Mariana's best friend | Jesus foster

Thirty-Three

As Jesus and I walked over to the front door and pass by the stairs, Mariana's luggage falls down the stairs with her groaning in frustration at the top of the stairs.

Jesus looks at the bag and just walks over it making me roll my eyes and let go of his hand that I was holding.

"Jesus. Excuse me. Little help here."

"Why don't you ask your travel buddy, Wyatt, for help?"

"I'll help!" Noah says and tries lifting up the heavy luggage. Mariana walks the rest of the way down and I helped Noah picking up the luggage.

"Oh, my god. I never seriously asked him to come with me to Europe." Mariana grabs the luggage and smiles at me and Noah.

Noah cheers as if he picked up the luggage himself and I High-five him.

"And even if we did go together, it would only delay your business for a couple of months. And it's not like you have any jobs yet."

Jesus ignores her and leans against the wall. I give an apologetic look to Mariana. 

=

The doorbell rings and Jesus immediately gets it. Scott shows up when the door opens. "Hey, Scott. What's up?"

"Can I have a word with your moms?" Jesus looks over to me and Mariana.

"I'll... go get them." Mariana goes up the stairs to get Lena and Stef.

They come down and everyone moves into the living room area.

"So, finally she shows up for a court date, and suddenly the judge thinks that she's fit to be a parent?" Stef asks with anger in her voice.

"She completed the parenting classes and the 30-day rehab and for now, he's just granting her unsupervised visits," Scott explains.

"Well, then, I mean, you know, if she's been sober for 30 days after a decade of drug abuse, by all means..." Stef snaps back.

"So what else? I know you didn't just come to tell us that." Lena's soft voice says.

Scott looks over at her and nods. "When Corey's mother heard that you were taking him out of the country, she got scared that maybe you wouldn't bring him back."

"That's ridiculous."

"I told her that, but the judge rescinded the permission to take Corey to the wedding." Scott stuffs his hands in his jeans front pocket.

"What?!"

"Bullshit!"

"No way."

"We'll find a respite family to put him in while you're gone."

This is really unfair to Corey. I could tell he was really excited about this trip and now he can't even come with us.

"Oh, no, no, no. No. Absolutely not. He is not staying with strangers. One of us is gonna stay home." Stef turns to Lena.

"I'll stay." Jesus immediately says and I turn to him. "What?"

"No one should have to miss your son's wedding. It's just for a few days. Corey will be fine." Just then, Corey walks in, with his luggage all ready.

"What's wrong?" We all look at him with sad expressions. "Is there a problem?"

=

"Welcome to Beaches."

We all, finally, get out of the car and into the hotel's lobby. I help Noah down from the car and he looks at our new surroundings with awe.