"Come on, do you think you're ever going to let that happen?" Tom replied with a raised eyebrow before taking a mouthful of coffee. "Or Elyssa?" He laughed at the idea of Shep letting JR turn into a potbellied old fart.
The pen started moving as JR spoke, writing "Elyssa's birthday present" on the page in Tom's handwriting. Then it got underlined twice, and a doodle of a birthday cake went beside it.
"Does she like books? Movies? Toolkits? Ornaments?" Tom rattled off a number of different things, then glanced out the window and noticed a jewelry shop across the way and nodded towards it. "Charm bracelets like those ones? Odd pets. A star chart of the day you first met. Sea monkeys. A fruit basket? Am I helping?"