Page 94 of Until Nalia

“Nalia asked me the same thing,” Zuri mumbles.

“What did you say?” Billie asks her.

“That it would be cool.” She shrugs.

“Well, just so you know, if you guys move in and we share a bathroom, I’m not cleaning up after you.”

“Good, I’m not cleaning up after you either,” Zuri tells her, and I laugh.

“Guys, dinner’s ready!” Dad shouts from downstairs.

“Coming.” I jump up and Zuri tries to beat me out of the room, but she’s slower than me. “Loser.”

“Shut up.” She rams her shoulder into mine.

“You two are idiots,” Billie mutters, shoving us both behind her before walking down the stairs, and Zuri and I look at each other and laugh.

Twenty-Eight

LOGAN

“That’s it, good job,” I call out to Zuri as she kicks the soccer ball she brought into the foldable goal I set up in the front yard. “Next time, I want you to try to focus on keeping your eyes up rather than at your feet,” I tell her when she kicks the ball back to me.

“I’ll miss the ball if I do that.”

“If you keep your eyes on your feet, you’ll miss the person coming at you when you’re on the field.” I kick the ball back to her, and she dribbles it across the yard with her head up, only glancing down a few times before she kicks it into the goal.

“See.” I walk to her and raise my hand. “Good job.”

“Thanks.” She gives me a high five, then passes the ball to me before jogging over to Nalia, who’s sitting on the porch with Dozer. Picking up her water bottle, she takes a drink, and I walk over to join the two of them.

“Are you guys going to be able to come to my game tomorrow?” she asks while handing her water bottle back to Nalia. She places it down next to her on the step.

“We might be a little late, but we’ll be there for the second half for sure.”

“Cool.” She smiles then looks to the driveway when a car pulls in. When I see that it’s Billie, I frown. Her and Coop made plans to stay at their mom’s tonight and are supposed to meet me in the morning at the baseball field, so they shouldn’t be home unless one of them forgot something.

“What’d you forget?” I ask Billie when she gets out of her car. She doesn’t answer; instead, she slams her door closed hard enough that her car shakes. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” She bites out while Coop gets out with his school bag. As she gets closer, I notice that her face is red and blotchy.

“What happened?” I repeat, when she walks past all of us into the house, opening the door so hard it bangs against the wall.

“What’s going on?” I question Coop as he walks towards us slowly looking completely shell shocked.

“Mom and Billie got into a fight.”

“About what?” I ask him and he turns to looks into the house. “Bud, what’s going on?”

“Aaron asked Mom to marry him.”

“Tonight?”

“Ugh, I don’t know. Mom just told us about it, then Billie got really upset, and she and Mom got in a big fight.”

Shit.

“Does your mom know the two of you left her house?”