Read Be My Queen for Free Online

boyfriend."
    Lavender nodded. "He's down visiting."
    The guy's looked at each other and back at her. The one with the favorite band said, "How long?"
    Lavender sighed. "Just a week."
    The guys took up their conversation as if Diego hadn't interrupted them. Lavender tried to look interested in the guys as they enthusiastically explained a slasher movie they had seen, while one of the guys told a few new guys about the one who'd kissed Lavender. They bought ice cream and asked Abuelito about him.
    Abuelito made up a yarn about how long Diego and Lavender had been in love and how Diego had to keep going up to Oregon for his job, and how Abuelito dreaded the day Diego would come and take Lavender away forever.
    The new guys looked Lavender over. She smiled back because they bought ice cream. These new guys told her about a better movie that they'd seen. A family came up for ice cream, but couldn't get to the window. Lavender smiled at each of the guys, said she'd see them later, and went inside the shop to help Abuelito.
    Once the guys were gone, several other families came by. Lavender sighed.
    "Tired?" Abuelito asked.
    Lavender wasn't really, but talking to the guys, being talked to like she was a real girl, had lost some of its appeal when compared to Diego's attention.
    More guys arrived. Lavender sold them each an ice cream cone. Abuelito shooed her to the front of the shop. She smiled, nodded, and flirted, admired skateboards, shoes, and haircuts, but today, more than ever, this was work.
    This wasn't how people acted when they really liked someone. It wasn't how Diego acted with her.
    *~*~*
    Diego leaned against a railing. He was close enough to see her, but far enough that he wouldn't interfere with her work: getting people, especially boys, to buy ice cream. Half of the boys around her weren't as tall as she was. She'd make a wonderful hostess for one of Mom's parties. Tall, smart, beautiful, and friendly in an elite way, not to be touched, but with a smile that drew men in. He was one of those men.
    He checked his phone. A few more minutes.
    A woman walked by the ice cream shop with two children. The preschooler begged for a treat, but the mother said no. She was trying to pick out a basket at the stall on the other side of the row. The girl threw a tantrum and knocked over the toddler, who'd just wiggled out of his mother's arms. He looked at his mother, at his sister, then back at his mother, and howled. Seconds later, the noise stopped. Lavender was on her knees in front of the little boy. She covered her face, then revealed it. The little boy laughed. The little girl got to her feet and talked to Lavender. Diego couldn't hear what they were saying, but one of the boys brought Lavender a napkin and she wiped the little girl's cheeks.
    Lavender looked so right with small children. Maybe someday, those children around her would be theirs.
    The mother paid for her basket, picked up her toddler, talked to Lavender for a while, then spoke to the girl. The girl shook her head and looked at her feet as she said something to Lavender. Lavender smiled. The little girl looked up at her mother with pleading eyes, but she didn't cry. The mother bought two ice cream cones. The one for the little girl was upside down in a cup. The mother shared the other with the toddler. The little girl talked to Lavender until her ice cream melted. Then, she followed her mother up the pier while eating the sticky cone.
    Lavender watched them go, her lip between her teeth.
    Diego smiled at Lavender's grandfather and put his finger to his lips. Her grandfather nodded towards the back of the shop. The boys near Lavender bristled. Diego ignored them. They weren't worth his time. Lavender's grandfather looked at her with a sigh. "You say you will marry her?"
    Diego nodded. "If she'll have me."
    "I love her," her grandfather placed a hand over his heart, "as if she were my own."
    "I can understand that."
    Lavender was lovely, filled with grace and