Toby had returned from the park shortly after noon. The space had been helpful, as well as meeting the red-head in the park. True, it hadn’t put him back to 100 percent, but it had certainly done him good. Just as he had with breakfast, he made enough food to feed a small army – grilled cheese to be exact. Once again he ate with T.J. first, this time making sure to steer away from the topic of all females, before bringing a plate into his room for Emyli. He stayed with her long enough to make sure that she ate and then gave her another dose of Oxycodone to put her back to sleep. Even if it had only been a day, the fact that she was healing put a lot of his worries to rest.
He was fully prepared to spend the rest of the afternoon with T.J., but his friend more or less shooed him away from the back of the house. Toby liked to compare T.J.’s version of working on a surprise to a child making something for an adult; sure, he knew what the elemental was doing, but acknowledging it before he was supposed to would have disappointed T.J. So he busied himself with running around the front yard as a squirrel since he had missed the opportunity to do so earlier. Toby was in a tree, toward the top few branches, when Nana Mama started yelling in his head. The unfortunate thing about the donkey not being his familiar was that he couldn’t give her a sarcastic retort with his thoughts. His only choice was to yell back at her, something he was incapable of doing as a squirrel. Toby wasn’t inclined to the same rose-colored glasses way of looking at the world the way T.J. was. He knew that people were underhanded, greedy, and self-centered; most of them didn’t have a problem screwing others over if it meant getting something out of it in the end. That was why Toby handled most of the dealing.
He had barely made it back into the house to shift and grab some clothes before Nana Mama was screeching that he needed to hurry up and call someone before T.J. went and got himself killed by the intruder. Something told him that his friend’s familiar was now resorting to exaggeration to get her point across. “Dude, can you tell that her that I am not her property to boss around,” Toby groaned as he pulled open the door to the greenhouse and came up beside T.J. “What’s goin—” His words were cut off as his eyes traveled to where his friend was looking. He too was caught up in awe of the beautiful girl knitting in their greenhouse. His hand grabbed on to T.J.’s shoulder to pull him closer so that he could whisper in his ear. “If you’re gonna call dibs, you better do it now.” Even if he was still talking to the elemental, Toby’s eyes never left the girl for a second once they landed on her.