One Day At A Time

Chapter Seven: Halloween - Part #2

All of the kids walk until the stars come out, their candy bags getting heavier and heavier.

After what seems like hours, they step onto the porch of the last house.
Anne and Andy had been switching off ringing the doorbells of the houses.
The doorbell on the last house was Andy's to ring.

They all happily say, "Trick-or-Treat" one last time and they're rewarded with king-sized Snickers bars.

The walk back to Ava's house takes a while.

"My feet hurt!" Andy groans.
"Mine too!" Anne groans with him, which prompts everyone else's moaning and groaning.
They're all worn out, but it's worth it when they see Ava's house in the distance.

"Holy shit, we made it!" Lucas sighs with relief.
"Hallelujah!" Rose exclaims.

All of them shuffle into the house past Donna and drop down onto the living room floor.

"How was it?" She asks, turning to face the group of exhausted kids on the floor.
"We almost got killed my Mike Myers!" Andy tells her.
He takes of his mask and sets it beside himself.

Lucas, still playing along, looks at him with fake panic in his eyes.
"He's right! Those slow-pokes almost got attacked!" He says, pointing a thumb at Ava and Lilly, which makes Ava perk up.
"I kept Lilly safe, Mom." She says proudly.

A mix of exhaustion and excitement is buzzing through the living room as Anne asks everyone after they've all calmed down,
"Can we trade our candy now?"

The big kids look at each other and nod their heads.

Thus begins the candy sorting.

Rose has their candy sorted by the two vague categories of, "fruity candy" and "chocolate candy". Lucas doesn't even bother with sorting his candy, he just has a big mountain of sugar in front of him.

Lilly attempts to sort her candy in an organized way, but she gives up after putting all the Hershey bars in one big pile, leaving the rest as its own mass of everything.

Ava sorts her candy meticulously, putting all the different types of candy into their own piles and stacks.
The little candies, like Warheads and gum balls, get put into piles, while the bigger candy bars get stacked up into neat towers.

Now, the real fun can begin, the candy trading.
As much as everyone wishes they could say it's a civil affair, it really isn't.

Five minutes into it, Lucas is throwing his king-sized Snickers bar across the living room at Andy so he can get a kid-sized handful of Warheads.

"I'll give you my Kit-Kats for your Jolly Ranchers!" Ava says to Rose.
"All of them?" Rose questions.
"Yes! All of them!"
"You've got a deal!" Rose grins as they scoot over towards Ava and switch off the Jolly Ranchers for the Kit-Kats.

Everyone takes their turns yelling and trading with each other until they're all happy with their new piles of candy.

Ava's mom takes one last picture of the night, all of the kids tired and smiling with their chaotic piles in front of them.

Time goes on and soon, Rose and Lucas are about to leave, where Ava stops them at the door and thanks them for playing along with the little kids.

After those two leave, Ava and Lilly scoop up their candy and go into Ava's bedroom.

Lilly takes a seat in the desk chair and sighs tiredly, looking at Ava, who's working on getting her hair tie undone.

When she's about to offer help, Ava pulls it out and undoes the braid with her hands.

It's a rare thing when Ava's hair is down, since it's always tied up.
The only exception is when she sleeps.

Because of the braid, her hair is wavy now.

Lilly's immediate thought is that she loves Knight-In-Shining-Armor-Ava with wavy hair as opposed to the braid.

She looks at her silently for a moment, her heart beating like a hummingbird.

It's ridiculous, it's ridiculous how good she looks with her hair down and how much Lilly loves it.

Ava looks at her with a curious look on her face.
"Are, are you okay?" She asks.

Lilly blinks her eyes and clears her throat.
"Yeah. I'm okay, don't worry."

Telling Ava to, "not worry" does the opposite, because all she can do now is worry.

Ava goes to take off her necklace, but she stalls for a second, clasping and unclasping the necklace.
Another nervous stim of hers, though it's a more recent one than her shirt-tugging.

Lilly stands up and walks over to her.
"I'm sorry. There literally isn't anything to worry about, I don't know why I said it."
After another second, Ava fully takes off the necklace and sets it on her dresser.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."

There wasn't anything for Ava to worry about, though Lilly was worrying in her own mind.
Even in the dark, she could vaguely see Ava's face flush after she'd been called Lilly's, "knight in shining armor".

It was a thing that's never happened before.
Ava's face has never flushed like that before.

Lilly doesn't want to over-analyze something as small as Ava's face slightly turning red, but she can't help it.

She tries her best to push her thoughts to the back of her head as she settles into bed with Ava that night.

Despite her racing thoughts, she's happy.
Halloween this year was great.

Ava's happy, too.
She drifts off to sleep, dreaming about knights and dragons.
She sees Lilly in her dream, too.