Page 49 of Manny Included

By way of an answer, he roared at Pete.

“Now you covered in pink cotton candy!”Merida crowed.“We fwiendly dragons!”

“Yay!”Pete scooped up Flynn.“We’re friendly dragons, baby boy!Yay!”

Flynn threw his arms up.“YAY!”

Bay laughed and stood, flying Merida around too, making her squeal with happiness.

Pete glanced over at him, gaze warm and happy.“Good morning, Bay.”

“Morning.”He smiled back.“We’ve got grocery shopping this morning, right?”

Pete nodded and flew Flynn over to see them.“We do have a very exciting day ahead of us.Thought maybe we could all go have lunch, too, and enjoy the day.Pretty soon, we’ll have all four of them home during the day all day long.We should get our two-on-two time while we can.”

Bay thought it was an improvement that his first reaction to the mention of all four kids home all day long was not panic.Or at least not much panic.

“Lunch sounds good.”He’d text Will and tell him to move any meetings he had to later this afternoon.

“Yeah, so do you need to work this morning to make up for it?”Pete shrugged, pinked.“If you’re free, we can hang out.”

He liked that Pete wanted to spend time with him.“I just need to send a text and then I’m yours until this afternoon.”

Pete nodded for him.“Come on, Merida.Let’s all sit down here on the floor and draw a picture of your dragon.I’d love to see how she looks.What color do you think we need?”

Merida beamed at him.“Pink!All dwagons are pink!”

Bay felt his eyebrows go up.He was pretty sure that wasn’t quite true, but then they were all pretending to be dragons that roared and blew out pink cotton candy so who was he to judge?

“Can I please be a purple dragon?I feel purple.”

Merida seemed to ponder Pete’s words, then she nodded.“Okay.”

“I’ll be blue, if we can make Flynn orange,” Bay suggested.“Let them all be different colors of the rainbow.”Rainbows were even better than pink, right?

“Oh…” Her eyes went huge.“Wainbows!Bay!Wainbows!”

Pete started giggling, his eyes dancing.

“Yes, I think rainbows would be even better than pink.”He stuck his tongue out at Pete.

“I love rainbows.”Pete plopped down on the floor and grabbed the crayons.

Somehow this did not surprise Bay in the least.

He watched Pete and Merida color, grinning at the bizarrely shaped dragon Merida was making.

He did his texts, reorganizing his day.

“Would Will like to come to lunch?”

He blinked up at Pete, frowning.“What?”

“Will?Would he like to join us?He’s been very kind.”

“Oh.Sure, I can ask him.”It just hadn’t occured to him.He supposed that made him a bad person.He added a to his text chain.

Will sent back.