let's light up the sky ☆

Chapter 11

"What about those two?" I whispered, thumbing over to a couple walking towards the beach.

Aaron cringed. "Ooh, good one. It's like, you can tell those two are together but that four-foot gap? I wanna know what happened in the car on the way up here."

I laughed. "'I told you not to eat all that leftover chili right before we left!'"

"'Don't tell me what to do! Chili is life, babe!'"

I glanced over to someone who looked like she had been typing out a furious text for the last few minutes. "Whoever she's been talking to, they better start writing their last will and testament."

Aaron nodded in solidarity. "Yep, last time I got a text that long... I was suddenly single."

"Damn, what did you do?"

He clicked his tongue. "Here's a word of advice. If you're bad at remembering anniversaries, write 'em down."

Work was slow for once. We had a rush early in the morning but things leveled out as the beach-goers had gone out for real food. We hunkered down for the after-lunch rush. Until then, Aaron and I were enjoying our downtime and a little bit of people-watching.

"Anyway, I'm gonna make myself a milkshake. Want anything while I'm up?"

"Blueberry!"

"Thanks for the eloquent response, big dog." I scooped two large helpings of blueberry ice cream into the blender with milk to make it easier to blend. Unfortunately, I didn't put in enough milk and choked up the blades halfway through the mix. I covered my ears to block out the awful squealing sound. "God, I'm never gonna get this right," I muttered. I still couldn't manage to make a proper milkshake. Mine are either too thick or too watery.

Aaron glanced over from the lounge chair where he'd kicked back to relax. "Do you remember my trick to measure it?"

"You know I'm bad at math."

Aaron stood up and took over for me, which I was more than happy to pass off. He emptied out the rest of the whole milk jug and tapped the blend button to finish evening it out.

I huffed. "Freezer time?"

"Freezer time!" The best thing about running out of anything is the chance to go to the walk-in freezer for a few minutes and get out of the heat. I slipped out while Aaron finished making enough milkshakes for both of us.

"Anoush?" Aaron called out while I put everything we needed onto the plastic cart.

"Yo."

"Your folks are here."

That was odd. Mom dropped me off just a couple hours ago and I still had three to go before my shift was over. I scuttled my way back to the counter and greeted them with a smile.

"Hey, what are you doing here?"

Mom sucked in a breath and grimaced. "Bad news," she started. "Giannis and I are going to San Francisco for a few days. We dropped by to say that and grab a treat for the road."

I leaned in and whispered, "For Aunt Anahit?" Aaron caught my drift and put his headphones on to get to work sorting everything from the freezer.

Mom nodded and hummed. "Yep, she's at the hospital now. They'll try to do everything to stop him, but it seems like baby D wants to come early."

Like Mom, her sister Anahit had a less than perfect time being pregnant. The only problem is, this is her first kid and she's already 35 years old. "Baby D," the nickname they picked out so they wouldn't spoil his real name before they were ready, wasn't supposed to come until the end of August. They all kind of predicted that this would happen – it wasn't a matter of if he would come early, but when.