Red_Roses_and_Black_Dahlias_-_Macy_T

The girls were taking in their surroundings and I got on my feet, gesturing
to my little creation by widening my arms.
“It’s not much, but… I thought we shouldn’t let the incident from earlier
keep us from celebrating your twentieth.”
I rubbed my head, suddenly self-conscious. What if she thought I was
trying to sweep it under the rug and downplay it? I wasn’t, I just wanted to
give them something else to think of.
“If you don’t want to and just want to get back to sleep, it’s fine, we can
—“ Sofia cut me off.
“I haven’t celebrated my birthday since I was twelve years old. This is…
this is wonderful. Thank you so much, Maddox.” Her voice was a whisper,
emotion clearly audible in it as she continued to take in her surroundings.
Valentina was smiling at me and she’s the one who got Sofia out of her
thoughts as she pulled on her hand and started walking to me. I had showered
and changed into my pajamas while they were asleep, so I sat down as they
joined me, Sofia curled up on my right, an arm wrapped around my middle as
mine was on her shoulders, while Valentina was resting against my left side,
holding my hand in her much smaller one, using my chest as a pillow.
We turned on the TV as we munched on chips and cookies. Valentina
chose the movie and obviously, she put on one of her favorite Disney movies,
the Princess and the Frog. We watched it in sweet, sweet harmony, laughing
whenever Ray the dragonfly did something funny. Valentina graced us with
some comments here and there which made me chuckle too because she just
knew the lines by heart given how many times she watched it.
When it ended, Valentina and I went to grab the cake we made earlier
from the fridge. We placed it there hoping the cream wouldn’t melt and as I
opened the fridge door I was glad to see everything was still in place. It
didn’t look as good as the ones I had looked up on the internet, but at least
we tried.