I think they’re just about the best people I’ve ever met. I like being with them. I wish I could stay with them forever. I hope my parents never come back. I wish they would just let me stay with them always. I’d be very good and never make them angry. I wonder if I told them that if they’d let me stay.
“Merry Christmas!” Kim cheered as she jumped out of bed, shocking the hell out of the other two people sleeping next to her.
“Wha?” Shego asked in a dazed tone as she shot up from her resting place with her hands balled into fists. One would have thought that her pet just called out that they were being robbed from the way that she sat up.
Kim readily grabbed her disoriented mistress and planted a long, passionate kiss on her lips. Todd, who was awake thanks to all the yelling, promptly leaned over and stole two kisses, one on Shego’s cheek and the other on Kim’s cheek. It would seem that he learned that they were the only ones that could kiss each other on the mouth. Kim turned her attention to the boy and placed a big kiss on his cheek. Shego sighed as she decided to join in on the love fest and kissed Todd on the end of his button nose. He blushed, even though he liked the attention.
“Let’s go see what Santa left!” Kim suggested with a grin and she grabbed Todd.
Shego watched the two redheads charge out of the room. She wanted to correct Kim and tell Todd that Santa was certainly not the one that had come through for him. Her mother used to do that with her and her brothers when their father told them that Santa brought something. Isabel always said “To hell he did. Your momma brought you that stuff.” Isabel liked it when credit went where it was due; no way some imaginary fat man was stealing her thunder. Shego could finally totally understand that one.
The pale woman slowly rose out of the bed and went into the living room to see the annoying duo’s reaction. They were cheering because of all of the gifts. They grabbed boxes and started shaking them to find out what they would like to open first. And then Kim stopped suddenly.
“We need a camera,” the hero realized.
“For what?” Shego asked curiously as she flopped down on the sofa. She did not take pictures of anything. She felt that if she could not remember something then she probably did not want to.
“To take pictures!” Kim answered. Why else would they need a camera?
“Why?”
“Because!”
“Can you just open this shit?”
“No!” Kim replied. “Smiley, don’t open anything yet,” she commanded the boy, who listened without question.
Shego sighed. “If I go get a camera, will it shut you up and get you to open something?” she inquired through gritted teeth.
“Yes, ma’am,” Kim answered.
“Fine. Don’t do anything. I’ll be back in ten minutes,” Shego sighed.
Damn bothersome pet, Shego grumbled in her head. She threw on a jacket and went out to buy a camera, despite the fact that she was in her pajamas, it had snowed yesterday, and it was Christmas. She was going to find a camera or die trying if it would shut her pet up. It was not hard to find some of those disposable cameras down the road a bit. Thankfully, some things in Go City stayed open come Hell or high water.
Shego purchased a few of the cameras once she found out that they only took twenty-one pictures. She did not want to hear Kim’s mouth for the rest of the day about pictures. She was not even supposed to be home that day. She had to literally beg Betty, seriously plead, that she be given Christmas off because she did want to be there for Todd’s great Christmas day. She was hoping to just relax and experience the day, watch the boy play with the toys or something, but of course, it had to be annoying from the moment it started.
The green-skinned female returned home with the cameras and sighed as she flopped down onto the sofa. She was glad to see her monsters remained sitting in the living room and had not torn the place apart. She pulled out one of the cameras and took a picture of them when they were not paying her any mind.
“Well, you two, start acting like jackals and open some presents,” Shego commented.
The two redheads grinned and went for their gifts. They began opening boxes while Shego continued to snap pictures when she was not being mauled with hugs from a grateful monster or an overjoyed gremlin. Hugs and kisses seemed to be Shego’s gifts, which were fine by her, but halfway through the presents, Kim went to Shego with an unopened box.
“This one’s for you,” Kim told her mistress.
“I told you not to get me anything,” the moss-hued female replied.
“You tell me a lot of things,” the hero remarked with a smile and a shrug.
Shego sighed and opened the small box. She expected jewelry of some kind because of the size of the box, but she did not see how her pet could afford something like that. She opened the package and found that it was a strange grass green crystal. It was shaped like a teardrop. She turned to her munchkin for an explanation.
“Isn’t it pretty? I got it on my last mission. It’s very rare and it’s supposed to bring good luck,” Kim reported.
“Well, I could definitely use some of that,” Shego quipped.
“I figured you could. It’s called an angel’s tear. Do you like it?” Kim asked with hope in her voice.
Shego nodded as confirmation as she admired the stone. It was a very lovely crystal and it was small enough to wear as a necklace. She usually did not wear jewelry, but she certainly was going to make the exception now. It was on a simple lace, which could be snapped together to secure the gem around her neck. She wasted no time in putting it on.
Kim smiled and then she pointed to herself. The older woman knew exactly what her pet was requesting. Shego complied and gave the little imp a small kiss as thanks. She then allowed Kim to take her picture with the necklace on. She held the gem up for the picture and even smiled a little. Then the two redheads went back to getting into their things.
Shego received a few other gifts, including a framed picture of Kim and Todd together, which they took at the mall. She also got a book that she had been dying to read. Her last gift was a digital camera of all things. She looked at Kim, who shrugged.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” the pale woman inquired.
“Maybe,” Kim replied. They needed pictures, not just of them, but also Todd, who was playing with a plush saber-tooth cat toy. He was having a good time with the toy that was about the size of a toddler. He was making it dance by holding its arms and bouncing it around.
“Where’d you get the money for this?” Shego asked.
Kim shrugged, as if she did not know where she had gotten the money from. She had, in fact, borrowed a little from all of her friends, who were all happy to help. She had wanted to get her owner one “big” gift and she thought that Shego needed a camera.
The green-skinned woman decided to not press the issue and she just petted Kim. The hero smiled and went back to her few remaining gifts. She got a few puzzles, including a ball puzzle, which she planned to get right to later on. She got some clothes; Shego liked to keep her in style when she could. A couple of c.d.s and dvds were also in the set as well as five thick books that Kim had secretly wanted. She did not understand how Shego knew that she desired them, but she did not ask. Hey, Shego was the mistress after all.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Kim said.
“What?” Shego asked against her better judgment. Todd was now curled up next to her with his giant plush toy. It seemed that the excitement had been too much for him and he was taking a breather.
“I didn’t get a big gift,” Kim said.
“Big gift?” Shego echoed.
“Yeah, like you got the camera and Todd got the handheld game,” the slim adventurer explained. They had brought Todd a rather expensive handheld game that he did not seem too interested in at the moment.
Shego nodded; okay, she had forgotten to get Kim a “big” gift. They had been so focused on Todd that it had not crossed her mind. Although even without him, she probably would not have thought to get her pet a big gift. Typically, she would have been irked by her pet pointing such a thing out and just barked on her, but with the way everything was going, she decided against that.
“Tell you what, Pumpkin, I’ll let you have a pet,” Shego started.
“Spanking!” Kim cheered.
“For a day,” Shego added and her pet pouted.
“A day? That’s it? Does it have to be today?” the younger woman inquired.
“No, any day you want, but it’s only for that day.”
“And I can have anything I want?”
“Yes.”
“All right,” Kim agreed with that. Her mistress was already getting the idea that the proposal was probably going to come back and bite her in the ass, literally. She just hoped poisonous fangs were not involved when it happened.
“Now, let’s get some breakfast in you two,” Shego commented while petting Todd on his stomach.
“Then what?” the boy asked, even though he had enough for the whole day from that one morning. He had gotten so many things and he was quite happy. He had a feeling that Kim and Shego had bought all of those presents for him, even though Kim kept insisting that it was Santa. They were now officially the best people that he had ever met.
“Then what?” Shego repeated back because she did not understand the question.
“We’ll watch a Christmas Story. It’s on all day and it’s a great movie,” Kim suggested with a smile.
No one argued and they had breakfast before lounging on the sofa for the whole day. They vegged out on “A Christmas Story” with Shego sitting on the sofa, Kim lying in her lap, and Todd sitting on what was now his pillow. Shego caressed Kim’s head and the hero, in turn, rubbed Todd’s head, and Todd just hugged his plush toy. After lunch, they changed the way that they were situated. Shego lay down on the sofa, Kim rested on top of her, and Todd laid down on Kim’s back. They all fall asleep like that after an hour of resting on the sofa and the television was left watching itself.
Shego made a pretty big Christmas dinner for the three of them. It was a nice spread, especially for just the three of them, although with the way Todd and Kim ate, it could have easily not have been enough food. The redheaded pair did not make pigs of themselves, though. The dinner was civil and a great way to end the day.
They all curled into bed at a reasonable time; Todd did not let his plush toy go all day and took it to bed with him. It was easy to see that despite all of the other things, including the expensive handheld game system, the plush toy was his favorite gift. He held it tightly in his sleep; he was sleeping in the middle now. It was the best Christmas that he had ever experienced. Shego would have understood because she felt like it was the best Christmas that she had ever had too.
(New day)
Kim and Shego walked up the stairs to their home. Shego was holding some bags while Kim had Todd on her shoulders. They had gone food shopping and the redheads joined in to specifically tell Shego what snacks they wanted. It had been an interesting day for the simple fact that people had assumed Todd was their son, mostly because Shego kept yelling at him to stop touching stuff while Kim kept chasing him around to get him to stop eating things that they had not paid for. He seemed completely different now from when he had first come to them. He seemed totally comfortable around them and very happy.
Todd was very comfortable around the two women, more so than he had ever been with anyone. They made him feel special and safe. He liked being around both of them and they could tell that. He never brought up his parents, or why he followed Kim home, or where he was before he got lost. He just got into the flow with them and now it was like he belonged with them and belonged there. And then, then came reality.
The trio noticed a couple standing outside of their apartment door. Todd gasped and buried his head in Kim’s red mane, as if he was hiding. Shego arched an eyebrow because of his reaction and then she turned to the couple. She could guess who they were, but she decided to play otherwise.
“Can I help you two or something?” Shego asked the couple while pulling out her keys to open the front door.
“I’m Tyler Grumbling and you have my son,” the man stated in a clipped tone. He was a well to do looking gentleman. He had a dark blue silk suit on with the same type of tie. He had stylish spectacles on his clean shaven face. All Shego could think was, funny, he did not look like the dick he was.
Shego imagined that he was as much an asshole as his wife because any caring father would have wanted his son back as soon as possible, but not him. He seemed just as content as the cow that he was married to with leaving Todd with a total stranger who could have easily killed the boy and gotten rid of the body by now. They could have done damn near anything to Todd for all of the time that they had him and his bastard parents did not even seem to care. She was pissed at them and seeing what they looked like did not help her disposition. She just wanted to spit in their faces.
She was so happy that Todd had followed Kim home that day with the parents that he had. Had he followed someone else home, any number of things could have happened to him and his parents probably would not have cut their vacation short no matter what. What assholes.
“Oh, so you must be Missus Grumbling,” Shego said to the redheaded woman in his company. She was a crimson-haired woman with sky blue eyes. Todd actually looked a bit like the woman, which angered Shego more. How the hell could a woman that he looked so much like just leave him with strangers?
“I am,” she confirmed as if she was insulted by the fact that Shego was even speaking to her.
“No, you know, it’s just that with all of the makeup, I thought you might be a prostitute,” Shego remarked.
“What?” the woman gasped. The nerve of the green-skinned freak, she thought.
“Shego,” Kim scolded her owner. It was something that she had recently found herself doing because her master was being rude to Todd early on and now she was being so curt with his parents.
“Right. Princess, take Smiley inside and give him some lunch,” the raven-haired officer said as she opened the door.
“All right.” Kim nodded and she walked into the apartment with Todd.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Mister Grumbling demanded to know as the two redheads vanished into the apartment.
“I’m going to need you two to come down to the station with me,” Shego informed the parents as she put the grocery bags into the apartment.
“What?” the pair shouted.
“Look, we’re here, just give us our son back,” Missus Grumbling demanded.
“Yeah, I don’t know what kind of asshole you think I am, but I’ll guarantee you I’m not that kind of asshole. You weren’t in such hurry to get him back before, so shut the hell up. Now, I need you to come down to the station with me,” Shego repeated as she was finished with the bags.
Shego closed the apartment door and locked it back. In her opinion, Todd was now a world away from his parents and if they wanted him back, they would have to play by her rules. No more bullshit from them, she decided. They eventually complied with her orders when they saw that she was not playing around with them and went with her to the station.
“Kimmie,” Todd said in a low voice as they sat down for lunch. She had made tuna sandwiches because that was his favorite.
“Yes?” Kim replied.
“Am I going to have to leave?” he asked curiously.
“Well, when your parents come back, probably. Don’t you want to go home?” Kim countered in a curious tone.
“What’s home?” he asked while staring down at his sandwich, which was cut in four triangles because he liked it cut that way.
“Well, you know, it’s the place you want to go to at the end of the day to relax and feel comfortable. It’s the place you feel safe in, the place you feel happy in, and the place you can just be yourself in,” she explained as best she could.
“So, isn’t this home?” he inquired.
Kim was speechless. The apartment was home for her and Shego, of course, but she could see how it could be home for Todd too. His parents did not seem to care too much about him. They had left him for almost a week with total strangers because they did not want to break their vacation. He claimed that he never had gotten Christmas gifts before living with Kim and Shego. He even tried to hide when he saw his parents and they had not even embraced him after the ordeal of losing him and not seeing him for however long. Todd did not want to go home, or rather, he wanted to stay home.
Eventually, Todd was going to have to go back to his parents, though. He knew that, but he wished that he could just stay with Kimmie and Shego. He wanted to stay with the women that protected him from the boogeyman, that took him outside to play in the snow, that built snowmen with him, that kept him company by watching cartoons with him, that taught him to count and do puzzles, that let him sleep on them, and that cut his sandwiches into four little triangles or squares. He wanted to stay with the women that included him in things. He wanted to stay with them because he mattered to them and he could tell that he did.
Shego took Todd’s parents back to the station to confirm that they were who they claimed to be. Once that was cleared up, she then informed them that child services would be watching them closely. Shego and Betty had been utterly disgusted that the parents had just left Todd with a stranger just because she claimed to be a cop. The parents did argue that they checked to make sure Shego was telling the truth. They did have connections to do that sort of thing, but Shego did not really give a damn. They did leave the kid with a fucking stranger after all. Still, Todd had to return to his parents.
The pale woman was not happy with that decision, but she did ask herself, what was going to happen if Todd did not go back to his parents? It was not like she would have been able to keep the kid. He would have been placed in foster care and that would not have been what he needed.
She returned home and packed up Todd’s things while he stood with Kim away from his parents, who were standing by the door. His mother had huffed that he did not need any of the things that Shego and Kim bought for him. Shego had been understandably outraged and exchanged heated words with the decided bitch. She then proceeded to pack away everything Todd had acquired while with them, which was quite a bit since he had spent Christmas with them.
Shego and Kim accompanied Todd down to his parents’ car; Kim carried him while Shego carried his bags. The pale woman put the bags in the backseat of the car, but he remained close to Shego and Kim as if he had no plans of getting in the automobile at all. He did not look happy with the way things were going. He appeared to be closed to tears, his mouth curled up in anger and his eyebrows were furrowed. He looked so much like a tiny adult and they did not think that was right. He was a kid and he should get the chance to get just be a kid.
“Don’t cry, gremlin,” Shego said to Todd.
“Yeah, you’ll be all right,” Kim tried to assure him.
“Can I come back and visit?” he requested as his tears began to fall. He figured that he would be all right as long as he could come back to them. He did not want to stay with people that hardly knew he was alive and that always forced him to do things that he did not want to do. He did not want to stay with the people that did not protect him.
“Anytime, gremlin. You’re always welcomed here,” Shego promised the boy.
“It’s home,” Kim added. “It’s your home,” she assured him.
Todd nodded and Kim hugged him. She gave him a big kiss on the cheek and ruffled his hair. Shego rubbed his head, not caring much for a touchy-feely farewell. He motioned for her to lean down and she knew that he wanted a kiss. She leaned down and he kissed her goodbye, on the cheek.
“Take care, booger,” Shego said.
“Bye,” he muttered.
Todd hopped into the backseat of the car with his plushie saber-tooth, which was his sidekick they guessed. He locked himself in with the seatbelt, which he learned to do with Kim and Shego in the pale woman’s car. He stared at them through the window and waved as his father drove off. He felt like he was being carried out of paradise and to the gallows. He did not even know what gallows were, but it felt like he was headed there. He cried harder as he felt like he was driving out of Shego’s and Kim’s lives forever.
(Glimpse into the future)
“Smiley, will you bring your ass?” a young lady hollered rather unladylike through a big apartment. She was standing at the door and dressed rather nicely. She was in a black, knee length skirt and a white and black button-down shirt.
“Can you give me a second? Damn it, you’re worse than my She-she,” came the somewhat soft spoken response from the back. His voice and his replies sometimes did not match up with each other.
“If your She-she was here right now, you’d be ready. Now, move your ass. I don’t want to be late…later than we already are. I want to see my family.”
“Yes, master,” he replied rather sarcastically. She liked that he did not point out that she could have easily stayed home instead of coming to pick him up, as she had done.
The young woman laughed. She was Mayah Director-Jones. Yes, her parents were Betty Director and Dahntay Jones. She looked like a younger caramel version of Betty, except that she had both of her eyes, which were rather unique eyes because one was onyx and the other was chocolate. She was a curvy nineteen-year-old college student and she was dating Smiley, also known as Todd.
Now, Todd was older than Mayah by almost seven years. He had been trying his best to not get involved with Mayah just because it seemed a bit messed up to him considering that he had known her for pretty much her whole life, but she was a persistent and scary woman. She really just reminded him very much of his “She-she,” which was what he called Shego.
What happened with Todd after he first left Shego and Kim so many years ago was an odd thing, he kept running away, going back to them. He was only five, but he would leave his parents’ house in another city and run off back to Shego and Kim. Now, the two ladies acknowledged the danger in that and proposed to his parents that they just let him visit whenever he had a school holiday or vacation or something like that. His parents had at first been against that idea, especially after they figured out the pair’s sexual orientation.
Apparently, back then, Todd’s parents thought that Todd would grow up to be gay if he was visiting two lesbians. He figured that if parents helped develop a child’s sexuality, then he was a lesbian because he had a weakness for women, especially Mayah as it turned out. He never really understood why his parents had a problem that his She-she and Kimmie were a couple, even if it did make him grow up gay because his parents never seemed to care about what he did with his life.
So, he spent a lot of time with Shego and Kim after his parents agreed that it was dangerous for someone as young as he was be hitching rides to Go City, which he had done the first time he ran away. It freaked Shego and Kim out so badly that they told him to call them the next time that he wanted to come out and they would come get him, even if his parents did not want them to. They just did not want anything to happen to him.
He had quickly come to consider Shego and Kim his parents because they were better than his birth parents to him in his opinion. He called Shego his “She-she” instead of mother because he thought that any form of mother was just boring and nothing boring should ever be assigned to his parents in his opinion. He usually called Kim “Kimmie” because that was the name that Shego used when not using the typical pet names that she had for Kim. But, Kim was “his Kimmie” when he spoke about her. They were good parents and he would defend that until his last breath to anyone, including his birth parents and he had argued with his birth parents about them several times over his life.
Kim and Shego were the ones that took him to sporting events for quality time. They were the ones that signed him up for little league because he did spend his summers with them. They talked him into doing pee-wee football too and promised to come to all of his games, even though he had to play them in another city because of the season that football was played in. They did drive from Go City every weekend to watch him play. They tried to be there for him no matter what. Hell, sometimes, they even went to parent-teacher conferences for him.
They had been the ones that paid for his college education. They paid his rent the first couple of months that he moved into his apartment. They were there for every important event in his life, all of his graduations, his prom, and just everything that he could think of. They were there for him when he was trying his best to escape Mayah. Obviously, their efforts were wasted in that area, but he had only given into her recently, so it worked for a while.
“Damn it, Todd ‘Smiley’ Possible-Gooding, we need to get out of here,” Mayah called.
Todd snorted from the use of his whole name; he had his name legally changed when he turned eighteen and his “parents” even legally adopted him then since they could. He would not consider himself henpecked or nagged by Mayah. If she did not get on his case, he would be all over the place. He was very much like Kim, and he heard that often, believing that he could do anything and he tried to do everything all of the time. He had trouble focusing sometime and he was easily distracted, so Mayah kept him on point when she was around. She was actually the best girl that he had ever dated because most others just could not deal with him. He was so much like his Kimmie, intelligent, yet scatterbrained at the same time and it just got on most of his girlfriends’ nerves. Mayah was very different.
Mayah had had a crush on Todd since who knew when. When she was little, she used to be awed by almost everything that he did. She used to creep him out, really. She was always smiling at him or wanting to know about what he was doing or something like that. The thing was that she was seven years younger than him and he just never looked at her as, well, a girl.
“Smiles!” Mayah barked yet again.
Todd came running at the sound of that voice, knowing that if he let her call him one more time then he was going to be in the doghouse for a long time. Mayah frowned when he came down the hall, fixing his hat. She thought that he was changing his clothes, which was a bad habit of his, even though he had not said that he was going to change. To make her more irked, he had changed his clothes, but now it looked like he was going to a basketball game. She would bite his head off if she could only open her mouth that wide; he made her that angry sometimes.
“Smiley, baby, what the hell, man?” Mayah sighed. If she did not love him so much, she would have hit him in the head with a baseball a long time ago, she thought.
“What?” he asked while looking at her with a bewildered expression. He was now a tall young man with wide shoulders. His body reflected the fact that he played football throughout his life. His crimson hair was still cut short and somewhat messy, but the hat covered that up. His arms were muscular and thick and Mayah enjoyed touching his biceps, which were on display since he was wearing basketball jersey.
“What’s with the outfit? It’s my mom’s birthday for crying out loud. And where the hell is the gift?” Mayah inquired.
“Oh, the gift!” he gasped and charged back into the bedroom to retrieve the gift.
“Smiles, you’d lose your head if I wasn’t around,” Mayah sighed.
He laughed; she was right, but he would also lose his head to her while she was around because he irked her. He grabbed the gift and returned to be scolded for his attire. She grabbed him and they left the apartment. He drove them to her parents’ house for her mother’s huge birthday bash. They always threw Betty a big birthday because they swore that she, as a superwoman, deserved a day that celebrated her “powers.” They also tried it with Shego a few times, but she had a bad habit of not showing up for her own party when they made a big thing about it.
“Hey!” the young couple called as they entered the house.
“It’s about time you two got here, but I get the feeling that you’re late because Smiley is Kimmie’s son,” Shego remarked as she caught them first because she was standing by the door. She was starting to go gray, but only in the center of her hair, which they all thought was odd. She had a few lines on her face, but nothing much.
“She-she,” Todd sighed as he greeted her with a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“You’re just as pathetic as Kimmie,” Shego teased.
“Well, like you said, I am her son. Where is Pop?” he asked. He called Kim “pop” sometimes just because she did a couple of things that he associated with a father, like break the rules with him.
“I think she’s eating junk as usual. Go say hi to her and then go greet the birthday girl,” the green-skinned woman ordered.
Todd nodded, as he had a habit of doing with his She-she. He and Mayah made their way through several other partiers, mostly former coworkers or employees of the birthday girl. They went to the back of the house and found Kim. She was not eating like Shego claimed. She was showing off some snakes to younger people at the party, Mayah’s three siblings among them.
“She’ll never change,” Todd muttered, but then again, he figured that reptiles would always be interesting. “Hey, Pop!”
“Hey, if it isn’t Doctor Possible-Gooding and only two hours late this time,” Kim replied with a grin.
Todd blushed in embarrassment, not just because he was late as usual, but also because she called him “doctor.” He was a PhD holder. A lot of people thought that he was going to follow in Kim’s footsteps because he liked to travel the world and he had a soft spot for reptiles, but he did not go for herpetology, although he did go for the slew of degrees like Kim. He decided on becoming a paleontologist and that got him around the world and in dangerous situations just as well as herpetology did for his Kimmie. He also did the hero thing every now and then since Kim was getting older and he thought that she needed a rest. She was not looking to slow down, though.
Todd made his way over to Kim and kissed her on the cheek. He hugged her very carefully because he did not want to injure the serpent that she was holding. He also greeted Mayah’s three siblings and then he got the shock of his life as a teenage girl seemed to appear out of nowhere, holding a huge python. He jumped back and yelped.
“Wow, Smiles, you sure are jumpy,” the teenager remarked with a cruel smirk. Apparently, she had meant to shock him.
“Not funny, Jade,” he grumbled.
The teenage girl, Jayden, better known as Jade, only smiled. She was Smiley’s little sister. She was a year younger than Mayah and the pair was great friends. She had long ebony hair, but it was dyed that color. She had been born with light brown hair, but had begged for her mane to be changed very early on in her life. She had a round face like Kim’s and olive eyes like Kim too. She acted like Kim and Shego mixed; it seemed like her mood depended on who she was around or what time of day it was. Right now, she wanted to be annoying to her big brother.
“Jade, you keep scaring my baby and I’m going to have to take you outside and thrash you as usual,” Mayah said.
Jade scoffed. “Don’t tempt me, Mayah. I still owe you for those pants you stole from me.”
“Those were my pants that you stole, ya thief. I only took them back,” Mayah argued.
“Details, details,” Jade replied dismissively, knowing that her friend was telling the truth. The truth hardly mattered in an argument to her, though. She just wanted to win the verbal battle, like any other battle.
“Come on, baby. Let’s leave the snake with her friends and go see my mom,” Mayah said while tugging Smiley away.
Todd did not argue. He offered Kim and Jade a smile as he was pulled away. The mother and daughter went back to showing off their snakes. Yeah, they were Jade’s snakes too. If anybody was following in Kim’s herpetology footsteps, it was definitely Jade.
“Hey, Mom,” Mayah said as she found her mother and hugged her.
“Hey, baby,” Betty replied as she returned the embrace. She was sitting outside on the deck, away from most of the party. She then noticed Todd and laughed a bit. “And you brought this guy.”
“Hey, Miss Betty,” Todd said with a polite smile as he leaned down and kissed her cheek.
“Hey, Smiles. Are you taking good care of my baby?” Betty inquired.
“Mom,” Mayah groaned. She hated when her parents asked questions like that. They knew Todd, so she did not see why they always had to make a thing out of the fact that she was dating him.
Betty and Dahntay really did not have much of a problem with Todd dating their daughter. They knew him and they knew that he respected Mayah. They also knew that Mayah was head-over-heels in love with the weirdo redhead, who had tried his best to stay away from her. The most they had to get over was the age difference, but they got over that fairly easily because Todd’s legal parents shared the same age difference and they did not see anything wrong in that relationship…well, technically speaking anyway.
“No, ma’am. I’m not taking care of her at all, so you should tell her to stay away from me,” Todd replied. He often said such things, mostly joking now, but he used to say them with the hope that Mayah’s parents would get the crazy girl away from him.
“Please, I stay away from you and you’ll be dead within the week,” Mayah stated.
“She’s got you there, Smiley,” Betty commented with an amused smile.
Todd smiled too; he really did not make his nickname seem ironic anymore. He was so glad that he had followed Kim home all those years ago. It was probably the best decision that he had ever made in his life and he had only been five. He had the greatest parents that a guy could ask for now.
Next time: oh, this’ll be a good one. Kim cashes in on her gift of getting a pet for a day. Wonder what she’ll decide on.
Also, I had a short story planned to explain the existence of Jayden, who was introduced in this chapter, but I’m not sure if anyone’s really interested in that. If you would like to see how Kim and Shego had a daughter, let me know now or it’ll just remain a mystery once this story comes to an end.