"Hey Babe!" Toni beamed as Adi opened the door. The smile on her face couldn't have been wider, and she was practically bouncing with nervous energy. It wasn't a common look for her; she was normally so calm. Adi found herself wondering if her friend hadn't just been joking about trying to give her a makeover. And then she turned around to see her mom at the kitchen table, hiding a knowing smile behind the top of the newspaper. She seemed a little surprised, but trying not to show it.
"Toni," Adi smiled, a little nervously. After the conversation earlier, Mom would be sure that she and Toni were dating. "You don't need to be so enthusiastic."
"Hey, I'm helping my friend out. And we get to go shopping. That's reason enough to be happy, isn't it?"
"Yeah, but my Mom might think..." she gestured nervously as she spoke, but didn't really know what point she was trying to get across.
"While you're here, Toni?" Mom called from the kitchen table, "Can I talk to you a little? There's something I wanted to ask."
"What's up, Mrs Spenser?"
There was a long pause which drew out to the point where Adi really started to notice the ticking of the clock in the corner, and the small sounds drifting in from outside.
"I get it," Adi was the one to break the silence. "She wants to give the 'Are you dating my daughter?' speech, and probably some kind of dire warning about what she'll do if you hurt me. Tell her it's not like that, right? I'll wait outside while you two get through the serious conversation."
She smiled, picked up her bag (carrying four spare diapers in a discreet pouch, even though she was sure she wouldn't need them), and walked out to the kerb. She was surprised to find that none of Toni's bikes were in sight, so she paced up and down for a few minutes. The sun was lurking behind the edge of a hazy cloud, but it was bright enough to make the air warm against her skin. A nice day for a picnic, if they hadn't already had other plans. Adi took a few minutes to try to unpick Mom's recent behaviour in heer mind, but she couldn't make any sense out of the many shifts in perspective that morning. Love, and stress, and her upcoming birthday. All she could think of was that Mom was anxious about her little girl finally being an adult, and couldn't find a good way to express her worries. All the stuff about just making stress go away, that was a weird philosophical exercise. But if she interpreted it as a confused attempt to say "I wish I could shield you from the world forever," then it was kind of touching.
"You okay, Babe?" Toni appeared at the door a few minutes later, and strode down the path at an energetic pace Adi would have needed to jog to keep up with.
"Ready to go. You had the confrontation, then?"
"Remember your brother's back tomorrow!" Mom called from the doorway, but didn't step outside. "You might want to get him some kind of present. Let him know you missed him."
"I'll think about it," Adi called back, hoping that conveyed the detail that thinking was as far as it would go.
Toni walked up to a car that Adi couldn't remember seeing before, a silver coupé with mud splatters along the bottom of the doors. Not a luxury car, but probably less than a year old.
"Bikes are for fun," she explained as she climbed into the driver's seat. "Shopping can be fun too, but they don't go well together. I borrow Hendrik's car if I don't know how much space my shopping will take up."
"So," Adi mumbled. She didn't say anything about the car, so much more modern than anything Mom could afford. It had a large touch-screen that Toni operated one-handed to get directions to the Mercer Centre and queue up some music. The seats were more comfortable, too. "What did she have to say?"