Picturesque

Chapter 29: Friends

The days were sweeter than they had ever been because I spent them with Jo. We grew naïve in our passion.

A humid afternoon, I was sat on the living room floor with Holly and Judd. I'd begun to notice how parentless they were, or at least motherless. I wasn't sure what Katie did in her spare time, but she spent it as far away from the children as possible. Marty would check in throughout the day, but the only other sign he was home was his distant booming laughter when he was on a phone call. The kids seemed used to it, but sometimes they would look around the room hoping one of them was there. I tried my best to distract them.

We were playing with building blocks. Marty had just bought them a new set, with many different sizes and colors. Judd was trying to build a horse, while Holly was just putting random pieces together to make some sort of structure.

"A blue one," she commanded, pointing to the bag of blocks. "A big one."

Following her bossy command, I reached into the bag and took out a big blue one, handing it to her clumsy hands. She put the block on top of the structure she was making. Between her commands, I was making my own structure. It was supposed to look like a house.

"What's that?" she asked, pointing to what I was building.

"A house," I replied, putting a red block on top as a chimney. "What are you making?"

"I don't know!" she giggled sweetly as she accidentally hit her structure, causing half of it to tumble apart. A few of the blocks rolled over to Judd who was super concentrated on his horse.

"Hey!" he exclaimed when the block rolled under his horses legs, flicking it back over to Holly's pile. "Leave Lucky alone."

"That's not Lucky," Holly said with a sassy whip of her head. "Lucky is brown, idiot."

I covered my mouth to keep myself from laughing at how boldly she called Judd an idiot. It was true, because the real Lucky was brown and this horse was multi-colored.

"Shut up!" he yelled, his face getting a little red. "You don't even know what you're building."

"A house, idiot!"

"Stop calling me that!" He reached his leg across and kicked her foot, and Holly shuffled backwards and grabbed her foot, her face turning red as she started to cry.

"Judd," I reprimanded him, placing my arms around Holly when she turned to me and reached for me. "You didn't need to kick her."

"Yeah, she sure didn't shut up, did she?" he grumbled as he turned his focus back to his horse.

"Judd, you little twerp," Jo said as she walked into the room, holding a tray of lemonade. She had went to get some for us and the kids.

"She started it!" Judd exclaimed innocently, looking scared to see that Jo had seen what he did. "She threw a block at me."

"It was an accident," I gently corrected him.

"Here, Holly girl," Jo softly said, leaning down and handing one glass of lemonade to Holly who was sniffling in my arms, her arms clutched tightly around my neck. Holly looked at Jo and the lemonade, slowly letting go of me and crawling over to take the glass.

"Thank you," she softly said as she held the glass that was a little too big for her, taking a clumsy sip that left some of the lemonade spilling down her chin.

"Here's yours, you wild animal," Jo said, handing a glass down to Judd who glared at her but reached up for the glass, until Jo quickly moved it out of his reach. "Apologize for kicking her."

"Why?!" he exclaimed, but Jo was glaring down at him threateningly, and he folded under her stare, looking over at Holly who was rather deviously eyeing him from over her glass. "I'm sorry for kicking you," he grumbled, his face turning red again.