The plan was to meet at around noon, and Ken couldn’t claim not to be nervous as he headed to the assigned meeting area. The sky was clouding over, the heat finally breaking as the temperature dropped, and those clouds looked ominously threatening to him. What if it rained? What if Jade hated him? What if Justin freaked out? What if Godzilla came and attacked them and stole their tuna fish sandwiches?
But he’d found, in his life, that most of the things that he worried about didn’t actually happen. So he tried to remember that as he stared out at the ocean, but he found that he couldn’t sit still.
He’d brought a few things, just in case. A towel and a change of clothes, in case there was swimming. He already wore his swim trunks. He’d brought a soccer ball because he really didn’t know anything about this little girl, but who didn’t like kicking a soccer ball around?
That soccer ball, as it turned out, was his salvation. Or at least a really good first impression. He pulled it out and tossed it around, then dropped it into the sand, which made quite the fun challenge, since the ball didn’t go where he expected it to most of the time and it was a test of his reflexes to try to get it before it got away.
It helped. It distracted him from the waiting—since he’d ended up being a bit early—and as always, the physical exertion helped to calm his mind. It was to the point where, when he did see Justin, he was able to smile and wave instead of throwing up.
It was a near thingthough, really.
There was a child, a little girl, bouncing around Justin, and they weren’t close enough for Ken to hear what she was saying, but she was clearly chattering away a mile a minute. Finally, Justin pointed, and she looked up, her eyes scanning and then locking onto Ken.
She was a pretty child, her hair the same color as Justin’s and a strong family resemblance between the two of them, even to the shape and the hue of their gray eyes. The face was rounder, less angular, but the chin was the same, the mouth smaller, but formed the same. If he had seen this little girl, he would have known who she belonged to, he thought.
She looked at him, and her face turned solemn, which only made her look more like Justin. Then she grinned and waved, and with the sort of energy that even Ken envied, the kind that could really only belong to children who weren’t teenagers yet, she bounced over the sand toward him.
“Hi, I’m Jade, are you Ken?” she asked while Justin ran up after her, a harried look on his face. He put a protective hand on Jade’s shoulder, which she impatiently shrugged off. “I like your soccer ball. Do you play?”
All of that was said without her seeming to pause for even a second, or even to breathe. There was no time for him to get a word in edgewise, not until she had to stop finally to gulp in air. But Ken was used to that sort of thing, with all of his younger siblings, and he just grinned and weathered the storm of words, letting her run herself out before replying.
“Yeah, I’m Ken. It’s good to meet you.” In his experience, kids her age didn’t want to be talked down to a lot, and the best way to make friends with them was to treat them fairly and similarly to how you would treat anyone. So he kept his tone casual, and she grinned at him in response, so it seemed to be going okay.
“You, too,” she agreed, then turned to look up at her father. “You didn’t tell me he was so cute,” she stage-whispered, obviously intending for him to hear. This one was a live wire, for sure, but she was also undoubtedly charming as hell. More flirtatious, in an innocent way, than her dad was, for sure.
“He is pretty cute, isn’t he?” Justin commented back, also in a stage whisper, with this bratty grin on his face. To his own shock, Ken felt a flush of heat rush to his cheeks that had nothing to do with the summer heat, because he really, really hadn’t expected Justin to be as open as that.
“You guys,” he protested, laughing, and then picked up the ball and tossed it to Jade, unable to wipe the grin from his face. She caught it, smirking at him in a way that reminded him sharply of Justin.
Really, really no doubt about who was the father of this particular young lady.
She got her hands up and caught the ball, and Ken arched his eyebrows. She had some grace to her and good reflexes.
“You know, with some training up I think you might be a half decent soccer player,” he informed her, which made her grin and toss the ball right back to him.
“Half decent? I know I can do better than that,” she replied, and then, while he was still forming a reply, she darted in like a lightning bolt and stole the ball from right under him, kicking it merrily toward the large grass field of the park which was right on the beach.
“Oh, it’s on,” Ken called after her and broke into a sprint, gesturing for Justin to follow, unable to stop grinning madly the whole time.
