Angelica In Love
"Daddy, where are we going?" Angelica said, pulling herself out of her glum mood. She had been thinking about the boy she'd fallen for… who she'd never be with… only to notice that they weren't heading back to her house.
"Well, I thought we'd stop off for ice cream."
"R-really?" Angelica said, startled. "But we haven't done that in a long time!"
Actually it had only been a few weeks, ever since Angelica had broken Tommy's lamp and taunted him about it. While things had gotten better and her parents had forgiven her for that Angelica had still seen a lot of things she took for granted disappear. Trips to the toy store, visits to the candy shop, dessert for supper… all of that had disappearing in favor of boring normal stuff.
In the past she would have become excited… and tried to see if she could convince her father to give her even more. But ever since she'd begun seeing Dr. Jasper the little girl had learned that it was far better to be grateful for what you got than to demand more and more.
"Well, you've been a very good girl," Drew said. "Aunt Didi told me you've been very nice with the babies."
Angelica considered that. Thinking back she realized that she hadn't really picked on Tommy and his friends in a long while. She'd ignored them mostly, doing her own thing, but she hadn't gone out of her way to torment them. They still bugged her and she told them to scram when they asked her a lot of dumb baby questions… but the desire to push them around or swat them about wasn't there.
Dr. Jasper had told her that such things weren't nice and while they might be fun in the short run they never worked out in the long run. And Angelica had begun to see that. Yes, it felt good to mock Tommy and call him a stupid baby and tug on his smelly diapers to make him run away… but she always got caught and punished. If she just ignored them or found ways to play with them WITHOUT them annoying her… her days actually went really fast.
"Also… I know mommy and I have been really busy at work," Drew said, cutting through Angelica's thoughts as they pulled into the ice cream parlor. Drew got out of the car and moved to unbuckle Angelica from her car seat. "And we've talk about it and decided we're going to try and take more time off to spend with you. It won't always be ice cream!" He smiled as he said that. "But we are going to try, okay- OOMPF!"
He looked down, smiling as Angelica hugged him tight.