished their pizza.
“Got ’em, boss,” he says to me.
“You may go and play,” I tell the boys.
Lana pushes her chair back. “I think I’ll go play too. Show them howCentipedeis done.”
Griff, who’s been leaning back on his rear two chair legs, drops the front two back to the floor as my family races one another to the game room. “That’s still here?”
“They’re never getting rid of it,” Ryker tells him.
“I thought it would’ve died by now.”
“It did,” Daphne says. “Right between you leaving for college and me being disinherited. I bought the new one and set up a trust fund for it in case they ever have to replace it again in the next hundred years.”
Bea’s brothers stare at her in utter reverence.
“In retrospect, I probably should’ve funneled my trust fund into a different trust fund but…eh. Live and learn.”
“Why do some rich people who are complete douchenoodles get to stay rich, but you had to be disinherited when you were doing so much good in the world?” Hudson says to her.
“Excuse you, I’m still very rich. In character.”
Bea’s dimples are putting on quite the show as she watches them all.
I slip my arm around the back of her chair, my fingers brushing her bare shoulder. Vest tops are, indeed, my favorite article of clothing ever. “You’re not friends. You adopted her.”
