She looked around at the mess and noticed Henry, who was grinding the bread into the sofa.
"Don't do that," Tara chided, kneeling down beside him. "Why don't you come with me, and we can find Mace?"
"No!" Henry yelled and pushed her away with the hand that held the bread. I winced as Tara cursed. The nut bread was smeared in her perfect hair.
"Say sorry, Henry," I told him. "That was rude." Inside I was secretly laughing.
"Sorry," he said with a pout.
Tara turned on her heel and left.
"Serves her right," I said.
Henry resumed his yelling and dancing and general destruction. I pulled out my bag of cereal and popped a marshmallow in his mouth. Henry's eyes lit up.
"Yum!" he said. "This is amazing!"
"I know, right? Come to my office. Let's leave all this stuff alone." Henry followed me like a little puppy begging for treats.
I worked on Garrett's presentation slides in between playing seal with Henry. He would jump around and clap, and I would throw a marshmallow at him. Henry would try and catch it in his mouth. We played all afternoon. A generous portion of the bag was gone between me taking handfuls to make it through the presentation and throwing pieces at Henry to keep him occupied.
"Okay here's two," I said, throwing them at him.
"I missed one," he said as he crunched through one of the marshmallows.
"Go find it. We don't want ants," I told him.
Henry scurried around the room, looking for the treat. "I can't find it."
"Keep looking," I said, not looking up from the screen. There was one thing I wanted to finish on the slides.
"Wait, here it is. I found it."
"Don't eat it," I said absently.
"But it's mine."
"I'll trade you for a fresh one," I said, not looking up.
"Okay, but I want a star because this one's a star, and they taste better—oh." Henry went silent. I looked up.
Mace was standing in the doorway. He looked furious.
"Sorry about your office. I'm still trying to do Garrett's slides," I explained.
"Did you feed him sugar?" Mace asked, advancing on me.
"Just a little…" I said, feeling apprehensive about the look on Mace's face.
Henry started spinning around and around. "I'm a rocket ship."
Mace grabbed him and picked him up, inspecting his little brother. "His face is covered in sugar." I looked at Henry. He did look like he'd been in a fight with a clown. He was also looking a little green, which I didn't think had anything to do with the shamrock marshmallows.
"I think you should—" I started to say.
"No." Mace interrupted, walking over to me. "You can't just ignore every instruction I give you and feed him garbage."
I scooted back. Henry was licking his lips. He looked a little drooly. I'd done enough college drinking to know what was coming next.
