Page 110 of Family Bonds- Kelsey & Van

“Didn’t you say you had things to do today? Errands or something?”

“I need to do laundry and get some groceries. I’m lucky I’ve got bread and milk. And now you’re trying to change the subject and I’ll let you.”

“Why don’t you go do that and I’ll stay here with Frankie?” he said. “Unless you want me to go home.”

“Nope,” she said. “You can stay. What a sweet offer. If you don’t mind, I’ll start laundry now and run out. Frankie will mostly sleep. He didn’t sleep well last night. He needs his beauty rest.”

“I’m going to chill out. Maybe I’ll take a nap too.”

She squinted one eye at him. “Can you be waiting for me in bed naked when I get home?”

He laughed. She really did have a way of lightening the mood.

“I’ll think about it.”

But twenty minutes later, he wasn’t doing a lot of relaxing as he was trying to pull the burdock out of Frankie’s hair.

The dog started to run laps in the yard and went into some bushes to get the ball that he’d thrown.

He’d heard the yelp and went running and saw the tangled mess in the hair.

No amount of gently pulling got it out.

The last thing he wanted to do was cut it.

He ran the tub knowing the dog liked baths.

“Do you want to play in the tub?” he asked the puppy who was looking panicked over having something attached to its fur. He felt like a fool talking like this, but it was a shitty feeling the puppy was scared on his watch.

When the water was filled up enough, he picked Frankie up and put him in, but the puppy wanted nothing to do with it.

He was the one starting to panic and more so when he heard Kelsey moving around the kitchen and calling their names.

His first time babysitting and he’d made a mess of it.

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LOOK BACK AT AND LAUGH

“What’s going on in here?”

“Just me trying to salvage some of my dignity.”

“Are you bathing Frankie?” She moved into the bathroom to see her puppy shivering with the water up to his belly. Her hand went in and felt it. “It’s cold.”

“I didn’t want to burn him,” he said. “I take a shower with it like this.”

“He doesn’t like the cold,” she said. She picked her puppy up and saw the hair all tangled up in his ear, almost sticking to his side. It had to be pulling too. “Oh, baby boy. What happened to you?”

“I couldn’t get it out,” he said. “I tried. He was crying and wouldn’t sit still. I thought you’d kill me if I cut it out. I thought the water could do it.”

“Maybe it would,” she said. “If you were bathing him the way he was used to it.”

“I don’t know how he gets a bath,” he said.

“In the sink,” she said. “He’s tiny yet. The tub is probably scaring him more. I’m surprised he didn’t piss in it.”

“He probably did,” he said. “I felt it get warm for a minute and told myself it was just a hot spot of the water.”

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