Both of his eyebrows shoot up. “Not too much more, I hope!”
“Dad,” I say. “Quit being weird.”
The back door opens and Wes walks in. His hair is sticking straight up, and he’s still in the same shirt he wore last night.
“?’Morning,” he says, waving to us. “How’s Margot and Anna?”
Mom gives him a recap, but Wes never moves from beside the back door, near the wall where the date board is.
“You want some coffee?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No, I just came by to do one thing.” Wes grabs a rag off of the kitchen counter and then erases Nonna’s cryptic message from yesterday. Then he picks up the dry-erase marker and writes:
He turns around. I can tell he feels a little awkward with my parents watching him. But he winks at me and says, “Catch up with you in an hour?”
I nod and hide my smile behind my coffee cup, and then he’s gone.
“Well, that’s the cutest thing ever,” Mom says.
“Will his parents be home while you’re over there?” Dad says.
I get up from the table and kiss them both on the cheek. “I’m going to jump in the shower. Love you both.”
Just before I leave the room, Mom says, “You seem really happy, Soph.”
I give her a huge smile. “I really am.”
Anna’s crying voice fills mycar over the Bluetooth and I can barely hear what Margot’s trying to tell me.
“What?” I say for the third time.
I hear some shuffling and then a loud smacking sound.
“Okay, sorry,” she says in the blessed silence. “She acts like she’s starving to death when I just nursed her an hour ago, but I guess she’s a greedy little girl.”
“Ew, Margot. TMI. These are details I don’t need.”
I’m on the interstate, headed to Shreveport, just like every Friday for the last three months. Margot and I still text all the time, and thankfully now the only pics she sends are the ones of my beautiful niece, who is as round as a butterball. Hard to imagine she’s the same tiny thing who didn’t even weigh six pounds when she was born.
But this is our time to chat. A solid thirty minutes that’s only interrupted when Anna needs to eat.
“So y’all are coming down next weekend, right?” she asks.
“Yeah, Mom is letting me check out early so we can be there by dinner.”
“Okay, we can’t wait to see you. And that outfit you sent Anna is adorable, but she’s growing so fast she’ll probably be too big for it in another month.”
“That just gives me an excuse to buy her something else.”
We chat until I pull up in front of Nonna’s.
“Okay, I’m here. I’ll text you later,” I say.
“Have fun and send me pics so I know what y’all are doing,” Margot says before ending the call.
That week and a half I spent here at Christmas changed everything. I realized I needed my family…and that cute boy next door…in my life, so now I’m here every Friday night and I work with Wes, Olivia, and Charlie at the shop every Saturday. And most times, Olivia, Charlie, and Wes come back to Minden with me on Saturday and we hang out with Addie and all of my other friends.
Whatever this is I’m doing with Wes doesn’t have a label. He’s not my boyfriend and I’m not his girlfriend. We’re best friends who kiss. A lot.
