Saying Grace

You made your way to your usual seat and sat down before both Mom and Sarah walked out of the kitchen holding loaded plates full of a pasta bake, empty glasses and a pitcher of water.

Mom happened to be holding your plate and set it down in front of you while trying to avoid looking in your direction. You smirked at how obvious she was being and the fact that she was doing it so blatantly made you realise how naive she seemed to be sometimes. Knowing she wasn't this all-knowing busybody made you less angry at her and you had to reconsider your next steps.

You decided to bring forth one of your ideas for tomorrow that would have hopefully helped with the mobile phone plan but it seemed to fit in better for this scenario. With everyone settled and seated at the table you brought up your suggestion to them both.

“Hey Mom do you mind if I say grace today?” you asked. You got almost the exact same confused looks from both of your family members but you knew they were for completely different reasons.

You could explain this to Sarah as some groundwork for tomorrow but you could tell from the look in your Mom’s eyes that she was suspicious of you.

This was also a bit of petty **** for her intentionally ignoring you earlier. You decided to maximise the amount of time she would be **** to watch and listen to you while also giving you the added benefit of letting you drag on so you could add some extra seconds for the KDK. A win-win in your book.

“...Sure” Mom replied. Not being able to think of a good reason to stop you.

You held out your hands before you started and while Sarah immediately took it, you saw out of the corner of your eye that Mom had hesitated to hold your hand before a slight blush reddened her cheeks. Giving her no time to think, you quickly leaned forward and picked up her hand yourself, making her slightly tense up at the contact. She quickly relaxed before looking at you and nodding, taking this as a sign to proceed you started your ‘speech’.

With as many pauses and fillers as you could reasonably use, you slowly made your way through the prayer you were attempting to ad-lib. Blessings for food. Blessings for family. You listed as many things as you could remotely say you were grateful for just to try and pad for time. With what you assumed was around a couple of minutes, you finally put them out of their misery and finished the prayer.

“Amen” you concluded.

“Thank you honey, that was very…” Mom said, attempting to describe your mediocre performance.

“Shit” Sarah interjected with a massive grin on her face.

“Sarah! Language. You should know better than that by now.” Mom scolded. You expected her to ask Sarah to apologise but she seemed to want to move on from this topic of conversation as soon as possible. Although it was a bit of an embarrassment on your end, you were pretty sure you had successfully leveled them both up and then some. You considered that a good price to pay but you would have to wait until later to actually view your reward.

Your eyes widened as you realised you had forgotten all about Rebecca’s stats. You knew for a fact that you had levelled her up considering you had timed most of your contact with her. How could you forget something like that! You were interrupted when you first got home but you'd been playing games on and off for the past hour. You might have even levelled up yourself and not even know.

Unbeknownst to your internal anguish, Sarah began talking to Mom about her day at school and how her latest cheer practice had gone. You tried to tune into the conversation but weren’t having much luck. You kept getting distracted by all the negative thoughts that seemed to be centered around your recent mistakes.

“... Heard anything more from Lucy?” Sarah asked Mom.

The mention of Lucy’s name seemed to finally do the trick and snap you out of the depressing spiral of thoughts completely.

“We spoke earlier but she still said Friday Evening. She mentioned again that she'd probably be late getting here because of the traffic but definitely in time for dinner” Mom replied back.

At least you got some reassurance there. Your Friday plans should at least be going ahead smoothly.

You joined the conversation and were soon discussing weekend plans and what events Mom had planned to keep Lucy occupied the first couple of days.

“I was thinking we could all go and see a movie on Saturday if you guys want to anyway?” Mom proposed to the two of you. “I thought it would be nice for all of us to do something for a change.”

“Sure, I've got no complaints,” you replied.

The way Sarah enthusiastically nodded her head while continuing to eat showed she had no opposition either.

“Well, that's settled. “Mom smiled at how quickly you had both agreed. “I don't know what's on at the moment but if nobody has any suggestions, I’ll leave it up to Lucy to choose”

Another round of head nods followed from the both of you before you carried on eating. Nothing particularly interesting popped up after that. Mom did mention what she’d done that day and included the fact that Grace wasn’t at home for her to visit but she quickly steered off that topic when it got to her getting home.

With dinner winding down, you collected everyone's empty plates and headed to the kitchen before making a repeat trip for the glasses and cutlery. You did a bit of a half-assed job washing and drying them all alongside the pots and pans Mom had used for cooking but the excitement of finally seeing all the new KDK info was getting to be too much.

With the washing and drying finally out of the way, you rushed upstairs and immediately to your room before locking the door behind you. You hastily pulled out the phone from your jeans pocket to see a now-familiar notification on your lock screen and loaded up the app.

Multiple changes detected. Click here to view details in the KDK app.