AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“The pretty one?”
I grinned. This was the perfect kid. “You’re damn right.” I stopped myself. “Wait—sorry. You’re right. Not damn right. Don’t repeat that.” I shook my head. “Look, I need you to say something when she comes back around, okay? You say it, you get fifty bucks.”
The kid nodded even harder. “I’m Bruce.”
“Cool. I didn’t ask for your life’s story, kid.” I thumbed back towards Piper. “When she comes around, all I need you to say is that I seem like a great guy. Got it? Or a great man. And use a scrabble word like she would. Stupendous or something. This will sound great coming from you. I think she’s going to like a child’s opinion.”
Bruce stared at me. “What?”
“Just try to say it, make it sound natural.”
For a moment, the kid scrunched up his features, and he thought about it, still petting the goat. Slowly, he nodded. “I got it.”
“Let’s hear it.”
He took a deep breath. “He is a—”
“Louder, kid,” I urged. “We’re not talking to the geese.”
“Okay.” Bruce took a deep breath and gestured to me. “This is—uh—this is a man-child—”
“What?” I demanded.
“I forgot the rest of the words,” he admitted.
“That wasn’t even the right way to say the words!” I ran my hand over my face. “Dude, what was that?”
“You’re doing it wrong, Bruce,” a little girl cut in, half a head taller than him. She fluffed out her dress. “I know what you want him to say and I want to be an actress and I should be the one who says it.”
With a glance over my shoulder, I could see Piper making her way back to the petting zoo.
Shit.
“Okay, you say it, you get fifty bucks,” I agreed.
She took a long time to clear her throat, and for some random reason, spoke in a British accent when she finally got the words out. “This is a stupid man-child—”
I bit back a curse. “Stupendous. I said stupendous.”
“I don’t know what that means,” she told me. “I thought it meant stupid.”
“You know what?” I fished out two fifties and shoved them in the kids’ hands. “Take this and just don’t say anything.”
Both swindlers beamed at me and walked over to the piglets while I muttered under my breath, rubbing my temples. I just lost a hundred bucks to two kids who called me a man-child. I made my way back to the fence, stepping over the kids, determined to duck under my boots.
“This is why I don’t want kids,” I muttered. “Unbelievable.”
“Hey.” Piper stepped up to the fence and held out the lemonade for me. “Did I just see you give kids some money?”
I took a long drink. “They scammed the fuck out of me.”
“Oh, yeah.” A giggle burst out of her. “Kids will do that.”
We traded places, and I hung on the outside while Piper rested against the fence post, watching over the dozen or so kids that wandered around and annoyed the animals.
And Piper was so happy. For no reason.
“You want some of these?” I asked, passing the lemonade back to her.
