Social Experiment

Epilogue

He grins widely. "So you're saying you wouldn't mind having a go right now?"

A blush coats my cheeks at his forwardness and cheekiness, and he chuckles, the sound melodic to my ears. Nate grabs my hand from under the table and laces his fingers through it, giving my hand a small squeeze.

"I'm just kidding, kitten," Nate says seriously, then winks. "I can wait until we get home."

"Can wait for what?" Mason pipes up, looking up from his plate with big, round, curious blue grey eyes.

"To take out the trash."

"To do laundry."

Nathan and I glance at each other, our voices tumbling over one another. I look at Mason and smile. "To take out the trash and do laundry."

He giggles. "Well, duh, you can't do laundry at Rosie's!"

"Yeah Lauren," Nathan quips. "Duh."

I narrow my eyes at him, and then soften my gaze when it falls on Mason. "You're right, honey. Actually, I think I don't need to do laundry today."

Nathan picks up on my hint and pouts dramatically, giving me the look he gives me when he wants something. And, because it always works, I look away from him almost immediately. I feel Nate poking my arm like a child, and when I finally look at him, he's still pouring, his eyes wide and sad.

"Stop doing that," I hiss at him, trying not to smile, but he notices my struggle and a wide grin grows on his face.

"I knew it," He says, his voice low. "You can't stay mad at me. And you want to do 'laundry'."

I can't help myself. As usual, Nathan has me bursting out into a fit of laughter, and he joins me with his deep chuckle that makes my heart flutter. Mason watches us laugh in confusion, and I simply make up some excuse for our laughter, seeing as I couldn't exactly tell him the reason behind it. We continue eating and Nathan eagerly flags down Esther to get the check.

We leave Rosie's with smiles on our faces, as we do every Sunday morning. Ever since we had Mason, Nathan and I thought it to be appropriate to continue the tradition his parents started. Esther absolutely adored seeing us every week, and never failed to serve us with a large smile.

I picked out Nathan's familiar black Mustang in the parking lot and smile warmly to myself. If there's one thing that I never wanted to change, it was that car. We only took it out on special occasions- our Sunday morning breakfasts included- considering it was pretty old and we had new cars now. But when my eyes landed on the familiar black Mustang, with a shiny paint job that Nate had done last week, I couldn't think of a better car.

When we reached our comfortable white house in the outskirts of the city, I see two familiar cars parked on the road that sent Mason jumping up and down in his seat. The second our car was put in park, Mason jumps out of the car and runs to our front door with a grin on his face, and I smiled at him as I got out of the car, and then averted my gaze to our house, my smile widening as I admired it.

The light blue shutters that Nate and I had painted last summer complimented the eggshell color of the house, reminding me of my childhood home. The hand imprints in the cement pathway reminded me of the day that Nate, Mason, and I stuck our hands in the new wet cement despite the workers insisting we stay away from it.