Under Summer Sky • Zarry

26. Z word

3 years later. June.

"Hey Harry, do you think you can scoop Harlow up from preschool today and take her for a bit? I have to stay late at work editing tonight and Jeff won't be home till after dinner," Gemma asked me over the phone on a Friday afternoon.

"Yeah sure, no problem Gem," I replied, slipping on my pair of junky red converse, then grabbing my car keys off the hook in the foyer. "I just gotta be to work by quarter to seven."

"Thanks baby bro, I owe you one."

"Don't even worry about it. We'll just hang out and watch Paw Patrol...maybe eat McDonald's," I tossed back, knowing very well that the last part of what I said was going to send her off.

I was right.

"Harry! Do not give her McDonald's, I mean it! This is a vegetarian household...you know that," she scolded me.

I laughed. "I know, chill out. I'm joking," I said as I marched down the front steps of my house in Kensington.

I hopped into my white 1970 Ford Capri with Harlow's car seat already secured in the back and started up the engine of my new vintage roadster, speeding off down the street towards the Caversham Nursery School.

I only bought this vintage car a few months ago after I saw it in a car auction in Manchester and since I had been saving a ton of money over the last few years after being quickly promoted to assistant manager at Bentley's Bakery, I was actually able to snag it.

But I didn't work there anymore.

I graduated from UEL last year with two honors degrees in both business and media communications, an achievement that I never thought I'd ever have under my belt, but I somehow managed to do it. My mum couldn't have been any prouder.

I ended up turning down a professional career with football, even though everyone called me crazy for doing it, because after all those years of playing for East London, I realized that I had bigger dreams than making the sport my whole life.

What I really wanted was to have my very own vineyard and winery.

There was just something that clicked in my brain during my third year at university when I had to create a hypothetical business plan for an assignment, and the very first thing that I thought of was Lombardi Imperial Wines.

I guess it stayed with me.

I knew that it was going to take a lot of money, land, and a serious amount of work to ever do what Gio did, but I wasn't planning on giving up on that dream. I knew one day in the future that I would do it. But for right now I settled with being a lounge and club manager at Stella's in London.

And speaking of Stella, for whom the club was named after, I just saw her now as I exited my car upon arriving at Caversham Nursery School.

Stella was only two years old, just a few months shy from turning three, with her bouncing brown curls that were pulled up into two pig tails, her wide brown eyes and her adorable, cheeky grin, and she ran up to me straight away as I popped in to Mrs. Dean's preschool class to pick up my three year old niece that late afternoon.

"Harry! Hi Harry!" Stella exclaimed in her high pitched toddler voice, tugging on the end of my red and orange paisley, button down shirt.

"Hey Stels. Where's Low? Can you go and get her for me?" I asked as I bent down to her tiny level.

"Mhm," she grinned at me and hopped across the room, pulling on Harlow's arm from out of the reading nook.

"Uncle Harry!" Harlow shouted, her big hazel eyes lighting up as she skipped towards me in her yellow corduroy overalls, the ones that I bought for her.