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He shrugged. “It’s okay. I haven’t hit a home run yet, but Dad said there’s more to life than hitting home runs.”
“He did? Well, that’s true,” London said. And both surprising and refreshing to hear. Maybe Kenneth was starting to mellow out in his old age.
She snorted. Her dad would go apeshit if he heard her refer to him as old.
“Just remember that having fun is the most important thing,” London told him.
“Did you have fun when you played baseball?”
“I never played baseball.”
“Basketball?”
She shook her head.
“Well, what do you do to have fun? And why do you wear your hair that way? And don’t you think you should wear more rings? Dad always buys Mom new rings because he says that girls like them. Why don’t you have a husband?”
“Can I help you?” the girl behind the counter asked.
“Thank God,” London said. She pointed. “Let’s get Nina and Koko’s lunch. And then maybe we can all get ice cream for dessert.”
By the time London finished ordering the burrito bowls, Miles had moved on to questions about cows and milk and why ice cream doesn’t taste like grass if that’s all cows eat. London gave him a bullshit answer because who had the time to explain that process, but it was still better than tackling the husband question.
“Did you two find something you liked?” London asked as Koko and Nina approached.
“Just this.” Koko held up a tie-dyed headband.
Nina rolled her eyes. “She has like fifty thousand headbands already.”
“And you have fifty thousand pairs of earrings,” Koko countered. She grabbed her burrito bowl and sat at the table London indicated. “She bought big hoop earrings that she knows Dad won’t let her wear,” Koko said.
Nina shrugged. “He won’t see them.” She sat across from Koko. “Besides, I didn’t buy them, my big sister did. Thank you, London.”
Great, now she would get accused of buying contraband.
“Just make sure Kenneth doesn’t see them,” London told her.
“Why do you call Dad by his first name?” Miles asked.
“I…uh…”
How could she explain to her younger brother that she’d started calling their dad by his given name to piss him off? It was probably better to just stop doing so in front of Miles.
“I would hear my mom do it all the time, and I guess it just rubbed off,” London lied.
Miles rubbed his hands together, a mischievous grin lighting up his face. “I should call himhoneythe way Mom does.”
“Please don’t.” London laughed. Between Nina’s earrings and Miles’s new name for Kenneth, she would be lucky if she was ever permitted to take these kids anywhere again. She’d better check Koko’s pockets for cigarettes before they left this mall.
Although she couldn’t see her middle sister doing anything that would get her in trouble. Of the three, Koko reminded London most of herself. If only for her acerbic tongue. The one-liners she hurled at Nina were so good, London had made a mental note so she could use them on Samiah and Taylor.
Why was she just discovering that she liked hanging out with her siblings? Despite Miles and his endless, sometimes inappropriate questions, and Nina with her stank teenage attitude, London had enjoyed herself.
She worked with other people’s children all day long, but when it came to these three, London realized that she’d hardly gotten the chance to know them. She didn’t have to be the much older sister who saw her siblings only on holidays or their birthdays. She could be the sister who carted them to the mall on the weekends, and who FaceTimed during the week to check in on them.
Shehadto do better when it came to these three.
London pushed her own burrito bowl away as a heavy weight sank to the pit of her stomach. She’d missed so much of their childhood, and now that she’d decided to finally be the big sister she should have been all along, there was the possibility of her leaving Texas for her fellowship. She felt like shit.
