✅1️⃣ Trusting the Babysitter

Chapter 19 - Your Choice

"What do you want for lunch?" Adam asked. It wasn't an easy question. There was a lot of food available, from sandwiches to microwave meals. And there was a small stack of menus available for delivery, if Adam thought it was reasonable to spend some of the cash from the counter. But Claudia was finding it hard to state a preference now. Not just because she wanted to get back to the tournament as quickly as possible, and didn't really care what form lunch took as long as it was quick. The big problem today was that she wasn't allowed to ask for anything, which made it very difficult to express herself. And she couldn't tell him that there was a problem either, because of more restrictions on what she was allowed to say.

She looked at the menus, and the refrigerator. She wanted to answer quickly, because music coming from the lounge told her that Lorelei had probably just finished whatever she was watching, and might be coming to torment them more in a few seconds. But again, she didn't know how to say what was on her mind without asking for anything or saying that she was worried. She had to wait for Adam to work it out, and perhaps it wasn't quite as obvious as she might have thought.

"How about pizza?" he suggested, and Claudia nodded quickly. "Microwave pizza? I mean, they taste like cardboard sometimes, but something you can eat with your fingers between bouts is–"

"No!" the banshee wail from the doorway interrupted Claudia's frantic nodding. "No she's a baby. Babies aren't allowed to eat pizza and cake. You got to feed her, like a little baby. Look, we got baby food!"

Adam looked around, and saw Lorelei taking a jar out of the cupboard. He was a little relieved to find that she hadn't actually found baby food, which would undoubtedly have been past its use-by date if it had been there since the younger sister had needed someone to feed her. But it could have been close enough; it was some kind of sauce that was clearly supposed to have other ingredients added before serving. Poured over meat, or mixed in with pasta, he wasn't sure. But he would admit that it looked like the kind of mush a baby with no teeth might eat, and he couldn't think of any real argument against it.

He nodded and walked over to take the jar, then started reading the label as he came back over to Claudia.

"We got some tasty nums for a little baby girl here," he said, hoping he could encourage her. "Is this okay, sweetie? Will you eat your lunch like a good girl?" She nodded, and he thought he might have seen the faintest trace of a smile. Claudia wasn't a baby, and she knew that. But she also knew that the simplest way out of this situation was to put up with anything that wasn't particularly unpleasant, until the drugs wore off or her little sister lost interest.

There was still work to be done. He couldn't warm up a microwave pizza for Claudia, and her baby food substitute didn't have heating instructions that he could rely on. It was supposed to be poured over a couple of chicken breasts, and then baked in the oven. But he could see that it was mostly cream based, with small pieces of vegetables, cheese, ham, and mushrooms. He didn't want to serve meat cold, that could be unsanitary, so he decanted about half of the jar into a small jug and put it into the microwave for one minute at a time.

"Hey I need food too!" Lorelei squawked when she realised that he was just doing what she had said. "You said there's pizza!"

"Okay, do you want me to do yours first or warm this up for your little sister? You know little babies get cranky when they're hungry, I don't want her throwing a tantrum."

"Uhh..." Finally, after taking charge and getting everything she wanted, Lorelei seemed to be at a loss. Adam could guess the thoughts behind her eyes, the things she didn't want to say out loud. Wondering if he was playing along like she'd asked, or taking the piss. It must be hard to tell, especially for someone with very little experience of adult social interactions. She'd said she was the big sister, so he talked to her like she would an adult. It just made sense, and if she complained that would mean she wasn't the big girl she claimed. She didn't want to admit that Claudia was mature enough to wait for her dinner, and she knew she would be embarrassed again if she acted in a way he'd just attributed to babies. But he hadn't said she was a baby, he'd been talking about her sister.

"Yeah," she eventually barked. "Do a pizza for me and baby food for her. You can wait."

Adam didn't have a clever answer for that, because he knew that it was at least possible to follow the order he'd been given. He lifted Claudia's lunch out of the microwave, and put in a small frozen pizza on a plate. While it was buzzing away, he tested the temperature of the sauce. It was still cold, and would probably be very unpleasant. But it was getting warmer, and he hoped that it would taste okay even if it was deficient in nutritional value and texture. As soon as the microwave pinged he stuck the jug back in, and set about removing the last pieces of packaging from the pizza. The brand came with a weird little cardboard stand to hold it a fraction of an inch above the plate for the first half of the heating time, which Adam didn't really see the point of but it was no effort to do it right. And that meant that he could let Claudia's food heat while he was doing something with the pizza, heading off any complaints that he was taking too long. Then the pizza was cooking again while he stirred the sauce, both of the girls looking at him with some kind of amusement.

Adam didn't quite see the joke. He'd been given something to do and he was doing it, in the most efficient way possible. Maybe it wasn't something that most of the guys he knew from school would be able to do – or any of them, now he thought about it – but Adam had always believed that anything worth doing was worth doing properly. Certainly, a guy his age juggling two meals at once to please two babies shouldn't be out of the ordinary. Or if it was, it would be nothing compared to the sight of a small child jumping up and down and claiming to be an adult, while her big sister stood by in a skirt that wasn't quite long enough to conceal the bulk of an adult diaper.

Finally the pizza was done, and he put it carefully on the table in front of Lorelei. She grabbed for it, and squeaked a little as she realised the plate was hot, but she couldn't complain without stepping outside her own game of pretending to be the big kid. She put it down again and stared angrily at the food, clearly realising that it was her that had done something silly and childish. As she sulked silently, Adam could hope that all he had to do now was feed Claudia a small jug of almost-food, and then they could get back to the game.