Page 34 of Already At Risk
Footsteps raced down the stairs, and within seconds, Chloe burst into the kitchen.
“Hi, Chloe,” I said as I scribbled the lock code on the notepad, hoping Natalie’s daughter was okay with me crashing their pizza night plans. “How was the zoo today?”
“Hi!” Chloe appeared unfazed by my appearance in her kitchen. “It was pretty good. My favorite part was the bird show. A macaw almost landed on my shoulder!”
“It was terrifying,” Natalie mouthed before shuddering. Chloe turned toward her a second later, missing her mom’s reaction.
“Can we have our root beer floatswithdinner?” she pleaded, and Natalie nodded, pointing to the freezer.
“Sure, honey. Grab out the ice cream, okay?”
Chloe’s face lit up, and I took a second to compare it with her mother’s. They had the same shine in their eyes, same sort of vivacity. They both sort of buzzed around the kitchen, coexisting in a symbiotic way. I knew I should probably stay out of their way, but I didn’t like not doing anything, so I stepped into the mix, opening a cupboard and finding glasses for the floats.
“Thank you,” Natalie said breathlessly, taking the glasses from me and putting them on the counter next to the ice cream that Chloe had grabbed. “What kind of ice-cream-to-root-beer ratio do you like in your floats?” she asked me.
“Can’t say that I’m a float connoisseur, but I’m gonna guess a pretty equal one,” I said and then opened two drawers before finding spoons and straws. I put them on the counter with the rest of the materials, right as Chloe appeared with three cans of soda in her arms.
“I likelotsof ice cream,” she announced, putting each can down on the counter with more force than probably necessary. “Threescoops.”
“And I like more root beer,” Natalie added, a tiny smile on her face as she started spooning ice cream into each cup, using the appropriate ratios: a lot of ice cream for Chloe, a little ice cream for herself, and a medium amount for me. “I just like a little bit of the creaminess for flavor.”
Chloe cracked open a can and started pouring root beer into her cup, and I knew within a second that it was going to fizzle over. Snatching a towel from behind me, I whirled back around just as Natalie was sucking in a breath, noticing the same thing I was. Luckily, I managed to wrap the towel around the glass right as root beer began overflowing onto the countertop.
“You have to goslowwith that, Chlo,” Natalie admonished gently.
“Oops,” Chloe muttered, wearing a grimace.
“It’s all good.” I wiped up the rest of the spilled root beer. “Try again.”
She did, watching the glass so carefully this time that I had to stifle a laugh. The pizza might just be cold by the time we got these root beer floats made.
“Oh my God.” I could hear the humor in Natalie’s voice as she realized what Chloe was doing. “I mean…I told you she was a fast learner,” she said under her breath to me, and I shook my head with a smile.
“You weren’t wrong.” I raised the volume of my voice a notch. “These lookgreat, Chloe.”
“Why, thank you,” Chloe said, pressing her lips together in a pleased-with-herself grin and then dropping into a funny little curtsy after she finished the last pour.
“Now we have to remember which one was which,” Natalie laughed.
“This one’s mine,” Chloe said confidently, snatching one of the glasses off the counter, grabbing the pizza box with her other hand, and running away into the living room.
Natalie turned to me, and there was that spark in her eyes. The one I remembered seeing when she spun to face me in the bar, the first time I saw her. It was like feeling the sun come out from behind the clouds, its heat brushing my skin.
“I might have also told her we could watch the newPercy JacksonTV series with dinner,” she said, almost sheepishly. Like I would care. “I told you, she’s obsessed. We’ve watched all the available episodes once already.”
“Look, Natalie,” I said, starting to feel more and more like I was intruding. “I don’t have to stay, either. If this is your night off with Chloe, I don’t want to interfere with that.”
“No, no.” She shook her head. “Trust me, Chloe is always excited to share her love of things with new people.”
“But maybeyoudon’t want to share her love of things with new people,” I offered. “And that’s okay.”
Natalie chewed on her lip for a second, clearly conflicted. I was about to use that to make my exit when she said, “If you don’t want to stay and watchPercy Jackson, it’s really?—”
“I very much want to watchPercy Jackson,” I found myself cutting in to say. “You know, I’ve always hoped to find someone who loves that series as much as I do.”
“Then you should stay,” Natalie said with an uncharacteristic giggle, one that reminded me more of the untethered and carefree personality she had when we’d met. And then it vanished again, her expression more serious as she said, “We don’t do this every night, of course. I cook. A lot. I’m actually a really good cook. But I miss enough dinners because of work that I try to make them special every now and again, ya know?”
A strand of hair fell out of her claw clip, framing her face instead. I had to shove my hands into my pockets to keep from reaching out and tucking it behind her ear. A second later, she did it herself while blinking up at me with those mesmerizing eyes.
