Page 99 of Rock Chick Bonus Tracks

“She might try to make it your problem.”

God, his baby girl.

“Listen to me, honey,” he urged. “Don’t take this on. Definitely not before anything happens. And not after. It’s summer. You got that internship you’re doin’ and other than that, all you gotta concentrate on is havin’ fun and bein’ young. Next summer, you’re gonna be graduating and getting ready for college, and then you’re gonna be in college and then grown up and startin’ your life. After that, you’ll beinlife and working for the money to pay your bills and findin’ your way to get ahead. You warned me. I love you for it. But now, your job is done. Hear me?”

“I hear you, Dad.”

“Wanna get your sister in here and watch a movie?”

She lifted up her head. “Wakanda Forever?”

“Haven’t we already seen that?”

“If we don’t pick one, Alice is gonna make us watchJudas and the Black Messiahagain. It’s a great movie, but we need a happy ending.”

“Boomerang?” he suggested.

She shook her head.

“House Party?”

She rolled her eyes, then shook her head again.

“Waiting to Exhale?”

“God, Dad, get in the new millennium.”

He grinned at her. “You pick. Go get your sister. And popcorn. I need to text Shirleen we’re doin’ movie night and I’ll call her tomorrow.”

She jumped over him and hopped off the bed.

At the door, she turned and warned, “You two can’t gang up on me and make me watchPoetic Justiceagain.”

“That movie is a classic.”

“We’ve seen it seventeen times.”

“Maybe…four,” he contradicted.

“Whatever, we’re watchingGirls Trip,” she decided then flounced out the door.

Oh shit.

He hadn’t seen that one.

He texted his woman that she had the stamp of approval, it was all good, they were doing a movie, and he’d call her tomorrow.

While he was looking up a rating and the trailer forGirls Trip, he got back,Love that for you, baby. Like I said, all good here too. Talk tomorrow.

So he was smiling when his girls, both of them this time, flounced back in.

Then he got another text with advice from Shirleen.

That movie…maybe fast forward through the grapefruit scene.

Ohshit.

He didn’t expect it.

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