“I’m finished,” the teenager informed after a couple of minutes. Elias stopped the timer and noted the time.
He stood from where he’d been seated, pocketed his phone, and approached the table. He looked over the cards, swapped two cards whose functions were similar, and nodded at Jordan.
“Good job. The rest are right. These two are tricky because the purposes are similar.”
Jordan nodded. “Okay, I got it. Can I have these?”
“Sure,” Elias agreed.
“So, I think my mom might be coming around to me getting a motorcycle without freaking out. Or at least, the last couple of times I’ve brought it up, she hasn’t told me I can do whatever I want to when I no longer live under her roof.”
“That doesn’t mean she’s coming around to it. It only means she’s said what she meant so many times that she doesn’t feel the need to say it any longer because you should know by now.”
Jordan sighed. “Yeah, I was afraid of that, but she let my uncle teach me how to ride. I don’t know what the big deal is with getting my own.”
“Did she let him? Or did he teach you and the two of you told her after the fact?”
“That’s…a good question. I mean, I assumed he got her permission, but knowing how my uncle is, and his better to ask for forgiveness than permission attitude, he probably didn’t. But if he hadn’t, I know she would have grounded me for it.”
“She probably laid into him since he was the adult in the situation at the time,” Elias supplied. He knew Jordan hadlearned to ride a couple of years before. “But I get where she’s coming from. Motorcycles can be dangerous, and since you don’t have the added benefit of airbags like you do in other vehicles, they’re risky to drive.”
“You ride a motorcycle,” Jordan deadpanned.
“Not all the time, but when I do, I know acutely that I not only have to drive for myself but for everyone else on the road, too. And having to wait until you’re out on your own won’t kill you.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Jordan responded. “Did you have work you needed to do, or are you treating me to lunch?”
Elias raised a brow at him. “How is it that every time I see you, you’re roping me into buying you food?”
The teenager shrugged as he gathered the cards. “It’s the right thing to do.”
Elias didn’t respond and headed towards the door. It was lunchtime. He didn’t mind taking him to get some food before he needed to get to his first tattoo appointment.
“Ciao, Mamma,” Elias answered as he cleaned his station after his last appointment.
“Ciao, Figlio. Are you busy?”
“No, I’m getting ready to leave the shop for the day. What’s up?”
“Are you seeing Eri tonight?”
“I’m not,” Elias responded, but not because he didn’t want to. She had her meeting with Koa tomorrow and was making last-minute edits on all the designs she’d created. He didn’t want to distract or pull her focus away from it when he knew she was excited and nervous, and wanted everything to be perfect.
“Will you talk to her tonight?”
“I will. Did you need me to tell her something, Mamma?” Regardless of what she was doing, she always called him beforeshe went to bed when they weren’t together. Even if they only spoke for a few minutes.
“Yes, give her my number and ask her to call me.”
Elias furrowed his brow. His mother’s tone of voice told him she was up to something. “Why?”
“That’s not your business,” she countered.
“Mamma, if I pass along your message, don’t do anything to make her…”Want to break up with me.“Uncomfortable.”
“I would never,” she replied, offended. “If you must know, Lorna and I were thinking of doing a mother-in-law/daughter-in-law day sometime soon, and I wanted to ask if she wanted to join us.”
Elias contemplated whether he believed her. “Fine, I’ll pass your message on, but no talks of marriage or grandbabies with her. That falls under the realm of making her uncomfortable.” He thought he should put that out there because he didn’t put it past his mother to try to weasel a grandbaby out of Eri if she thought she could.
