Wait for It

by Mariana Zapata

“What!” he shouted. “How can I get suspended?”

“What are you doing standing around? That’s not what I pay you for,” I called out to them. Louie gaped before asking his brother, “She pays us?”

“Your faces are gross.” Maybe I wasn’t feeling bad enough not to argue with them. “No, just Josh’s,” Louie chimed in, making me snort.

“I love you, J,” I said. He blinked sleepily. “Love you too.” And in that way that Josh and I had—my oldest nephew, my first real love—we hugged each other, side to side, by the car. While Louie might be the sun, Josh was the moon and the stars. He was my gravity, my tide, my ride or die. He was more like my little brother than my nephew, and in some ways, we had grown up together.

Just like when he was a baby, Louie reeled back, smacked his hands—which I was 99 percent sure were dirty—on my cheeks, and jiggled them as he leaned close enough to touch the tip of his nose to mine. “Grandma gave me a lot of pizza and chicken nuggets.”

“I have to put this stuff on you and wait ten minutes before you can shower. So get naked, you dirty monkeys.” Louie groaned, “But I took a bath yesterday.” While the other one—God help me—yelled, “You’re a pervert!”

You can’t always wait for someone else to do the right thing when you can do it yourself.”

“Okay. I’m gonna take Mac for a walk then.” “Don’t go far,” Dallas and I both said at the same time, watching each other carefully. Josh gave us a horrified expression, but just like that, he disappeared.

“I got a soft spot for single parents. It’s tough. But I got this thing—you might know what it is, it’s red and it’s in the center of your chest—and that has more than a soft spot for hot aunts who raise their nephews. You can’t even call it a spot, really.”