“Y’all stop watching me.” I waved them off, spooning a piece of the cobbler into my mouth.
“So, you tell Daddy what’s on your mind?”
“He did,” my father answered for me. “It’s the woman that got him smiling at that ice cream. Kyiris Sullivan.”
“Oh, another woman, huh?” she asked, climbing onto a barstool.
“No, baby,” my father corrected, “thee woman.”
His words made my mother shoot me a hard look. Studying me for a few seconds, she looked back at my father. “How you know that, Mecca?”
“Look at him. He ain’t doing all that smiling just ‘cause that woman fine, makes him laugh, or got some good snatcha watcha.”
“Pop.”
He held his hands up. “I’m just saying. You thought about her the whole ride over here then brought her in here witchu. She’s been sitting behind your eyes the whole time I’ve been looking at you.”
“Hmmm.” My mother hummed, putting her hand around my father’s waist. “Who taught you to be observant like that?”
“My wife.” He bent down to kiss her lips.
“So… is he right?” she asked me.
I smiled in response.
“I ain’t never seen you smile so much over a woman, and you’ve dated plenty. I’ve also never seen you come in this house looking…” she paused, searching for the word.
“Concerned? Conflicted?” My father tossed out a few that made me frown.
“Undone.”
“Undone?” I questioned, laughing. “The hell?”
“You look like someone put it on you and left your head spinning or said something that left you stuck for days. Maybe both.”
My father smirked, and I knew he agreed.
“She did ask me a question,” I said.
“And what was that?” my mother inquired.
“She asked me if I ever thought about the difference between what I wanted and what I needed.”
They both looked at each other, neither of them saying a word, but broke out into smiles.
“What?”
“I asked your daddy the same question almost forty years ago.”
I looked at Pops, and he nodded.
“She just worded it different.”
“What she say?”
He looked over at my mother, who had pushed up on the edge of her seat with her arm on the bar.
“Get it right,” she warned playfully.
