Page 48 of Until Nalia
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, honey, I’m right out here if you need me.”
“Alright.” She looks at me, then Nalia. “Night.”
“Night,” I tell her, and Nalia whispers the same as she closes the door.
“I really thought that she was out for the night,” Nalia tells me, taking her seat back while picking up her glass.
“It’s early. Normally, Coop isn’t out until after nine thirty on school nights.”
“Her too, but she had her first soccer practice this evening and was worn out by the time we got home at seven. I swear I caught her falling asleep in the middle of dinner.”
“Coop’s done that more than once.” I laugh. “How was practice?”
“Good,” she smiles, “Hot. I need to get one of those fancy chairs with a cover over the top if I’m going to make it through the season without getting sunburnt.”
“Give it a few weeks, and it will cool down and start raining every other day.”
“You say it like it’s a bad thing, but I’m looking forward to fall; it’s my favorite time of year. Well, that and the first few weeks of winter, and by winter, I just mean the weeks leading up to Christmas and Christmas day. Right after that I’ll be wishing it was summer again.”
“Good to know.” I grin while taking a swig of my drink then tell her. “You’ll have to give me her schedule and we’ll try to make it to a few of her games.”
“She’d love that, I know she wanted to go to Cooper’s game Saturday, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to make it.”
“You have plans?”
“My parents want us to come over. Since school started, we haven’t had a lot of time to visit with them.”
“Do you have plans Saturday evening?”
“You really are relentless.” She shakes her head with a small smile that offers a bit of hope. “No, I don’t have plans, but I also don’t have a sitter.”
“I got one, and Zuri can hang out at the house with Coop, and the sitter can keep an eye on the two of them at my place.”
“I don’t know your sitter and I’m not…”
“You’ve met my mom a few times,” I cut her off. “She’s mostly trustworthy.”
“Mostly.” She smiles.
“I let her watch the kids one Saturday, and by the time I got home, we had a new puppy. Another time I came home to the kitchen covered with slime, and then there was the LEGO fiasco.”
“LEGOs don’t seem as bad as coming home to a puppy you weren’t planning on or slime everywhere.”
“You’d think so, but I hate LEGOs, and she bought one of those architecture sets that’s like five thousand pieces. Billie was younger then and really wanted the castle for her bedroom, so who do you think ended up spending forty hours putting it together?”
“At least it wasn’t a rat,” she mumbles, and my brows drag together. “That was the surprise my parents gifted Zuri when we moved in here.”
“A rat?”
“Yep, a real rat. His name is Pippin, and I hate admitting it, but he’s cute.”
“Yeah, you win,” I mutter, and she nudges my shoulder as she laughs. “Gotta love grandparents.”
“Yeah,” she agrees softly and there is something about the way she says it and the look in her eyes that tells me she actually means that.
