Mia sat up straighter and tucked her hair behind her ears. “Oh, geez, you’re right. I sound like a try-hard.”
“But if you’re serious about taking a trip, I’m down. It doesn’t even have to be Miami. It can be anywhere you want. My buddy—do you remember Cash?—he’s having a big Fourth of July bash on his ranch outside of Nashville if you want to do that. Have you ever been to Nashville?”
“I’ve never been anywhere.” She looked at her phone. “I have to go.”
She put her arms around my neck and gave me a sweet kiss that I wanted to last forever. “Bye, James Beckett Junior, you irresistible man.”
“Bye, Mia Abernathy, you badass woman. I’ll call you later.”
I waited until she retreated back into the coffee shop, then I stood up. A young boy was staring at me, hovering. “Hey, buddy, what’s up?”
“Are you JJ Beckett?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yes, sir, I am.”
He didn’t say anything else, just stood awkwardly, bouncing his feet back and forth on the carpet. He was probably around nine years old. “Did you want a picture of you and me?” I asked.
He nodded eagerly, but didn’t move.
I realized his father was standing next to him. “He’s not allowed in the casino,” he said. “You’re two feet over the line.”
Now that was a rule-follower. I was impressed with his willingness to listen to his father. “Gotcha. I will cross the divide and we can take a picture.” I offered my hand to the father. “Are you on vacation?”
The man nodded. “We’re here for my sister’s wedding.”
“Vegas is the place for that.” I held my hand out to the boy and he took it and shook it with a reasonably firm grip. “Nice to meet you.”
“I’m Foster,” he said. “Was that your girlfriend you were kissing?”
Foster’s father groaned. “Buddy. That is not appropriate to ask.”
But the question amused me. I grinned at Foster. “Yes, it was. Only kiss someone who is your girlfriend.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “Then I guess you don’t have to worry about it.”
“What if I want a girlfriend? How do I get one?” Foster asked.
This kid was killing me. Six months earlier, I would have told him the key to getting a girlfriend was to be a football player. But now I had a different answer. “You gotta be a hero,” I told him. “Show her that you always have her back, that you’ll take care of her.”
Foster seemed to think that through. “Cool.”
Other thoughts ran through my head about being a friend, about not being selfish, and making sure you weren’t a little bitch when your woman had responsibilities, or hell, just interests that took priority over you. But that seemed like information overload for a nine-year-old who probably just wanted to sit next to a cute girl at lunch.
I held my hand out for a fist bump. “Let’s take that pic.”
* * *
Mia
* * *
“Oh, the finance department included the final bill in your packet here to say that you’re paid in full,” Jeannette said, tapping the manila envelope she had laid on the counter for me.
“Paid in full?” I parroted. I’d just gotten a whole slew of discharge information from the doctor and Mama’s nurse and I was feeling stressed out. James had been busy today filming a commercial. Yes, a freaking commercial. He’d expressed regret over and over that he couldn’t pick us up, so maybe this was his way of making up for that.
Jeannette nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Paid in full.”
“Mia, did you rob a bank?” Mama asked from her wheelchair next to me. “How is that possible?”
I knew exactly how it was possible. “JJ?” I asked Jeannette.
She gave me a grin. “Yes. His assistant came in yesterday and took care of it.”
I didn’t even know he had an assistant, though it made total sense.
“Who is JJ?” Mama asked.
“JJ Beckett. Mia’s boyfriend,” Jeannette said. “He’s a professional football player. She didn’t tell you?”
“No, not one word! Mia, why wouldn’t you tell me that?” Mama shot me a dirty look.
Oh, a lot of reasons. Starting with not wanting my mother to get carried away and ending with the same. “I wasn’t sure how serious it was,” I said. “It’s… new.”
“They met when Mia fainted working at Starbucks in the casino,” Jeannette said, clearly relishing her role of being in the know.
“You fainted at work?” Mama looked upset. “Why?”
“I didn’t get enough sleep. It wasn’t a big deal.”
My nonchalance convinced Mama not to worry either. She immediately circled back around to the boyfriend bit. “Tell me about this football player. He must really like you if he’s paying your bills.”
The look on her face scared me. It was calculating.
“He jumped right over the counter and rescued her when she passed out,” Jeannette said. “I have the video if you want to see it.” Mama nodded eagerly, so she pulled it up on her phone and came around to show her. “Look at that. Mia just turns pale and crumples and bam, JJ flies over that counter.”
“Mia, you look like shit,” Mama said. “Good move, but a risky one. He might have just thought you were contagious and beat it out of there.”
I rolled my eyes. “It was not a move. I genuinely fainted. And I find it intensely irritating that someone was filming right then and there. Who films a Starbucks on their Vegas vacation?” Once we were away from Jeannette, I would tell Mama the truth about how James and I actually met, because I never lied to my mother. Besides, that was definitely less of a fairy-tale beginning to a relationship and might help keep her grounded in reality.
Not that it was working with Christina. She’d already mapped out my entire future with James and it included a wedding at the top of the Stratosphere and a set of twins. Neither of which I would want.
“It’s a good thing they were filming,” Jeannette said. “Now you have that footage forever.”
“Well, he must be a great guy,” Mama said.
That was a deceptively calm sentence. I eyed her suspiciously. “What are you thinking, Hot Mama? No shenanigans.”
“What are you talking about? Sheesh.”
I wasn’t buying the innocent act. “Come on, time to go home, you crazy woman.”
That made her grin. “Let’s roll. No offense, Jeannette, but I hope to never see you again.”
“Likewise, Margaret. Stay off the streets.”
That made Mama laugh. “I make no promises.”
I had wrongly assumed that my mother wouldn’t ask me any further questions about James in front of the car service, but I don’t know why I ever thought that. Mama never shied away from giving too much information away or asking nosy questions of strangers. She managed both in the car ride home to my apartment after I helped her into the backseat.
“How much do you make driving a car like this?” she asked the driver.