Page 18 of Until Nalia
“Don’t you have a mom?” Heather asks him.
“Yeah, but she doesn’t live with us; she lives with her boyfriend.”
“Imagine if your dad and Zuri’s mom got married.” Heather giggles. “You guys would be brother and sister.”
“That’d be cool,” Cooper says, and I rub my lips together. It would be cool, and if Nalia got with Cooper’s dad, she wouldn’t be with Cole, who still lives in Colorado, and we would never have to move back there. I don’t want to move back there; I like it here. At first, I didn’t know if I would, but I like our house and everyone at school. Well, except for Matthew, he’s a jerk, but everyone else is nice. And I have a big family here, and Nico and Sophie, who are the best, said that I could come up with a cool name to call them, like Cooper calls his Gigi and Pops.
“Oh my god,” I whisper when the egg I just bought opens.
“What?” Heather asks.
“I finally got the fox.”
“You did?” Heather whispers.
“Yeah.”
“I’m so jealous, I’ve wanted that for so long,” Cooper grumbles.
“Maybe you’ll get it next time,” I tell him excitedly.
Six
NALIA
By the time I’m done, and I have a bag packed with stuff for Zuri and me, it’s time for Logan and Cooper to arrive, so Zuri and I walk out of the house to wait in the driveway for them. I might be spending more time with Logan, but that doesn’t mean that I want him in my home and in my space, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Before Zuri and I even reach the end of the driveway, Logan comes around the corner at the end of the block with a black backwards ballcap on his head and his aviators on. Next to him, a mass of blonde hair blows in the wind, but I can’t make out much of the girl’s features beneath the oversized sunglasses covering half her face. Still, I know it’s his daughter, I saw lots of photos of her plastered on the walls at his parents’ house, and he mentioned her more than once, but she was at a friend’s, so I never got to meet her.
Coming to a stop at the end of my driveway, Logan grins, while his daughter eyes me behind her sunglasses without cracking a smile.
“You didn’t get a chance to meet my daughter, Billie, the other day,” he says, getting out and walking around to us. “Nalia and Zuri, this is my daughter, Billie.”
“Hey.” I smile at her.
“Hi,” she mumbles, and I wonder if I would have caught her rolling her eyes if she wasn’t wearing sunglasses.
“I’ll put this in the trunk.” He takes the bag I’m holding, then tells Billie. “Hop in the back so Nalia can sit up front.”
“But I called shotgun,” she whines like any teenager who called shotgun and won would.
“It’s okay,” I cut in when I see him about to pull a dad move and tell her to do what he said. “I’ll sit in the back with Cooper and Zuri.” I don’t even leave it open for discussion I walk to the open back door and Cooper who is dressed in his baseball uniform scoots over making room for Zuri then Zuri moves to the middle making room for me.
Once I’m in the back and all of us are buckled in with Logan in the driver’s seat, his sunglasses meet mine over his shoulder. “Ready?”
“Yep.” I drag my gaze off his and look out the side of the Jeep as he pulls away from my house. The drive to the baseball fields is quiet except for Zuri and Cooper talking and the music coming from the speakers on low, but the tension inside the vehicle rolling off Billie is so loud it drowns everything out. It’s a relief when we get to the field, and more of a relief when I’m out of the Jeep.
“I’m going to find my friends,” Billie tells Logan as she gets out of the jeep.
“Alright, but keep your phone on and make sure you come back and say hi to your mom and Gigi.”
“Fine.” She sighs before she wanders off, looking at her phone.
“Don’t take it personally that she was rude,” Logan says quietly, meeting me at the back of the Jeep. “She hates everyone except her friends and her grandmother right now, and she was pissed that she had to get up today and come out with us.”
“I was a teenage girl once; you don’t need to apologize,” I assure him while Cooper and Zuri get out of the backseat. Taking my bag, I put it over my shoulder, while Logan grabs a duffel bag and slings it across his back, then grabs a large bucket of baseballs. With the kids both walking ahead of us, we start walking to the field. It’s a beautiful sunny day, and there are so many people here already, along with a few local vendors offering food and drinks.
“How long have you been coaching?” I ask Logan when a group of kids calls out ‘hey, coach’ to him, and he greets them by name.
“Since Coop started playing,” he says, wrapping his finger through the loop of my jean shorts and using it to pull me closer to him as we are passing a group of people coming down the dirt path towards us. “So, about four years.”
