'Til Sun Beams Find You [COMPLETE]

Sixty-four (Part 1)

"Yo.." Carter called to his son, pulling his attention from eating his lunch. "Where you put my phone?"

Xavier shrugged.

"What do that mean? You had it.."

"Ion know," he shrugged again, focusing more on the pasta in his bowl than his father's dilemma.

"See if I let you use my shit again," Carter grumbled, walking to his bedroom to search the covers again.

He had tossed the room upside down looking for it, and he didn't even have a way of calling it or nothing.

Simba barked by the foot of his bed.

"You seen it?" Carter asked the dog, who just rolled around like an idiot. "Useless..."

He paused for a moment, standing still as he glanced around the room.

Where would Xavier leave it?

He walked over to the side of the bed that Zay slept on and got down, checking beneath the bed frame and then in between the mattress and the frame to see if it had dropped in between there.

No luck.

He checked the nightstand, opened the drawers and everything and couldn't find it there either.

Instead, his eyes landed on something different... something he hadn't seen in years because he never used this nightstand.

Tucked beneath a couple books, there was a box he had tossed in haphazardly one night, and in it, was his grandmother's engagement ring.

It was tiny, maybe half a carat but the marksmanship was impeccable, even sixty something years later and looked as good as new.

She had given it to him one of those nights he was speaking to her at length about wanting to marry Nico, and when he chuckled at how small the diamond was, he got a smack to his head.

What it lacked in weight, it made up for in sentiment and rarity.

It was a small diamond his grandfather had found on the beach one night after they had gotten married. They were strapped for cash at the time, and his grandmother suggested they sell it, but he got it made into an engagement ring, because he had never been able to buy one for her before that.

The story she told him, was that in due time, everything would work out, and when the right time came – and he'd feel when the time was right – she wanted him to give the ring to Nico.

He took it, even though he felt she might not like such a small ring, because he knew the sentiment his grandmother had for her engagement ring.

He'd never seen her without it, even after his grandfather died.

Carter shut the box closed and tossed it back into the nightstand before shutting it.

"Zay!" He yelled, and got ignored like usual. "Zay you better come help me find this phone or it's your ass.... Zay! You don't hear me calling you, boy?"

He walked to the living room to see Xavier sitting at the table, giggling.

"What?" Carter asked, walking over to the table.

On it, there was the instruction manual to the Lego tractor set they were building together, that still was only quarter way done because Xavier liked fooling around instead of focusing, leaving Carter to handle him and put the pieces together on his own.

Next to the tractor was a Lego flower set that he was putting together on his own, and it was mostly nearly done.

Xavier reached behind his back and pulled out the phone he had been hiding for the last hour while Carter put the Lego sets together and made his lunch.