“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Positive?”

“Yes!”

I snickered. “Did Josh?”

“Yes.”

“Where is he?”

“Playing video games in the living room.”

“Do you love me?” I asked him like I did every night just to hear him say it.

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“A lot!” his little boy voice giggled in amusement, reminding me why I still asked.

“Are you having fun?”

“Yes.”

“You’re ready?” I asked.

“Yes,” the five-year-old answered quickly. I could already picture him in my head, lying back against his pillows with his covers up to his neck. He liked sleeping like a mummy, wrapped up completely. “Can you tell me the one about daddy saving the old lady’s cat again?” he asked with a tired, nearly dreamy sigh.

God, I really needed to quit saying “old lady” around them. I couldn’t count the number of times I had told Josh and Louie the same story, but I always let him choose what he wanted to hear. So, for what was more than likely the twentieth time, I told him about the time Rodrigo climbed up a tree to save our elderly neighbor’s cat back when we had lived together along with my best friend. “The tree was so big, Goo, I thought he was going to fall and break his leg…,” I started.

Chapter Three

I was this fucking close to banging my head on the steering wheel. Oh my God. It was too early for this. And if I was going to be totally honest with myself, noon would have been too early for this. Six in the evening would have been too early for this.

“I don’t have any friends.” Josh continued the same rant he’d been going on for the last small eternity about how unfair starting fifth grade at a new school was.

He’d been going at it for twenty minutes exactly. I’d been eyeing the clock.

They were twenty minutes I would never, ever get back.

Twenty minutes that seemed like they were going to span the next six months between this moment and my thirtieth birthday.

Twenty minutes that had me silently begging for patience. Or for the end. For anything to make him stop. Oh my God. I was crying invisible tears and sobbing silently.

I’d been dropping Josh and Lou off at school and daycare for a long time, and in that period, waking up before seven hadn’t gotten any easier. I doubted it ever would. My soul cried every morning when the alarm went off; then it cried even more when I had to keep after Josh to wake up, get out of bed, and get dressed. So listening to him complain for the hundredth time about the unfairness of starting all over again was too much to handle before lunchtime.

To be fair, a huge part of me could understand that having to make new friends sucked. But it was a better school than the one he’d been at before, and Josh—not counting this moment—was the kind of kid I was proud to be mine, who made friends easily. He got that from our side of the family. I’d give him a week before he had a new best friend, two weeks before someone invited him for a sleepover, and three weeks before he completely forgot he had ever complained in the first place. He adapted well. Both boys did.

But this, this was making it seem like I was ruining his life. At least that was what he was pretty much hinting at. Me destroying a ten-year-old’s life. I could cross that off my bucket list.

When his grandparents had dropped him off the night before after being gone for a week, and he’d already been in a terrible mood, I should have known what I’d be getting myself into.

“Who am I going to sit with at lunch? Who is going to let me borrow a pencil if I need one?” he pleaded out the question like a total drama queen. I wasn’t sure where the hell he’d picked that up from.

My real question was: why wouldn’t he have a pencil to begin with? I’d bought him a value pack and mechanical pencils.

I didn’t bother answering or asking about the pencil situation, because at this point, I thought he just wanted to hear himself talk, and anything I said wasn’t going to be helpful. Commentary was pointless, and frankly, I didn’t trust myself not to make a sarcastic comment that he would take the worst way possible because he was in a mood.

“Who am I going to talk to?” he kept going, undaunted by the silence. “Who am I going to invite to my birthday?”

Oh dear God, he was worrying about imaginary birthday parties already. How rude would it be if I turned on the radio loud enough to zone him out?

“Are you listening to me?” Josh asked in that whiney voice he usually spared me from.

I gritted my teeth and kept my face forward so that he wouldn’t see me glaring at him through the rearview mirror. “Yes, I’m listening to you.”

“No, you’re not.”

I sighed and gave the steering wheel a squeeze. “Yes, I am. I’m just not going to say anything because I know you’re not going to believe me when I tell you that you’re going to make friends, that everything is going to be fine, and when your birthday rolls around, you’ll have more than enough people to invite, J.” I kept my mouth shut about his non-pencil problem for both of our sakes. When he didn’t respond, I asked, “Am I right?”

He grumbled.

Just like my damn brother. “Look, I get it. I’ve hated starting at a new job where I didn’t know anyone, but you’re a Casillas. You’re cute, you’re smart, you’re nice, and you’re good at anything you want to be good at. You’ll be fine. You’ll both be fine. You’re amazing.”