“What are we looking for again?”
Kacie stood up from behind a pile of boxes and a piece of her hair fell in between her eyes. She blew it out of her face. “A can of clear, sparkly spray paint.”
I looked around the garage at the stacks of boxes and odd tools laying around. “You’re sure it’s in here?”
“Yes. At least, I think it is.” She walked in front of me and bent over to make sure it hadn’t rolled under the shelf.
Tilting my head to the side, my eyes traveled Kacie’s entire backside all the way to the floor and back up again. She sighed in frustration and spun around quickly, totally catching me.
“Were you just staring at me?”
“Me? No. Why would I stare at you? You’re hideous with your perfect round ass and pouty, pink lips. I mean, come on. Ew.”
She stomped her foot and punched me in my arm. “Come on. This is serious.”
“What do you need it for again?”
Empty boxes went flying as she started flinging them off the top of the workbench. “For Piper. She lost her first tooth today at school.”
“I can’t believe this shit. I missed her first day of school the other day and now I missed her losing her first tooth.”
“You didn’t really miss much with the tooth thing,” she disagreed. “The real excitement comes in the morning when she wakes up and realizes that the tooth fairy came to her house. There isn’t going to be any excitement, though, if I can’t find the damn spray paint.”
I ducked as a box narrowly missed hitting me in the head. “Obviously I’m an idiot, but what does spray paint have to do with the tooth fairy anyway?”
“You take the dollar you’re going to leave under their pillow and spray it with the glitter spray paint. It’s clear so they can still use it if they want, but it’s covered in sparkles so they think the tooth fairy really touched it.” A tiny smile appeared on her face as she shrugged. “My mom used to do it with me and I wanted to continue the tradition with my girls. I still have all of my glitter dollars. I never spent a single one.”
“Wow. Your mom has some pretty awesome ideas.”
“She does, but none of it’s going to matter if I don’t find that damn can.” She threw her hands up in the air and turned back to the row of metal shelves that lined the side of the garage.
“What time is it?”
She pulled her phone out of her pocket. “Eight forty-five.”
“The hardware store closes at nine, correct?” I grabbed my keys and headed toward the door.
“Yeah, but it’s a fifteen-minute drive to town. You’ll never make it.”
I laughed. “Challenge accepted.”
Forty-five minutes later, I walked back into the garage to see Kacie sitting on the floor with a bunch of boxes scattered all around her, none of which appeared to contain spray paint.
“I can’t believe you made it!” Kacie jumped up and threw her arms around my neck when she saw the plastic bag filled with glitter spray cans in my hand.
“Barely. I called when I was five minutes away and begged the manager to wait for me. He was grumpy about it until I showed up and he saw it was me.” I hugged her back and set the bag on the workbench. “He asked for a picture, but I did him one better and gave him a signed puck. Thank God I always have extras in my truck.”
Her eyes softened as she looked at me and gently squeezed my forearm. “Thank you for going to get these. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Hell yeah, I did. Piper needs glitter dollars.” I looked down at the stuff all over the floor. “What the hell do you got going on here?”
“Oh, I found a couple of my old boxes, so I was going through them.” She sat back down in the middle of the clutter and I followed suit. “Some pictures, some drawings, old toys, stuff like that.”
I reached into a box and pulled out an old crayon drawing of what looked like dogs and cats. “Uh, did you do this?”
“Yeah.” Her cheeks turned an adorable shade of pink.
“Wow. This is amazing. I mean, except for the fact that every one of these animals appears to have a penis.”
“Shut up.” She giggled. “Stop teasing me.”
“No, really. You were drawing anatomically correct animals at a very young age. I’m impressed.” I turned the paper toward her and pointed to a particularly well-endowed dog in the upper right hand corner. “This guy up here, he’s very, uh, gifted in the penis department. His name must be Brody, huh?”
“Gimme that!” She snatched the paper out of my hands and laughed as she put it in another box.
“What’s in this one?”
She tried to peek over the top of the box off to the side of me. “Not sure. Haven’t gotten that far.”