Done Adulting Vol. 2 Ch. 10 (Patreon)

“It’s supposed to stop raining tomorrow,” Becky said hopefully. It was a deluge outside. “Come sit with me.” Jamie got down off the chair he was standing, looking outside at the rain. He could hardly see the beach. It wasn’t a bad storm. Just a lot of water falling from the sky. Manda flipped off the TV.

“Let’s play a game,” Manda suggested. She opened a cabinet under the TV where there were cards and board games. Jamie was ambivalent about playing games with bigs as it reminded him they were smarter than him, and when they played games more like human ones, he always wondered if they were playing down to his level. “Help me pick one out.”

But Jamie was bored and would do anything other than watch more TV or the rain.

“How about this,” Jamie said as he pointed to a colorful box that was too big for him to hold. Amanda slid it out from the stack.

“Okay. Mom, gonna play with us?”

“Sure.” They moved the coffee table aside and set the game up on the floor.

“What do you want to be, Jamie?”

He picked out his piece. “I’ll be the bird. Do you know how to play this?”

“Yeah. We used to play it at school on rainy days,” Manda told him, “when we couldn’t go outside at recess.”

The goal was to get from the starting square in the Forest of Cacophony to the ending square in the Valley of Bali by collecting as many riding goats as you could, but to get a goat you had to buy it with money earned through usury, lending to the toadstools who were notorious high graders and con artists.

Jamie got lost within a minute, and Becky moved over to help him. Manda had tried to teach him some of the math skills that a lot of big games were based on, but he never could grasp quantum geometry or spheroid counting, let alone do it in his head. Still, he tried, and Becky helped him along. He was happy to sit in her lap and eat snacks, though he did feel a nagging guilt at having contributed to so few goat purchases, and the one he did get turned out to be a mowing goat, unsuitable for riding. It gave out in the Desert of Pendants, and they’d lost whole turn.

“So this game is fun, huh,” he asked when he’d lost.

“Well, I guess for bigs. Wanna find another one? They have more up at the lodge,” Manda suggested, “probably some from your world.”

“That’s okay.”

“How about …” Amanda thought on it. “we could put on a play.” Make believe wasn’t really Jamie’s thing.

“Color?” Done a lot of coloring lately.

“Try to take over the world?” Too tiring.

“Build a fort out of cushions?”

“Okay!” Jamie liked building forts. He liked it as a kid, making his own space, and in a world where everything was oversized, it was fun to make little shelters where he fit and they didn’t. He pulled the cushions off the couches and chairs, then the throw pillows, then the pillows from the beds. Becky watched from the kitchen table as she sat with a book.

“Now we test its durability,” Manda said playfully. Jamie had mixed feelings about testing its durability. She picked up a throw pillow and threw at the cushion that was forming a roof over Jamie’s head. It bounced off.

“Ha,” Jamie crowed. “Still standing!” Manda tried again with the same result. She may have known tactile number sequences, but she didn’t know the first thing about pillow fort siege tactics.

“Maybe aim for a corner,” Jamie said. After all, Becky had helped him play their game. It was only fair to help her. Manda’s throw toppled a cushion. Her next knocked another pillow off. The one after that made a lamp clatter to the floor. Fortunately, it didn’t break.

“I don’t think that’s part of the fort, Amanda,” Becky scolded her daughter.

“Sorry,” she apologized with a red face as she righted the lamp.

“Hehehehehe,” Jamie tried to quietly laugh in his still-standing fort.

“What are you laughing at, stink rat,” Manda shot back.

“You got in trouble. Hehehehe.”

“O yeah?”

“Yeah!” The gauntlet thrown, Amanda tore the roof off the fort in a giant’s rage and plucked the little hero defender from his place in the battlements.

“No fair,” our hero pleaded.

“Tough cookies,” the young she-giant roared as she flipped him belly up, pulled his shirt out of the way, and descended on his tummy with raspberries and gobbles.

“Eeeeeee,” the boy squealed, “hehehehe. You’re so mean! Eeeee!”

The giant paused and looked at the older giant. “Ya wanna get in on this,” she asked, “There’s still plenty left over here,” she said as she poked a finger into the hero’s armpit. He tried and failed to escape its grip.

“I think,” Becky said as she turned her book over, “that the two of you are on the road to trouble this afternoon if you don’t go burn off some energy. Why don’t you go play outside?”

“It’s raining,” Jamie said as Manda put him into his more customary position on her hip.

“So? It’s not cold.”

He looked at Manda, who shrugged. “I’m game.” In five minutes, they were both changed into their swimsuits and out the door, leaving a sighing, happy Becky behind with her book and her quiet.

The pair walked to the field behind of the lodge, a virtual lake. “What do we do,” Amanda asked.

“Slip and slide,” Jamie answered with a delighted smile on his face. He’d seen plenty of drunk frat boys do it in college but had always been too bashful to do it himself.

“Do what?” Instead of answering, Jamie took off at the highest speed he could without falling and then threw himself forward on his chest, plowing up water and mud as he glided across the field. Amanda laughed when he sat up and turned around sputtering.

“Your turn,” he shouted.

“Okay,” she said nervously, “here I come.” The heavier Amanda didn’t slide as far, but she plowed up twice as much mud. Jamie slid up to her, spraying her with water.

“Wanna go again,” he asked. Amanda got up and did a better job of it that time. Jamie did it on his butt, and Amanda tried to do the same with worse results.

Looking around to be sure he wasn’t seen, though by who he didn’t know, Jamie scooped up a handful of mud. He slung it at her, hitting her square in the back.

“O, you are so dead!” She was on her feet and chasing him.

He took off and didn’t make it far, slipping and falling. Manda was standing over him before he could get up. She planted a handful of mud directly on top his head. He grimaced while she did it, then smiled, wiped off as much as he could, and tossed it weakly as her belly. She sat down next to him, picked up some more, and smeared it on his chest.

Not to be outdone, Jamie stood up, gathered some more, and feinted toward Manda’s back, then quickly pulled back her swim suit with his right hand and dropped the mud in with his left.

“Hey!” Manda wasn’t expecting that. Manda spun and got an arm around Jamie, pulled him back, and gently lowered him to the ground, ready to pin him there and resume feasting on his belly. She changed her mind when she saw how much mud she’d need to eat, and changed her tactics with a shout of “Pink belly!”

“Noooo,” Jamie squealed, but he couldn’t fight her off as she slapped, not too hard, his tummy until she was sure he knew he had lost the fight. She let him up. He inspected his stomach.

“This is an odd sensation,” Manda said when she sat down next to him.

“We may … and I’m not saying it was our fault,” Jamie said, “have gone a bit too far.”

“Perhaps.”

“Think Mom will be mad?”

“Not if we wash off in the water first.” They headed back toward their bungalow and the beach in back.

Or washed most of it off. They came back around to the front of the bungalow and opened the door, not stepping in.

“Mom,” Amanda called. “Could you please bring us some towels?”

“Coming.” Manda and Jamie waited for her reaction. “What the … What happened!?!”

“It was a big dog, Mom,” Jamie said. “It knocked us down.” He couldn’t even try to keep a straight face. Amanda bit her lip and turned red from the effort of holding in her laughter.

“Well,” Becky said, “I hope the “dog” got it out of your system.” She shook her head and smiled to herself, handing over the towels. “I swear,” she said as she handed one to Manda, “sometimes I think I have two littles.”

“We’ll take that a compliment,” Manda replied

“Littles are delightful creatures,” Jamie added.

Becky nodded. “Why don’t you go give him a bath and I’ll put the living room back together?”

Manda felt a little more sheepish now. “We’ll be clean and warm in no time.” Manda picked up Jamie so only one of them would track water through the house and carried him to the bathroom off her suite.

“Can I take a bath with you,” she asked.

“Sure.” He took baths with Becky sometimes. She set him on the lid of the toilet. “Wait right here.” She came back in a minute with some of his bath toys.

“Thanks,” he giggled. Manda used the dirty towels to clean them off more before getting into the warm tub, putting Jamie in front of her. The hot water felt good after the cool rain.

“Turn around,” she instructed Jamie. He did, and she went to work washing him off, then washed herself and pulled the plug.

“I’m cold,” Jamie complained. Manda put an arm around him and pulled him closer, and when the tub was drained she filled it again with clean, hot water.

Jamie turned back around and picked his toy boat up off the edge of the tub. He gave it a tap and sent it skittering across the water toward Amanda. She sent it back.

“That was fun,” he said. “The mud.”

“I liked it. Probably shouldn’t make a habit of it. We probably tore up that field pretty good.”

Jamie shrugged. “It’s a big field.” He sent the boat back. “We’re still gonna take vacations together, right?”

“Of course we are. Forever.”

“Can Kazoozle come sometimes?”

“I don’t see why not. In fact, why don’t we do that this summer?”

“Take him somewhere?”

“Well, maybe, but I meant the two of us. We could go somewhere, just the two of us, for a couple days.”

“Like where?”

“I don’t know.” Somewhere almost free, she knew. “Camping, maybe.”

“I’ve never been camping.”

“Wanna try it? I’ve been once.”

“I think I’d like that.”

“Let’s plan on it.” She took a rubber ball from the floor. “Wanna test the durability of that boat?”

“No!”

“Really?”

“Yes! You’ll sink it.”

“Only if it’s not durable,” she said with a wink.

“I think I’m ready to get out actually.” He looked at his pruned fingers.

“Preference for the rest of the day’s attire,” she asked as she lifted the plug again and pulled a clean towel down from the bar.

“Something fuzzy.”

“You’re in luck! We have several choices in fuzzy to pick from.”