“And if I leave after the tour?”
“I’m not asking you to give up something for me. I would never ask you to walk from your little man. I’m simply asking you to spend some time with me, ’cause you know as well as I do, it feels damn good. If our paths lead in different directions, we shake hands, walk away, and make damn sure we walk with respect.”
She nods.
“Yeah?” I ask just to fucking clarify.
“Yes.” She smiles and nods. “Yes.”
Instead of kissing her, I nod to the arena. “As much as I want to take you right here and right now, we should get back in before anyone notices we’re gone.”
***
We leave the venue and head to the airport. As we board the plane, headed for Orlando, I make sure she is sitting next to me, and River is on the other side. Not that I want him to be fucked up all the time, but fucked up friends miss shit, like me holding her hand.
She pulls out a Blow Pop and hands it to me. I unwrap it and pop it in my mouth as she does the same with hers.
“Your new vice.” She smiles, and I can’t help watching those lips.
“I have a new vice. You should, too,” I tell her, already having something bigger than a Blow Pop in mind.
“Care to enlighten me?”
I bite my lip and shake my head. Then I pull the Blow Pop out of her mouth slowly and rub it across her lower lip.
“See? Addicted already; you’re stealing mine.” She sighs, “Again.”
“I might take it out, Yaya, but I promise to always put it back in.” I slowly move it to her mouth. “Now open up and say ‘ah.’ ”
“Ah,” she plays along, but clearly has no clue what I am alluding to. Fuck! Even that is hot.
“You’re killing me, girl. Fucking killing me,” I groan as I adjust my shit.
I look back and her eyes are big as saucers, her mouth hanging open slightly.
She looks around and whispers, “You meant—”
“Perfect new addiction.”
“You’re so bad.” She smiles, her eyes lighting up.
I shrug. “I’m better when I’m bad. Let’s hope I can prove that to you … very soon.”
Contentment must bring on exhaustion in me, because when I next open my eyes, she has a laptop open and is typing a mile a minute. I glance over to see two screens open. One is Rocking Reviews and the other is Single Mom Saves. I watch as she types up product reviews and posts them. Some, she saves and schedules for a later date.
She clicks to the other page and starts posting about the top hits on Indie, Rock, and Pop music. She highlights tweaks and posts. As with the other page, she schedules some for later dates.
Then she clicks on a tab that takes her to a page that says something about favorites, and I see “Beckett is Bangable.” She types and glances over, slams the computer shut, and blushes furiously.
Pulling out her ear buds, she whispers, “Let me explain.”
“Explaining means you think I’m confused. There is nothing confusing me.” I lean my head back against the seat, reach over, and pull a few strands of her hair toward me. When we are nose to nose, I whisper, “I’m just glad you think so.”
She closes her eyes. “It’s just …”
“You do that a lot, you know, Yaya. Closing your eyes doesn’t mean I can’t see you. You just can’t see me.”
She grins, giggles, and then says, “I run a few blogs. That’s how I make money—made money … Well, I guess I still do.” She opens her eyes. “It helped a lot when I was … Well, when I didn’t leave, when Noah was a baby.” Her eyes smile when she says his name.
I sit back a little, let go of her hair, and take her hand, instead. “Tell me about him.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Well, he’s beautiful.”
“Looks like his mom, then.” I smile, but her face doesn’t follow suit.
“He has darker hair and eyes.”
I nod and smile, and yes, I’m thinking of that motherfucker I want to rip apart with my bare hands.
“Two little dimples. He’s small for his age, but he’s growing.”
“That’s a good thing.”
She nods. “He was early—really early—so he has some … issues.”
“How early?”
“Ten weeks. He was born at thirty weeks. His lungs weren’t developed well, but they’re getting stronger. He was in the hospital for a long time. He gets sick easily.” She closes her eyes. “He didn’t talk until he was two. They thought he had more serious problems … mental health problems.” She smiles. “You really don’t want to know all this.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“I figured out he could communicate with me. I waved to him; he waved back. He pointed to what he wanted, smiled, and mimicked facial expressions—that kind of thing. He wasn’t slow; he was … well, a little monkey. He climbed everything, and one day, I dropped something right beside him on his left side. It didn’t make him jump, so I dropped something next to his right side, and he reacted. Come to find out, he has fifty percent hearing loss in that ear. He has a hearing aid now and talks just like a normal four-year-old.”
“And you figured that out?”
She nods.
“You’re a good mom.”
“I’m gonna be better,” she says with forced conviction.
“Why do you think you aren’t good enough? Some moms don’t even make sure they feed their kids or keep them clean. You paid attention and diagnosed an issue a doctor couldn’t.”
“Well”—she swallows—“I suppose it’s because, at first, I went through the motions. I was just seventeen. My mother really wasn’t all that affectionate, so I suppose I didn’t know how.”
“And how is she with him?” I ask.
“She’s never met him,” she whispers. “She was in prison for dealing. She had a good lawyer or it would have been a much longer sentence, turns out she only did four years. When she got out, she left the country, illegally.”
“Left you?” I ask, staying calmer than I feel.
She nods. “She left me, but she left me the house. It was in my name before she divorced her latest husband. She also left me enough money to live on for a few years.”
“So, your work online is more a hobby?”
“No.” She shakes her head and smiles. “That’s how we live.”
“You and Noah?”
“My aunt and her kids who used to live there, too. Then they kind of moved back West. My cousins”—she holds up her hand—“all five of them, had a hard time with school.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, some of them got kicked out a lot, so she home-schooled them. Anyways, we ran out of money faster than Mom had planned for. When I was eighteen, I was either going to have to sell or get a mortgage on the house. I like my house. It’s—” She stops and looks down then up at me again. “I’ve never talked about this with anyone. It feels—”
“Weird?”
“No, good.”
I hold her hand up and kiss it. “Good.”
The flight attendant announces we will be landing soon.
“Saved by the bell.” She smiles, buckling her seat belt, then opening the laptop.
“I know it’s not rock star money, but after a year, I was able to make more than enough to pay the mortgage payment I ended up having to take out, and now we have a household account. See?” She points to some sort of bar that shows two thousand dollars. “This is paid for reviews. This is a slow month, but I’m not concerned. I have a job and the Stevie money in the account.” She then puts her laptop in her bag and shoves it under her seat.
I put my seat up and ask, “Where does your aunt work?”
“She works the online business and helps with Noah so that I can do the things she doesn’t understand.”
“Not a bad gig, Sonya. Two grand is nothing to complain about.”
“The mortgage is five.”