I wait the ten minutes, no friend of hers comes in and I head for the bathroom. When I come back to the table, she's excitedly chattering with a guy and she laughs. He has blonde hair, is easily six feet tall and muscular. I take my seat, his back to me in the curved part of the booth and I clear my throat as she shoves him. She looks at me and smiles, blushing. "What's up this guy's ass?" a familiar voice comments. 

"Nick, this is Josh."

He turns to look at me and his jaw drops with mine, eliciting laughter from us. "What up, man? Long time, no see!" he properly greets me with a handshake hug.

"When she explained you, it didn't sound like you! I'm good!"

"So you're the poor sucker she's been telling me about?" he teases. 

"Nick!"

"Shelby!" he yells back.

"That's not funny!"

"AJ's cousin's," he comments, pointing at her. "Can we go through this AFTER Grahm's party?" she demands, her face going tomato red.

"What about AJ's cousin?" I question. 

"His cousin's favorite Shelby Cobra, she lost it and christened it when she was seventeen," Nick divulges to me, an evil grin plastered on his face. 

Her face is on the table, her arms over her head. "To who?"

"I swear if you DON'T shut the fuck up, I'm kicking your ass, Doogie!" she exclaims, muffled by the table and her arms. 

"Whatever, Boogie," he replies, "you'll just beat on me next time anyway." 

I'm confused, looking at them like they've lost their minds. "What the hell?"

"I started calling her 'Boogie' when we were 8 and 12, after Aaron had been calling her that since he was a toddler because he'd wiped his runny nose on her during a fit and said 'my boogie' and she calls me 'Doogie' ever since Angel mispronounced 'doggie', looking right at me. They stuck after that."

"Is that why you say 'Boog' or 'Boogie' when a camera gets close to you during award shows?"

They laugh and I'm still confused, a little less than a minute ago. "Yeah, that's why. Aaron does it, too. Even Kade and Tae do it."

"How are Mook and Gook?" she asks. 

"Big!"

"Aren't they teens?"

"Mook is 15 and Gook is 12 now, doing good in school and they're all driving up tomorrow morning at the ass crack of dawn."

"Pops is crazy," she laughs. 

"How's Gin?"

"She passed in May."

She drops her head and he envelopes her in his arms, rubbing her back. "I'm sorry, Boogie."

Elise's cousin walks over and looks at Nick. "That you, Doogie?"

"Sure is, Anenome."

"She just told you about Gin?"

"Yeah, sucks."

"She has the house and the car, Derky died a week later from a broken heart."

"Derky?" I demand. 

"Elise's mom got a blue front amazon parrot around the time she was learning to walk and talk, her mom let her name it. She pointed at it and said 'Derky', meaning birdy. They even had it in Florida while they lived there."

"I'm exhausted, Doogie. Show him the way to the house?"

"Of course, Boogie. Let me up so I can hug Anenome and we can go. Still on for nine?"

"Yes." He hugs her cousin AJ. Oh, yeah, her cousin is about five foot nine, dark brown hair and hazel eyes. She's skinny, but not a sick Paris Hilton skinny, a Britney 'Oops!' skinny. "Hop on, Boog, I'll carry you."

I notice she's dead tired and she does allow him to piggy back her to my rental, dropping her in the front seat. "Why is she so tired?"

"JC, she works 47 hour weeks, has three kids, one of them has Autism and ADHD, deals with the schools, meetings and everything else that goes into being a single mom while keeping some huge secrets. She's never once told anyone she knows me outside of Deven or her family. Deven, I met her a handful of times and I'm not sure she knows exactly who I am, but she's cool in my book."

"Doogie?" she calls him, half asleep from my passenger seat up front. Nick bends down and smiles at her, dropping his head between his arms to look in her face. "Boogie?"

"Lessgo."

"Let me finish talking to JC and we will get you home, Boog."

"MmmtayDoog."

I shoot him a very befuddled look, bringing a chuckle from him. "She said 'ok, Doog'."

"She's exhausted. Do you know how busy she was this week?"

"She had to plan for his party, count guests, plan for the food, still has a cake to make from scratch according to her grandma's recipe, a guest book, make sure she has all blank memory cards for her cameras, the music and still has to set up the party itself."

"We can help her out when we get there," I remark. 

"Yeah, don't see why not," Nick agrees. He removes his hands from the roof, presses a kiss to her temple like he would one of his siblings and closes the door. "Flick your hazards on and off when you're set to go."

We get there and Nick shows me to her bedroom, helping me get her into her spot on her queen size bed. We walk out of the room, his hands skillfully closing the door without waking her because she's always been a light sleeper he explains and we go into the kitchen. He immediately reaches into a cabinet above the fridge and pulls out an old blue Betty Crocker book, flipping to the middle of it, but can't find what he's searching for before pulling out other books and putting them on the kitchen table. He flips through them all except one and halfway through the binder, finds what he needs. He points at the page, reading the ingredients and checking if she has it all. I chance reading the name of this cake. "Ice cream cheesecake?"

"That's nothing compared to her improvised chocolate and neapolitan ones, those are a serious pain in the ass," he whispers back. 

"Where are the kids?"

"Miss Thang is with Deven in her room, Mickie is most likely with some friends and Grahm's probably with his cousin, AJ."

"Wasn't she at the restaurant?"

"Her girlfriend, Charlotte, took care of him while she worked tonight," he informs me like it's the most normal thing in life. 

"Girlfriend?"

"Yeah, AJ's a lesbian, always has been."

He looks at my expression and smirks. "A lesbian?"

"Hey, for a lesbian, she's a blast to hang with," he defends her, shrugging.  A small girl that looks exactly like Elise zombie walks past us, grumbling. "Hey, Lani," he greets her. She raises a hand and grumbles something along the lines of 'hey, Doogie'. 

"Why does Elise call her Aaliyah sometimes?" I whisper my query once the little girl has been upstairs for a few minutes. 

"She behaves like Aaliyah Haughton, reminds her of her best friend she lost in 01. After that, she fell further down the steep embankment of addiction than I had for nearly a year, already having been partying harder than me since 99. She stopped in mid 02 when she discovered she was pregnant with  Mickie."

"Wow. Did she quit cold turkey?"

"Everything, all at once; drinking, heavy drugs and marijuana. She's been clean of most of it for seventeen years."

"What do you mean by most?"

"She can tell you when she's ready, I'm teetering on that fine line of trust as is, man."

I don't like how he just dropped the subject, it makes me want to rethink wanting to get involved. The whole mom of teens thing, I'm fine with that. The whole divorced thing, I can deal with it. The used to be a drug addict and alcoholic issue... I don't know if I can put up with THAT.