Mariana Zapata

“My schnecke. My little snail, do you know that’s what it means? It’s a term of affection in my country. My love. My snail. I don’t want to waste more time. I have nothing to hide and neither do you.”

You’re not ever going to be anyone else’s partner. Not while I’m alive, Meatball. I will drag your stubborn, beautiful ass kicking and screaming back to me because nobody else will ever be good enough for you

He was built like a porn star. The really attractive, muscular porn stars.
Or I guess a male calendar model.
I’d obviously been watching too much guy-on-guy porn lately for that to be the first kind of body I associated him with.

I said “yes” before I could think twice. They were my boys. Maybe they hadn’t come straight from my body, but they were as mine as they could get.

“He lives with you?”
The man’s eyebrows twitched. “Yeah. I’m your neighbor. He’s only staying with me.”
This was my neighbor.
All this was my neighbor?
What the hell?

I caught Louie’s gaze. I winked at him and he winked back… with both eyes.

Noticing that I was wrapping up the haircut, Josh and Louie were standing in the living room… staring at the old woman. And the old woman was staring back at them. I was 99 percent sure none of them blinked.

“Come on. Let’s get started on dinner before we have to put Mac on the grill.”
“Gross!” Lou gagged.

I was pissed. As the mob finally split up, I stood there, stunned and about five seconds away from pepper spraying half the parents.

No one was perfect, and I didn’t want him to believe he needed to be. He just had to be the best kind of person he could be and stand up for himself. Being “right” was so subjective.