“Don’t you think we can do better than this?”

Kari Grant sipped coffee from her Styrofoam cup and looked at her son.  It was the day after the victorious vote and she could tell he was still amped up from that victory.  She knew she had to get his little fourteen-year-old brain back down to earth.  They were in heavy traffic and she was driving him to school.  “Do better than what?”  she asked him.

“Better than this,” Jordan replied.  “Last night, Alex, I mean Mr. Drakos, won.”

Kari smiled.  “Did he really?”

Jordan grinned.  “You know what I mean.  We won, Ma!”

Kari was alarmed that he was still attempting to equate Alex’s success as if it were their own.  “Alex won, Jordan.  We didn’t win shit.  Don’t get it twisted now.  What does his victory have to do with us right here and right now?”

“It has everything to do with us!  We won, Ma!  It was our victory, too, even though I know what you’re saying.  But we won too.  Yet we’re still driving around in your old Toyota Tercel.”

Although Jordan was still grinning, his mother’s look was serious.  “We’re driving around in our car,” she said.  “A car I worked my ass off to buy and pay for.  And we’re going to continue to drive around in this paid for car for the foreseeable future.”

“But what about last night?” Jordan asked.

“What happened last night was great for Alex,” Kari responded.  “And maybe once the casino and hotel are built, and I’m able to get in on that housekeeping contract, it’ll be good for us, too.  But in the meantime, it’s business as usual, Jordan.  Don’t forget that.  Don’t get caught up in all of that.”

“But you’re his girlfriend,” Jordan said, and looked his big eyes over at his mother. 

Kari still couldn’t believe it herself.  But it was an extremely new title Alex had bestowed upon her.  They were still trying it on, the two of them, to see how it fit.  But she was concerned about her impressionable son.  He was behaving as if they were headed straight for matrimony, when nothing could be further from the truth.  She and Alex still barely knew each other!

“I want you to promise me something, Jordan,” Kari said.

Jordan didn’t respond.  Kari looked at him.

Jordan finally looked at her.  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“I want you to promise me that you’ll never take another man’s pond and call it your own.”

Jordan stared at her, then took his hand and lifted it, as if it was a plane flying over his head.  “That’s deep, Ma.  Way over my head.  What does it mean?”

“God bless the child that’s got his own.  Depend on the Lord, and yourself.  That’s what it means!  I made the mistake of letting a man take care of me when I met Vito.  That almost cost me everything, Jordan.  I’m not letting that ever happen again.”

“But Vito Visconni was a jerk,” Jordan said.  “Mr. Drakos is nothing like that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kari said, as the bumper-to-bumper traffic began inching forward a little further.  “Before I met Alex I had my own thing going, and I intend to keep my own thing going.  If it doesn’t work out for Alex and me, and that’s always a strong possibility, Jordan, then I’ll still be able to stand on my own two feet and take care of my family.  Namely, you.  You’re my responsibility, not Alex’s.  And I don’t want you to forget that.”

Jordan could see the concern in his mother’s big, expressive eyes.  She’d been burned before, big time, and he knew she was only being cautious now.  “I won’t forget it,” he said.

Kari smiled at him.  “I’d ruffle your hair if I didn’t have this cup of coffee,” she said.

“Thank goodness you’ve got that cup of coffee,” Jordan said.  “Don’t touch a black man’s hair!”

Kari laughed.

But as the traffic continued to move at a snail’s pace, Jordan looked at her again.  “Why don’t you call him and say good morning to him,” he suggested.

Kari shook her head.  Her son was such a hopeless romantic!

“I mean it,” Jordan said.  “Why don’t you call and say good morning to Mr. Drakos.”

Kari had already thought of that anyway.  “Nope,” she said.

“But why not, Ma?  Men like that kind of thing.”

Kari looked at him.  “And you know this how?”

“I’m a man.  I just know it.  Are you going to call him?”

The idea of her baby growing up still scared Kari.  “No,” she said.

“But why, Ma?”

“He knows how to call me.”

Jordan smiled.  “I’ll bet you’re going to go and see him after you drop me off at school.”

“Jordan!  Why do you keep harping on that?”

“But why won’t you just call the man, or go and see him, Ma?”

“Because I’m not running him down.  That’s why.”

Jordan wondered if there was more to it than his mother’s general stubbornness.  “He wouldn’t like it?” he asked her.

“I don’t know if he would or not,” Kari responded.  “I wouldn’t like it.  The last time I ran a man down and couldn’t live without him and all of that bull crap did not end well for me.  We both know how that turned out.”

Jordan ultimately had to nod and agree with his mother.  He knew.  “I wish my Dad hadn’t died so young.” Jordan’s biological father died of a heart condition.  “He was a great black man, wasn’t he, Ma?”  Jordan said this and looked at Kari.

“He was a great man, period, Jordan,” Kari said proudly.  “Although, in truth, he was barely a man, really.  He was only seventeen.  But he was a wonderful person.  He used to bring me flowers.  Did you know that?”

Jordan smiled.  “You told me a time or two.  Or two thousand.”

Kari laughed.  “But it’s true.  A guy that young bringing me flowers?  I was blown away.  Even though, one time, he brought me what he thought were flowers but turned out to be Poison Ivy and we both had to go to the hospital.  But still!”

Jordan laughed happily.  Kari was thrilled to see him so happy!

“We were so young then,” Kari said, shaking her head.  “Teenagers playing grownup games.”

Then a break in the traffic.  “Ah, finally!” Kari said with relief in her voice as the traffic picked up just past what was the source of the slowdown: a broke down pickup truck.  Now they were off to the races, and any talk of phoning anybody flew out the window.

When they arrived at Arapaho Middle School, a private school in town, Jordan grabbed his backpack. “Am I still going to spend the weekend with Uncle Benny and Auntie Faye?” he asked.

Benny and Faye Church were not his uncle and aunt.  They were his godparents.  But they both were thrilled when Jordan began calling them by such affectionate terms.  “You still want to go, right?” Kari asked him.  “They love having you.”

“Yeah, I love having them, too.  We have loads of fun together.  They spoil me rotten.”

Kari smiled.  “And that just breaks your heart, I know.”

“Breaks it in two,” Jordan said with a smile of his own as the school monitor, a young man, opened the car door for him.

“They still want you for the weekend.  But concentrate on school today.  Not the weekend.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jordan said.  He wanted to kiss his mother goodbye, but was too embarrassed right there around all of his schoolmates.  He just glanced at her, showing affection in his eyes, and got out of the car.

But after Kari dropped Jordan off at school, she did feel some kind of way about seeing Alex again.  Last night, after the county voted in favor of the referendum that would allow Drakos Capital to build a hotel and casino in Apple Valley, she refused Alex’s request to go to bed with him.  And she regretted that decision immediately.  She wanted Alex inside of her as badly as he wanted to get inside of her.  But she didn’t want Jordan experiencing that.  Not yet.  And Jordan, to a single parent like Kari, and until he was grown and on his own, had to come first.

But she still missed Alex.  And the more she thought about him, the more she was missing him.  Besides, Jordan had a point.  Maybe he would get a kick out of her coming by.  That wouldn’t be running him down.  That would be dropping by to say hello.

At least, that was what she decided to tell herself.