Page 116 of Challenge Me

She walked out of the room, and I followed her to the entryway. She opened the front door and stepped onto the porch, then pointed down the street. “Blue house.”

It was at the other end of the block on the opposite side of the street. Like this one, it was one story, but it was slightly bigger from the looks of it.

“That’s hella convenient. Do you ever get mad at one of them and run away to the other house?”

She snorted. “That’d be funny.”

“Yeah, but don’t start doing it now. They’ll know I gave you the idea.”

“Were you a bad kid?”

I sat down on the porch swing, then patted the spot next to me. She joined me, and I kicked off the floor before bringing my legs up to sit crisscross.

“I wouldn’t say I was bad. Troubled, but not bad.”

“Why?”

I blew out a breath. “Sometimes, the hard things start when we’re too young to handle them, but we still have to try.”

“Because your parents died?”

“That’s part of it, yeah. Your parents do a lot to keep you safe from a ton of things you don’t really recognize at your age. That’s their job. Me, I lost that, and I ended up in a place where I thought I could trust the people around me. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a good idea. But I learned and I grew, and now I’m here.”

Across the street, I watched a mom load her toddler into an SUV. She looked frazzled, and once the door was closed, she took a second to rub her eyes before she moved to the driver’s side.

“It’s important to keep learning from your parents,” I went on. “You can trust that they have your best interests at heart, even if you don’t always agree with them. The longer you have them around to teach you things, the better off you’ll be.”

“I want them here forever.”

“And they will be.”

The front door opened, letting Amir and Avery onto the porch. She offered us a wave before she took the steps down to the path toward her car. Amir turned to us with a smile on his face, though it might’ve been tighter than usual.

“I see the math is coming along,” he said.

“We’ll get to it.”

“Yeah,” Mal agreed. “We’ll get to it.”

He sat on the other side of her. “We’ve got two days until we officially kick off the season. What should we do?”

“I’ve got to be at the bar by three, so we’ve got time for anything, really.”

“Baseball,” Mal decided.

“Let’s get math out of the way, then you can show me your skills.”

She didn’t look happy about it, but she grunted her agreement. We continued to swing, and I looked at Amir.

“We good?” I mouthed.

“Just drama.” He draped his arm across the back of the swing to stroke my shoulder. “You can take the car to work.”

“I don’t want to drive that thing.”

“Not the Maserati. There’s an SUV in the garage.”

“It’s not gold-plated, is it?”