"Hey, G? You wanna be the one that takes our orders upfront?" I look over at Giovanni as he sits in the backseat of the car with my cousin playing a game using my phone that he had downloaded a few weeks ago. I've gotten used to bringing a portable charger whenever I'm with him because he never lets me use my own phone anymore.
I'm sitting in the passenger seat of Carter's car. Today was a special day at Giovanni's and my cousin, Chinelo's school where they opted to let the kids out for early dismissal because of something that involved the teacher's taking this as a free day to do some sort of training.
I was planning on picking them up and taking them out for ice cream instead of taking them straight home weeks ago but when I was heading out the door today, Carter offered to give me a lift.
Gio and Chinelo had already been familiar with Carter since he spent so much time around me prior to him confessing how he felt about me so I saw nothing wrong with it. We were planning to go back to the office anyway.
Gio and Chinelo pay me no kind of attention, practically dismissing what I'm saying by not answering as I call his name and continuing to stay engrossed in their game as Chinelo leans over to watch Gio play.
Carter notices this and lets out a small laugh scratching the back of his neck when he turns to look at me.
I don't know what I'm going to do when they become teenagers if they're acting like this already.
I sigh, unbuckling my seatbelt and turning my whole body around, placing my hand on the back of the headrest of my chair so I can look at them better, and reach my arm out to quickly snatch my phone out of Gio's hand. He looks up quickly and shakes the hair out of his eyes that were blocking his vision, looking at me with his jaw slacked open in shock as both he and Chinelo watch me shut off my phone and throw it into Carter's lap next to me.
"Karma! I was about to beat my high score!" Gio sits further back in his seat and groans loudly as Chinelo snickers quietly to herself moving farther away from him.
"Well next time when I talk to you, I expect you to listen to me instead of staring at my phone all day."
"You said I could use it! Karma, you just ruined that whole game for me!" he continues to whine and I shake my head with a sigh
"You're gonna mess up your eyesight by staring at that thing all day anyway, G. You didn't even look up or out the window to even notice where we were," I say back to him calmly. I'm anything but calm though, I can't stand when he gets in one of his moods.
He sighs loudly and turns his head to the right to look out the window and he lets out a gasp to see where we're at.
It was his favorite ice cream shop that I had introduced him to when he was a little younger than he is now. We never got to go there often but I wanted to surprise him and I was slightly annoyed at how he had been acting from the moment me and Carter picked them up.
His face twists to one of immediate guilt, a look that I've e seen on his face quite often, he turns away from the window and looks at me, "I'm sorry. I love you. I won't use your phone anymore." he takes his hand to rake through the front of his hair attempting to push it back.
I let out a laugh and say, "You can if you want but when I talk to you Gio--this goes for both of you--I expect for you to be attentive and respectful. But now that we got that out of the way, I'm craving something cold right now. Let's get inside."
We all get out of the car, Gio and Nelo walking in front of Carter and I. When we get to the front door of the shop Gio opens the door widely for Chinelo and then jokingly tries to shut the door before I can get through but because he does this often I was quick enough to grab the hand that was holding the door and replacing it with my own instead to hold it open for myself, ruffling the top of his hair as Carter is the last person to walk through the door after us.
I turn around to face Carter. He's never been to this shop before like the rest of us have so he's not sure what to order. He tells me that he'll have whatever I have just to try it out and when Gio hears this he quickly comes to me to get money so he and Nelo can order for all of us.
I'm about to pull out my wallet when I see Carter's hand holding a $50 dollar bill which is way more than what the total would come out to. But before I can deny Gio of taking the money, Giovanni says 'thank you' and motions for Chinelo to run off with him to stand in the short line in front of the counter to order.
I throw my head back and sigh turning around to look at him, "You didn't have to do that. It was supposed to be my treat to them." I give him a small smile and he returns it,
"I'm aware. But it was my treat to you. Why not kill two birds with one stone and pay for the little ones too?" he says and I snort
"Don't say that around Gio. He's turning 10 later this year, and he suddenly thinks he'll be grown since his age will have two numbers in it instead of one." he laughs at that as I walk to a booth for the four of us to sit in.
Carter and I sit at the booth and talk for a few minutes waiting for Gio and Nelo to come back. We don't wait that long before I see them walking over to us holding two cups of ice cream each.
Carter and I are sitting on one side of the booth as they come to sit in front of us on the other side. Chinelo hands me my ice cream while Gio hands Carter his own.
Gio reaches into the pocket of his uniform pants getting ready to give Carter his exorbitant amount of change before Carter stops him and says, "Why don't you split up the change evenly between you and Chinelo and you can keep it."
Gio and Chinelo's eyes light up when he says this and drop the money on the counter getting ready to split it between the two of them when I stop them saying, "What do we say to Carter, you guys?"
They both say 'thank you' in unison not really paying attention still looking down at the money as Carter chuckles to himself.
The change came out to being $29 and some change. Not wanting them to try and split an uneven number, I reach into my bag and take out an extra dollar dropping it on the counter so they could each walk away with $15.
We sat in the booth for about 20-30 minutes afterward in our own conversations. Nelo and I engaging in some girl chat as we talk about the newest season of love island. I don't know if it's something she should be watching but I'm a sucker for love stories so she definitely is taking after me just a little bit with being so obsessed with this show.
I can hear Gio and Carter talking about basketball beside us as a conversation about how Carter will be shooting the pictures for Steph Curry's feature in our magazine comes up.
When he told me about this, I had absentmindedly brought up that Gio was obsessed with everything Steph Curry related.
Gio proved that he is no fake fan by springing right into action and talking about everything he knew about this man while Carter paid attention and listened to his every word.
Gio had talked about how he wanted to get better at playing basketball so he could be just like him. And Gio was actually pretty good. I had talked to his mom about signing him up for the local boy's basketball team for kids and he's usually the one scoring most of the points in almost every game.
"You really like Steph Curry a lot huh?" Carter asks thoughtfully and Gio tilts his head to the side with a huge smile
"Duh! I've been saying that for the past ten minutes!"
"Well, I'm gonna meet him at that photoshoot...if you want you could give me a basketball and I could get you an autograph. Better yet, you could even come with me to meet him in person." Carter smiles widely at Gio as Gio's jaw is slacked open in pure shock.
"Dude! Seriously? You'd let me meet him with you?!"
I raise my hand up quickly, "No. No. No. I'm all for the autograph but G, I can't let you miss school. You know how your teacher likes to give those pop quizzes, you're already slacking a bit because you didn't do that one important project."
"But Ma, It's just one day--"
"Just like it was just one project and your grade dropped." No seriously. He went from an 89 to 62 all for that one project. It's been hell trying to get it to go up to at least a C minus
He shakes the hair out of his eyes with his mouth wide open in disbelief looking at Carter for help but Carter backs me up and says, "No. No. Karma's right. I shouldn't have asked I wasn't thinking right. You should go to school and I'll just let him sign a basketball for you or something."
"No! I--Karma. Please, please please. I'll do anything you ask for the next month. I'll paint your nails, I'll even do your toes! I'll fly to Mexico and be the ring person at Pao's wedding and I won't even complain once. Please!" he begs, "You can call in sick for me just this once, Karma, please! I won't touch your phone or anything for the next month. Two months. A year? Please!"
I shake my head and sigh inwardly not even knowing how to say no to all that. Especially since Gio was so passionate about this that he got kinda loud and some of the other customers had been looking at us--mainly Gio and I-- to see what I'd say next.
I point my finger at him and speak slowly, "Ok. I'll let you do this. If you promise to study over all the notes that you'll miss in class." he nods quickly, "I want you to get all your questions ready to ask him so that you don't forget anything when you actually meet him. You only talk about basketball. That's it. Don't ask anything too personal. I'll be looking over all the questions you ask the day before." I might be doing a lot but it's the journalist in me. He's not biologically mine, but I still consider him a representation of me wherever he goes, and since it's his first time meeting a big celebrity I want to make sure he acts as respectfully as possible.
Especially since he's a smaller copy of his brother and has quite the mouth on him at times.
"Thank you, Karma! Thanks, Carter!" Gio smiles widely shaking the hair out of his face again and running his hands through it to tame it, "I like you. Keep hanging around." he says to Carter and I refrain from shaking my head in slight embarrassment.
Carter grins and says, "Will do."
"When am I ever gonna get the chance to meet someone I like, Karma?" Chinelo pipes up for the first time probably feeling a bit jealous that Gio is going to meet his idol through the connection he has with Carter as she crosses her little arms across her chest.
"When Gabby Douglas or Simone Biles stops by, I'll remember to call you." I sigh going back to eating my ice cream.
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[A/N] karma is such a mom LMAOOOO and Carter is workin all the right angles