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I looked at her and asked, “What are you talking about?”
“That waitress. She didn’t even realize anyone else was sitting here,” she muttered darkly.
I shrugged simply, “Didn’t notice.”
Then I looked at Crew and asked, “So what games are we playing first?”
Then Crew went on to tell me the games he wanted to play and the games he wanted to play with each person at our table.
Once the pizza was set down, and the woman hadn’t walked away I looked up at her, as I placed my hand on Aliyah’s thigh, “Was there anything else I ordered?”
She shook her head and fluttered her eyelashes.
“Then why are you still standing there?” I snapped.
“Well, I was hoping she was your sister, and we could go take my break together?”
Marcus snorted, “Girl, she sure ain’t his sister. A man doesn’t look at a woman like he does if she was.”
“Yeah, that’d be gross,” Crew chimed in.
And that was when the waitress looked at Crew and smiled, “Well hey there. Do you mind if I borrow your dad for a minute?”
And Crew, well, being Crew, he narrowed his eyes at her, “Yes, I do mind. Because he’s mine. And he’s with my mommy who you’ve been disrespecting since we sat down and ordered our food. Now, my mommy told me it was never okay to hit girls, but I think she would make this one exception.”
“You heard him. Leave,” Aliyah said at my side.
Thankfully, someone snapped her name, so she left, but our entire table laughed when she got visibly reamed for doing what she did.
Twenty minutes later I was helping Crew take out zombies when I heard Marcus say, “Never seen him like this. Holy shit.”
Then I heard the confusion in her tone, “What do you mean?”
“He’s fu…freaking smiling. I've never seen him smile. Never even seen a freaking lip twitch.”
He was right.
I heard Aliyah say, “He’s like this with us.”
“Y’all are special then. Don’t hurt my boy,” Marcus said.
“We won’t.” And with her two words, I felt something I’d never felt before. Fucking hope.
We played for a solid two hours and by the time we left, Marcus gracefully carried Crew’s pile of stuff that we had all given him the tickets we won for.
I looked down and saw that Crew’s head was bobbing, so I knelt, and asked, “Hey buddy, want to ride on my shoulders?”
He looked at me and smiled, but it was his tired smile. I grinned, then picked him up and put him on my shoulders.
Aliyah caught the move and then I laughed when she ran ahead of us and then spun around and started snapping away. I dropped my head for a moment and tried with everything in me not to smile as wide as my heart fucking felt.
But with her.
With her boy.
That was near fucking impossible.
So, I grabbed my own-damn-self by my balls, lifted my head, and showed her the smile she wanted to see.
