Page 42 of How Sweet It Is

“Hunting for bears.”

“Ah, I see,” I say, biting back a laugh. “Did you find any?”

“Not yet.”

My DoorDash arrives, and I help Amelia set the table.

Skyler crawls out to see what kind of food I bought. She wrinkles her nose as I put some on a paper plate for her. “I don’t like that kind of food,” she announces.

Amelia elbows me. “I told you,” she whispers.

“Try it, Little Pup.” I scoop some onto her fork.

Skyler takes a bite then spits it out. “It’s too hot. I don’t like it.”

I’ve never seen her spit out anything Tobias gives her. Although, to be honest, I’ve been working a lot, or away at school, so I guess I haven’t spent a ton of time with her other than for Sunday dinners. “What don’t you like about it?”

“Can I have cheese pizza?” she asks, ignoring my question.

Amelia snickers. “We can order her some, can’t we?”

“All right,” I say, sighing. “I’ll order. I just didn’t want to get pizza because the place here doesn’t have any gluten-free options, and when I googled, it said that curry didn’t have any gluten in it.”

Amelia touches my arm. “That was very kind of you. But you got me gluten-free pizza the other night. Where did that come from?”

“The mainland.”

“You went all the way to the mainland to get me pizza that night?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

Amelia blinks at me, and I can tell she’s holding back emotion. “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”

Amelia and I eat the curry and rice, which is delicious. I pop the mango sticky rice into the fridge for later. After the cheese pizza arrives, I feed Skyler. Then we go back into the living room. Skyler takes the blankets down and piles them on the floor, with the couch cushions. “Now let’s play princess.”

“Okay,” Amelia says. “How do we do that?”

“We sit on the blankets and do each other’s hair, like princesses.”

I’ve been itching to see what Amelia looks like with her hair out of that silly bun, so I plop down next to Skyler. “Good idea. Amelia, you sit here. We will make you look like a princess.”

Her hand flies up to her bun. “You want to do my hair?”

“Yes!” Skyler shouts. “Sit down.”

Amelia looks like she’s going to protest and not play along, but Skyler begs her with a really cute “Pleeeeease?” and she can’t refuse.

“I’ll go get my hairbrush.”

“Goodie!” Skyler says.

Amelia comes back into the room and sits down on the blanket in front of me and Skyler. She takes the hair band out, and her hair falls down her back. It’s glossy black, and Skyler grabs the hairbrush.

Skyler tries to brush Amelia’s hair, but she uses too-short strokes, and the hair quickly gets tangled. “Ouch.” Amelia’s hand flies up to her hair.

“Here,” I say, taking the brush and gently helping Skyler untangle the hair. “You need to use longer brush strokes. Like this.”

“You do it, Uncle Levi,” Skyer says, pulling her hand away.

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