I sighed and got to my feet. “Exactly.”
“I’ll clean up.” Colby shrugged. “We should go to bed anyway.”
Yeah, we should.
I almost voiced it out loud.
What the hell was she doing to me?
“Y-yeah. You’re right…”
“Uncle Rip.” Ben waved a hand in front of my face. “Are you OK? You’re smiling really hard at your coffee.”
“That’s because Uncle Rip loves his coffee.” Colby was a walking zombie and looked over at me like she was plotting something.
I chuckled again.
“Maybe he marry it,” Viera said loudly, causing me to start choking.
“His coffee?” Ben made a face. “Eww, everyone knows you marry a person, duh.”
“You mean!” Viera stuck out her tongue.
I continued sipping my coffee and caught the gross little dragon Viera favored with my right hand as Ben threw it at her head. “No toys at the table,” I reminded them.
“Uhhhh, that’s not fair! She gets her dragon, but I can’t have my Legos?”
I made a grand show of setting the dragon on the chair so it wasn’t actually at the table, then felt the need to tell him Legos were totally different.
Colby and I were convinced they weren’t toys but a government experiment to see how small and painful to step on it could make them before you decided to burn them all.
“Though…,” I added. “Technically a stuffed animal is more or less like a blanket you carry to make you feel better.”
“My Legos make me feel better.” He chomped on a bite of Cheerios as milk dripped down his chin.
Touché.
Colby gave me a look that basically said, Don’t you dare give in, even though he’s super cute.
I smiled.
Her cheeks went bright pink, and I found that I had a really hard time looking away—that is, until Viera let out a shriek. “SPIDER!”
Colby immediately went into action. “Where’s the little bastard?”
“Swear jar!” Ben singsonged.
“Th-here!” Viera jabbed her finger in my direction.
I froze and pointed at myself. “On me?”
“By yours feets!” Viera wailed. “Right in the middle.”
“It’s frozen in fear.” Colby nodded, a crazed look in her blue eyes. “I’m killing it.”
“Just don’t kill me,” I reminded her. “Remember, your survival depends on my ability to breathe.”
“What makes you say that?” Colby said as she grabbed a magazine and rolled it up, then started to slowly make her way toward me.