[𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐃𝐎𝐍]

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐍𝐄𝐗𝐓 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄

kitchen with my laptop, looking for plane tickets to Calabasas. It was bittersweet for me seeing the Paris and Brooke with their mom. The feeling made me want to go visit mine....well, in order to visit her, I'd have to die. Dying certainly wasn't on my To Do List, telling Paris to stop leaving toothpaste globs in the sink was, though.

"Hi, London," Diane greeted as she strolled in with her new CELINE on her arm.

"Hey, Diane."

"What do you have in mind for dinner before I go grocery shopping?"

"Um, not sure. Maybe you should ask Paris or Brooke."

"Oh, okay. What're you doing?"

"Trying to find plane tickets so I can go back to California, and, visit my mom's grave."

"Oh," she muttered in a way as if someone told her that someone died. "Ezra and I can pay for them."

"No, that's fine, I got it. And I'll only be gone for a weekend. Trust me, I'm not trying to bail on you guys."

"Well, that's good to hear." She wrapped her arms around me in her motherly way. "That you're not trying to bail on Ezra and I, I mean."

"Yeah, I know." I smiled.

After the terse conversation, Diane left. I took it upon myself to take Cosmo for a walk. It was funny because Cosmo was supposed to be Paris's dog, but it seemed that Diane, Ezra, and I were the only one's really walking him.

Eventually, Brooke had to go back to school, which was not easy on the Havens especially Paris. After dropping her sister of at the airport and watching her board the flight, Paris was rather quiet.

At school, we sat with our friend during lunch. Shannon was irate due, I didn't know why, but I could tell by Sean massaging her hand.

"What's wrong?" Paris asked as she sat beside me.

"My parents, they shouldn't have had kids if they were going to choose not to take care of them," Shannon replied. "All of a sudden, they want to go to Costa Rica when I have plans over the weekend. Plans I gave them a two week notice about. See, Sean and I were supposed to go to Bellevue Botanical Garden on Saturday, but now we can't because I have to babysit those badass little girls at home."

"I can watch them for you," Kristen offered.

"Oh, I really don't think I want to put you through that."

Paris told me that Shannon was second to oldest, with three little sisters and an older one in college. Apparently, Shannon didn't like her older sister.

"No, it's fine," Kristen insisted.

"You sure?" Shannon checked.

"Yes, I'm serious."

"Okay. Oh my god, thank you so much." Shannon wrapped her arms around Kristen in an embrace.

"I would offer to help, but, I– I don't want to put myself through that again," Paris muttered to me.

"You've babysat her sisters before?" I asked. I would've loved to see how Paris would do with children. A child with a child.

"Well, I was helping Shannon one time when we were hanging out," she told me. "The whole thing was mess—I tried to make pasta for them but when I was boiling the noodles, the water got bubbly on top and overflowed for some reason. I mean, we still ate though."

"Hm." There was a pause before I started snickering to myself, pasta's supposed to be the easiest thing to cook.

"What, what's so funny?" Paris asked softly. I think she thought I was laughing at her, which I kind of was, but I didn't want to hurt her feelings.

"Nothing," I disregarded and controlled myself. "I'll teach you to cook."

"Teach who to cook?"

"You."

"No."

"It wasn't a question."

"London, I'm fine not knowing how to cook. If I run out of food, I'll just order."

"And If you run out of money?"

"I won't especially when I get my allowance every two weeks. And if that's the case then I won't have money to buy food to cook, therefore, I will starve and die."

"You can come up with all these excuses, either way, I'm still teaching you to cook."

Paris rolled her eyes and looked away.

"We'll start with something easy," I assured her. "I'm not going to make you cook a big meal. Okay?"

"Okay," she conceded, her lips curling up into the smile I was so fond of.