But I love her

9~pep rally

We drove for a few minutes quietly, nothing but the radio playing. I pulled up on my dad paying the tow truck man. I jumped out of the truck. "Hey dad are you okay?"

"Yeah I'm fine son" he said patting me on the back.

"Good," I said smiling. "Let's go"

"Okay, I'm on my way. Let me grab the pizza" he grabbed the pizza and hopped in the back seat.
***
"Have you ever heard about all the trouble Maverick and Adrien got into?" Dad asked.

"No but I'm eager to find out," Aria laughed.  I groaned beside her.

We were all sitting on the couch enjoying our pizza and talking and laughing.

"There was this one time where they got into Lori's paint, in the middle of the night, and got it everywhere" dad laughed. Aria laughed too. I was hiding my red embarrassed face behind a pillow.

"And another time when Lori was outside planting flowers and they wandered outside and ate the flowers she was about to plant" Aria and dad laughed yet again. I just buried my face deeper and deeper into the pillow. "Lori was so mad after that Maverick wasn't allowed to come over for a week" Aria laughed but this time it wasn't a fully concentrated laugh, she was thinking about something else I could see it in her eyes.

"Who's Lori?" She asked. I knew she would ask this sometime if dad kept mentioning her.

"Lori's my mom." I said coming out from behind the pillow, my face no longer flushing in embarrassment. Dad fell silent.

"I would love to meet her. She sounds nice," Aria said, completely oblivious.

"That's the thing you can't," I said softly.

"I should leave," dad said as he got up and walked out of the room.

"What do you mean?" She furrowed her brow in confusion.

"My mom died three years ago"

"Oh." She too fell silent. She was thinking, probably of what to say and do next. "I'm sorry I didn't know," she said, getting up.

"Where are you going?" I kind of wanted her to stay. She grabbed her stuff and slipped her shoes on.

"Home, I think I overstayed my welcome" she opened the door and left.

"Aria wait!" I yelled after her but she was gone. She'd walked to Maverick's house.
***
"It's game day boys!" My dad yelled coming into my room and practically bouncing off the walls. Waking us up.

It was a tradition that every night before game day Maverick and I would sleepover at one of our houses. This week it was my house.

"Five more minutes, dad!" I groaned, throwing my arm over my face. He ripped my blanket off me and continued going crazy. To say my dad was excited was an understatement.

"I've got pancakes in the kitchen and Maverick your mom is here."

Another part of the tradition is the parent that does not have the boys comes over and eats breakfast with us.

We slowly got up and moved our way to the kitchen. The pancakes smelled amazing. Mrs.Thompson already had her plate. I grabbed mine from my dad. I grumbled a thank you still tired.

Once I ate my pancakes and drank some apple juice, I was much more awake and pumped for the day. Maverick too. We looked at each other with mischievous grins.

In sync we both stood up on the counter and started dancing and yelling and getting excited for the day.

"Alright alright" my dad said smiling after a few minutes. "Go get your jerseys on, we don't want y'all late for school" he said in a more serious voice, still smiling shooing is out of the kitchen with a towel.