Page 59 of Loving Ladybug: Part One
Ma put her head in her hands. “I’m pretty sure Gwen doesn’t need a kitten right now.”
“You sound like Dimitri. Think of how happy she’d be if I showed up with one.” All I wanted was to make her happy. To see her smile. To have her eyes light up with unbridled joy.
“Come on, let’s go eat this popcorn while it’s hot.” Ma’s look and tone were no nonsense.
“Yes, Ma.” I could always sneak a look at the kittens later.
Chapter Nineteen
Gwen
“That’s it, like that,” I coached one of my tiny goalies. This week had been exhausting, because I was with the littlest of our hockey campers, mostly four and five-year-olds.
“Mariquita!” Carlos called from the stands nearest our group.
We were working in small groups on different parts of the ice. Bonnie had her group skating through cones, which were nearly as funny as my babies in full goalie gear.
“Why did he call you ladybug in Spanish?” one of my little goalies asked, as I kept running them through the drills.
“Ladybug is one of my nicknames,” I explained.
Carlos came onto the ice with his stick and skated over to us. “Can I join in?”
My campers all stared at him, slack-jawed. Oh, he had no idea what he’d done.
“You’re Little Brother Carlito,” one of them breathed, like Carlos was one of the most famous people in the world.
Another turned to me, eyes big. “Little Brother is going to play hockey with us?”
“Yes. And if you can show me that you can be good listeners, we’ll all playPuck, Puck, Goosetogether after we finish,” I told them. That game was a favorite and made a great reward.
“Ladybug.” Clark picked me up and spun me around.
“Clark!” I hugged him tight.
“I watch Monstruo Lane all the time,” another said, as they crowded around Carlos.
“I thought you weren’t coming back until Sunday?” I laughed as Clark put me down. It was nice to see him. Tenzin had left for Portland yesterday, then was going fishing with Cooter. I’d gotten some texts, but it wasn’t the same.
“My agent wanted to have lunch with me today. I’m doing another calendar shoot, which is exciting, since we already shot a TV ad campaign and some billboards.” He gave me a boyish grin, a sports strap attached to his black nerdy glasses. When he played games, he usually wore contacts.
“That’s great,” I told him. “Want to visit Marty with me tomorrow morning?”
“I’d love that,” he beamed. Marty adored him.
One kid started singing Little Brother Carlito’s signature song, which was a song in Spanish about cookies.
“I didn’t realize you had tinys this week.” Carlos got down on their level and sang with them.
Carlos was a semi-regular character in an educational bi-lingual children’s show. He played the younger brother of a blue monster named Anita, who was his actual older sister, wearing a fuzzy blue suit.
The show filmed during the summer, so there wasn’t any conflict with hockey. Carlos didn’t wear a furry costume, he was just himself, because families came in all flavors. For some reason, he wasn’t often recognized in the hockey world, except by his tiniest fans and their parents–though the cookie song played when he scored a goal.
The two of them helped me run drills. Then each of my baby goalies got to work on blocking them, hitting the gentlest shots ever from Clark and Carlos. We finished up withPuck, Puck, Goose.When we finished, Carlos and Clark helped me send them all off.
“Dimitri’s waiting for us upstairs,” Carlos told us, checking his phone, when the last one had been picked up.
“Go on up, let me clean up and clock out and I’ll join you,” I said to the guys.
