Easy A+

Chapter 61

She's all I need
She's something special

— Verzache, All I Need

. . . .

"Girls, dinner's ready."

Harry's voice echoes through the house along with the nauseating smell of chicken. I walk out from the bathroom to the kitchen where Harry has everything set out on the table along with glasses of water. Lilly's nowhere to be found at the moment.

"Lilly!"

He walks away from the kitchen and back into her room. Finally, after a couple of seconds, or even a minute later, he walks back out with an annoyed expression on his handsome face.

"She won't talk to me. She just sat there with her toys and blankly stared away from me. I asked her what was wrong and she just looked up at me with those big green eyes."

It's saddening how upset he is right now. They're basically best friends, so she's not going to be mad at him for long.

"I'll get her."

I walk back to her bedroom and open the door. She's just sitting on her rug with all of her Barbie dolls surrounding her. There's a small frown on her pretty face, and her dark eyebrows are furrowed as she strokes the blonde strands of a plastic doll.

"Lilly, c'mon, it's dinner time."

She looks at me for a brief second then back down to her doll.

"I'm not hungry."

"Don't be mad at your dad. He was just upset."

"I wanted to stay with grandma."

"I know you did, but you'll have plenty of time to see her again. Maybe you could have a play date together—just the two of you."

"Daddy was mean," she focuses on her pain rather than seeing her grandma again in the future.

"He didn't mean to upset you. He was sad and angry about something else, and he felt like he needed to leave. He doesn't like to see you so upset. He loves you more than anything, Lilly," I tell her to reassure her that dispute what happened earlier, her father loves her dearly. I stand back up from my crouched position and hold my hand out for her. "C'mon, let's go have dinner."

She doesn't say anything in response to what I said, but she reaches for my hand and holds it. Standing up from the floor, she's still grasping me and walks close to my side as we head out to the kitchen. Harry's sat at the table with his head in his hands. All of the food is on the tabletop, but none is served on the plates yet. When he hears us, his head shoots up and his cheeks are red from where his hands were pressed against them.

Lilly breaks away from me and walks around to the opposite side of the table, but instead of her usual seat adjacent to her dad, she pulls the seat closer to me, well—as much as a six-year-old can.

The frown on Harry's face drops even more the closer she pulls her chair to me. She's never even looked in his direction since she stepped foot in the room.

"Lilly, will you please talk to me? Or even look at me?" He's desperately pleading with her, but she's not breaking contact from the red placemat under her plate.

She just takes a bite of chicken then picks up her drink.

"Lilly?"

Again, she ignores him.

All of a sudden, his chair flies back and tips over onto the floor, his fist slams against the table, and his face is beet red. "I've had enough of this shit! Quit being so goddamn stubborn! I've given up so much for you, and yet you can't even look at me?"