AllFreeNovel
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He strained his neck to see who was sitting at the bar, then almost dropped the whole stack of boxes.
“So, what’ll you have?” Paige asked, pulling my attention back to her.
“If your kitchen’s not fully open, no worries. I just wanted to see who all was in here.”
“Nonsense. What’ll it be?”
“Pancakes!” Frankie called out happily.
“What?” Paige looked defeated. “You just had cereal, honey!”
I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing and gave him a head pat. “I would love some pancakes, but only if Frankie gets some too,” I said.
He gave me a bright smile, then looked at his mom with a hopeful expression on his little face.
“Alright,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Two orders of pancakes comin up. Anything to drink?”
I checked my watch. “Is it too early for a Long Island?”
Paige just laughed. “I knew I liked you. But why not wait til my party later. You and Addie are coming, aren’t you?” she asked excitedly.
“Hey, I thought it was my party!” Max argued as he walked up to the bar.
Paige turned to him and patted his scruffy cheek. “It’s my party because I'm doing all the organizing for it, honey. If I wasn’t there, you’d have nothing to eat or drink and no one would clean up,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Is that so?!” Max asked with wide eyes. He began tickle-attacking her sides, and she fell into him. “I’d make the rookies do all that work, babe. I’d get it done. Say I could do it.”
“Okay, okay!” Paige said through her laughs.
I found myself smiling right along with them. I loved the playfulness of their relationship.
“Do you wanna cowor?” a raspy, little voice with a slight lisp asked me.
I turned to see Frankie looking at me with wide, round eyes, holding a broken blue crayon and napkin out to me.
Paige interrupted us with a pointed look in her son’s direction and she said, “Col-or.”
He looked at her obediently and repeated, “Co-wor.”
Paige nodded, and gave him an encouraging smile, like he was doing better, and that made my heart squeeze.
He nudged me again as soon as his mom turned away. “Do you?”
I smiled down at him and accepted the crayon and napkin. “Sure. What should I draw?”
He leaned his head on his arms across the bar and gave me a sideways glance. “A dog.”
I got to work on the dog, and a couple minutes later, Paige was putting the plates of pancakes and canisters of syrup in front of us.
“So, the party starts at 2, but you can come over at any time,” Paige said with hopeful eyes.
“Sounds good. Is um…” I trailed off. I wracked my brain trying to come up with ways to ask if Duke would be going as well. We hadn’t talked since the day he defended me against Jaques, and I definitely had not been in the right headspace to talk about us. “Who is all going this year?”
Paige snickered and leaned her elbows against the wooden bar. “Is that your way of asking if a certain busted up hockey player will be attending?”
Max suddenly stopped what he was doing behind the bar and watched us curiously.
I nodded inconspicuously toward him to alert Paige that our conversation was being overheard by Max, who was probably team Greyson, who was definitely team Duke.
