Total pages in book: 191
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
I wouldn’t forget that had been a long time ago.
“I haven’t told my mom,” Boogie admitted, and that had Zac and me focusing back on him with a blink. He frowned. “Not yet. Later.”
I was watching him with wide eyes as I raised my hands and curled my index and middle fingers into quotation marks. “Later.”
As much as I loved my aunt and appreciated everything she had ever done for me—including letting me live with her while I’d finished high school and then a little while after that—I couldn’t say I didn’t understand why he hadn’t told her yet. I’d never met anyone more Catholic than my aunt. She was either going to faint at hearing that her precious baby was having a baby himself, or she was going to beat him with a chancla at the fact he had gotten someone pregnant out of wedlock. Sound the alarms.
“Your mom knows how to add, Boog, you know that, don’t ya?” the light-blue-eyed man asked, his mouth twisted up on one side in amusement.
Boogie made a face just as a waitress arrived at the head of the table. She smiled at me because I smiled at her. “Hi, my name is Clary, and I’ll be your server today. Would you like to get started with any drinks? We have—holy motherfucker.”
Yeah, her gaze had moved over to Boogie as she spoke and had ended on Zac, so had her speech.
The woman gaped at the man on the other side of the booth. The man who was smiling up at her, all innocence and friendliness.
“How’s it goin’?” he asked cheerfully.
“Can I…?” She cleared her throat and brought a big smile onto her face as her eyes brightened and she seemed to shake for a second in excitement or nerves or whatever it was. “Hi, I’m so sorry. Could I…? Would you mind…? Can I have a picture, Zac? I’m such a fan. I have been since your days in Austin.”
He nodded, lifting a hand to brush his dark blond hair to the side. “Sure can, but can we wait until I’m done with dinner?” He winked, and I watched the unsuspecting woman instantly swoon.
“Yes, yeah. Thank you so much,” she rushed out before turning around and taking two steps away before coming to a stop. Then she turned around and walked back, shaking her head. “I don’t know what I was doing,” she admitted in a rush, and I smiled at her again. “What can I get you to drink? I’m sorry.”
I went first when neither one of them made a move to speak. “A frozen house margarita, please.”
My cousin rattled off some craft beer, and Zac said, “Water for me, please and thank you.”
But the reality of what Boogie said really sank in then. Not the marriage to a woman I felt didn’t deserve him. Not the fact that he’d asked me not to tattle to his mom who was going to lose her shit either way, but the part before that. The part about why he was getting married—maybe in the first place.
His girlfriend—fiancée, whatever—was pregnant.
With my Boogie’s child.
My Boogie was having a mini Boogie. A girl Boogie. A boy Boogie. Who knew? Who cared? The point was, it was a mini Boogie.
And just like I’d felt when Connie had been pregnant with my niece and nephew, joy, this pure, pure joy, filled my entire soul. And I could barely make the words sound louder than a whisper as I said, “You’re having a baby.”
And it said everything about Boogie that he hadn’t gotten initially hung up on the fact that we hadn’t cried out in happiness the instant he’d implied that his lady was pregnant. That now that we—or I—had really realized what he’d said, it felt like the greatest gift I’d been given in a while. Someone with half his genetic makeup was going to be born!
“Boogie!” I whisper-hissed at him before clapping my hands right in front of my boobs. “Holy shit!”
My wonderful, amazing cousin instantly beamed. Happy. Nervous, I could always tell he was nervous. But mostly, he was happy. Very happy.
“I know,” he agreed.
I reached for his forearm and shook it.
Oh my God, I mouthed.
Oh my God, my cousin mouthed back.
“Is it a boy? Is it a girl? Do you know?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. Soon.”
I put my palms against my cheeks and opened my mouth again in a silent scream, and he grinned back.
“Ya know, it took me a sec, but I just realized what you said. I didn’t think about it,” Zac muttered, sounding like he was in a daze at that point too. “I’m gonna be an uncle again?”
Again? He didn’t have any siblings, not that I knew of.
His dad had never been in the picture, period. It was why he had Travis as a last name. No one ever talked about him.