A Short, Wholesome Family Dinner

The rest of the day past rather uneventfully. Jessica offered to pay for Jade’s food if she wanted to come along as she still wanted to encourage her and Gerald to spend time together so her cow friend wound up joining the family. Jessica was still curious to know how much Lily knew about her “daughter,” Clara so with some persuading she managed to get herself, Lily, and Clara into her mom’s truck while Gerald drove his car with Jade riding shotgun.

It was kind of fascinating for Jessica to observe as she found out that Clara had a mild interest in sports which is now something Lily and her remembered bonding over. She was an outdoorsy girl, had an athletic body, and a boisterous personality so being a little into sports made sense. For Jessica it was fascinating to watch as the memories of being Lily’s daughter meshed with her memories of her Cuban family and heritage. Somehow her old, real life and the memories the Random Remote added were able to merge together as the two discussed basketball, baseball, and for the first time Jessica could remember Lily added a little bit of soccer into the conversation. Apparently somehow some of Clara’s preferences and memories had also worked their way into Lily’s mind as well.

It was just as interesting once they got to the restaurant and met up with Sarah. While moving stuff from the apartment Lily had texted her wife and told her about the move into Jade’s place and as they sat down Sarah couldn’t help commenting on her son and Jade making a cute couple and getting a couple of blushes in response before asking if Clara would be joining Jessica and Gerald in the new place. Sarah talked about feeling bad that those two had their apartment while her other daughter was ‘stuck in the dorms’ for so long and feeling like she let the girl down a little bit.

And apparently as far as they were concerned that was a longtime back-and-forth conversation about Clara being the most social of the three siblings so being closer to people in the dorms was more her thing anyway. She also liked the dorms because she got to be closer to the libraries, computer labs, the gym, and the classrooms. The most surreal moment for Jessica though was as she observed the simultaneously new and old family relationships play out, Jessica realized she somehow knew which building Clara was staying in and that she was in room 418. That realization **** Jessica to wonder what else she knew that she didn’t know. Or what she didn’t know that she knew. Because of that and the fact there were too many people around she didn’t get a chance try to use the Random Remote on anyone during dinner.

Instead the conversation turned to something that has somehow gone unaddressed with the move until now and that was sleeping arrangements. Jade had three bedrooms with three beds but one of the rooms was stuffed to the gills with board games. Gerald of course in his willingness to always be polite offered to sleep on the couch for a couple days and “figure the rest out this weekend.” With his newfound confidence and decreased inhibitions he also suggested that him and Jade sharing a bed could be a possibility since they did it once before. That of course was a suggestion both Jessica and Sarah mentally favored and for a moment Jade did seem to consider it before saying if anything she would prefer to share with Jessica. Both Jessica and her mom were disappointed by that answer but Jessica wasn’t entirely surprised. The remote did say Jade would find being around her preferable to all others. As Jessica watched the cow girl eat though she took a moment to stop watching the relationships between Clara and the rest of her family to appreciate Jade. She sat naked in the middle of a fairly busy fast food restaurant eating a salad. Not only was she not acting in the slightest bit shy or self aware, but nobody seemed to be paying attention or in the slightest bit concerned which gave Jessica one more fascinating thing to think about.

Everyone was kind of done eating eventually but they still sat around talking and it was Gerald that made an offhand comment while discussing where to store the stacks and stacks of board games that wound up being a possible solution to the problem. “Would be great if Lily could do some work on that basement, seems like a waste as it is.” Lily and Jade asked for clarification so he delved deeper.

“Well, most of the house looks great and is well done and maintained and everything but when Jade gave us a tour the other day we barely went downstairs because the basement is basically unfinished so there wasn’t much to see. But Lily likes to watch those home repair and renovation shows and I can tell she gets ideas from them. Every time after her crew finished a job she would talk about little ideas that she had suggested that were usually rejected because the buyer didn’t want to pay the extra costs or whatever.

But I guess I always got kind of an impression that mom took pride in her work and sometimes wanted to use it as a chance to express herself creatively a little bit. So I was thinking that it might be kind of cool if Lily could turn the basement into some kind of gaming room. So Lily gets a chance to put some of her creativity to work and in exchange Jade gets an upgrade to her house. Plus mom likes to complains about the amount of useful material that gets tossed away as leftovers during jobs so she might even be able to do it fairly cheaply if her boss will let her have some of the stuff.”

Everyone sat quietly and thought Gerald’s logic was pretty solid but Jade broke the short silence by asking Lily if she thought she could actually do it. “I do actually have friends that are willing to play the games with me once in a while and if you’re going to be living there for a having a gaming room does sound kind of fun.”

As Jade said that Lily sat forward in her chair and made a thoughtful, “hmm,” noise as it was clear that her brain began to start considering possibilities. “Well I’m not sure what I can do without getting a good look obviously but I can at least brainstorm. So do you want maybe a theme or something? If it’s a gaming room in the basement some kind of light dungeon thing? Like light fixtures shaped like torches or something, track lighting so you can turn it down when you want a good, spooky atmosphere. If you’re gaming there will probably be a lot of snacks and drinks about so carpet would be a bad move. Maybe a good, dark wood panel flooring would probably be great for that since it’d be easier to clean and add to the atmosphere...”

Lily kept just throwing out random ideas and building the atmosphere as Jade listened intently the whole time and seemed to be quite taken with the ideas she was hearing. By the time Gerald, Jessica, Clara, and Jade climbed into the car to go back, Lily had agreed to come back when his wife was working on Thursday to take a look around at the basement to see if they could make some plans together.