Thick & Thin

Chapter Forty-One; All I want for Christmas.is You

"Really Mark. It's fine." Kelly rolled her brown eyes in annoyance while speaking into the mouth piece of her Motorola blue-tooth.

"I understand." She chuckled at the way he went on apologizing for thinking he'd stood her up on Christmas day, but it honestly wasn't that serious to her. Two days prior he didn't plan on leaving the state and going to visit his family for the holidays. Being the naturally sweet person that she was, she decided to invite him to tag along with her to Tina's big Christmas dinner. It wasn't until the night before that he learned his grandmother had become extremely ill and canceled on her at the last minute.

"Listen. I'm not mad at all. More than anything I'd rather you go see her before it's too late. Who knows when you'll be able to spend time with her again."

Surprisingly Mark had nothing more to say after that. She was right.

"Alright love, have a safe trip..mmhmm...talk to you soon."

Immediately, she ended the call and tossed the device connected to her ear into the passenger's seat. Somewhat relieved, she sighed heavily, thinking about the awkwardness she would've caused if he actually did show up with her. She shook her head and chuckled to herself thinking about the possible unwanted drama. She made a mental note to not let Mark get even more attached to her than he already had over the past few weeks.

Minutes later she arrived in front of Tina's house.

Due to the excess cars already there she'd attempted to park a few houses down before noticing Roy struggling to get the boys out of the backseat of his truck.

What a coincidence it would be for us to arrive at the same time, she thought.

Kelly parked and primped in the mirror for a few seconds applying another coat of lipstick. She teased with her hair before she felt like she looked good enough for Roy to drool over and got out of the car. Despite the fact that Roy hadn't paid attention to her past attempts to lure him back in with her good looks, she still tried.

Within seconds' she'd hopped out of her Range Rover and pranced on over to Roy's car. Keith and Ryan both giggled with joy once their focus landed on their mother. Roy slammed the door shut while managing both of them in his arms.

"How are my boys doing?" she smiled and kissed Ryan's forehead before grabbing Keith and shifting him towards her right hip.

"Good. Didn't have any problems."

Kelly nodded and stared at Roy intently indicating that she was referring to him also but sensed that she might need to be more specific. "And you? How you been?"

Of course she probably would've knew the answer to this three days ago when she dropped the twins off at his mother's house but dipped out before Roy could come pick them up. She'd been doing that a lot lately unable to face him for some reason.

"I'm good Kelly." The seriousness in his voice made it evident that he wasn't up for any of her games at the moment.

"You want me to put their stuff in your car now or later?"

"Oh don't worry about it, I'll get it later."

Roy nodded and headed towards the front door while she straggled behind giggling and playing with Keith.

Tina came to the door grinning from ear to ear. "Aww look at my babies." She cooed at the twins while they all walked into the foyer.

"So are we on that good of terms we're showing up to events together again?" Tina mumbled slyly to Kelly with a smirk on her face but Roy heard her and laughed finding humor in her question.