The words held foot-stomping attitude, and Zach had visions of another iced-tea catastrophe.
“Dinner’s coming,” Tessa assured her, starting to color again. “Help me color this flower. It’s called a hibiscus. Can you say that?”
“I don’t want dinner,” Sophia complained, looking at Zach and moving Pegasus to the table. “I want ice.”
He sighed and glanced at Tessa. He was seriously screwing this up, and he didn’t know how to slow this downhill slide.
But Tessa kept her gaze on the coloring sheet. “Look at this hummingbird, Sophia.”
Sophia huffed. Her shoulders dropped. “I no want the hummingbird.”
She dropped her hand to the table, her crayon snapped in half, and Sophia crumbled into tears.
Jesus Christ. Zach sat back, at a total loss. But Tessa stayed calm. Not one flicker of distress crossed her face.
“Here you go.” She continued coloring with one hand and offered Sophia a new crayon with the other. “Make his wings green. Do you remember the hummingbird we saw at the Cherry Blossom festival?”
“Yeah…” Sophia’s distress eased, but her little body still rocked with quick breaths, as if on the verge of tears again.
Over a broken crayon and delayed dessert.
“Hey,” he told Tessa softly. “We don’t have to stay—”
“But I want ice,” Sophia whined, her lower lip quivering. Zach was completely lost, and that look on his baby’s face made him feel like he was coming apart at the seams.
“You’ll get ice, sweetheart,” Tessa assured her. “The hummingbird’s wings were such a pretty green.”
Sophia rubbed one fist to her eye. At least he recognized that gesture. Tessa had been right. Sophia was exhausted and needed to go home.
Zach spotted the waitress coming toward their table. Thank God. If they could get through dinner and just get Sophia her shave ice…
“Oh,” the waitress said to Sophia. “You’re doing a beautiful job.”
“Thank you,” she said, still a crayon snap away from meltdown.
The waitress set down their orders, placing Sophia’s cheese quesadilla down last, and took their glasses to refill their drinks.
Tessa moved Pegasus toward Zach and positioned Sophia’s plate closer to her, then pulled apart the quesadilla triangles. She picked up one, blew on it, and then offered it to Sophia.
“No want quesilla.” The way she’d combined the first and last half of the word quesadilla would have been freaking adorable if she hadn’t then crossed her arms on the table, dropped her head against Pegasus, and started sobbing.
Panic struck Zach’s chest like lightning. He sat forward with the instinct to comfort Sophia, but didn’t know how. When his gaze darted to Tessa, her shoulders slumped, her eyes rolled to the ceiling, and she started counting.
“One…” she said calmly even though the expression on her face was barely restrained exasperation.
“No, Mommy,” Sophia said without picking up her head. “No ‘one.’”
“Two…” Tessa continued.
Zach leaned toward her, panicked over what would happen at “three.” “We can go—”
But his whisper was cut off by Tessa’s “Three.”
Sophia was still fussing, rolling her head back and forth on her arms. Tessa sighed and looked at Zach. Zach held his breath.
“We’ll be back when Sophia calms—”
“No!” Sophia lifted her head and yelled. Her face scrunched and red with anger. “No, Mommy.”