Chapter 7 Ella #3
“Thank you for telling me,” I said. “I’ll have to add it to the ‘featured in’ section of the website.”
“You’re welcome, sweetie,” Pat said, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. Her hazel eyes crinkled at the corners when she pulled away.
For someone who never wanted children, she was one of the most maternal, caring women I’d ever met. It confounded many of the other women in my family for years, until it finally clicked that just because someone was good with children, it didn’t mean that they had to have some of their own.
Pat hadn’t wanted to sacrifice her career, or her love of travel, or her alone time, or her nightly glass of wine, and she never made any apologies for that.
It was wonderful growing up with her as an aunt, because where so much of our society pushed women into motherhood and guilted and harassed those who lacked the desire to have children, here was this happy, successful, regret-free childless woman in my life to counter all of that gendered pressure and show me that I had options.
“Auntie Pat, did you see the decoration I made for the tree?” Evan asked her.
She crouched down to his level. “I didn’t, honey. Do you want to show me?”
Evan nodded, took her hand in his much smaller one, and led her away.
Ack. The cuteness was so strong with that child.
I looked away just in time to see Charlie roll over on the couch and blink his eyes open.
He was growing his hair out, and it was shaggy enough that he had some serious bedhead going on.
In the summer, his skin tanned to a deep brown, but now, in the dead of winter, it was several shades lighter.
The bags under his eyes were an uncomplimentary puce.
I’d never seen him with bags under his eyes, and the sight set off all of my protective older sister instincts.
Our gazes met, and I weaved my way over to him.
“Hi,” I said.
He squinted up at me, half-blind without his glasses, which were folded on the end table near his head. “Hi,” he croaked.
“How were your finals?”
“Literally the worst.”
I grinned. “You’re the one who chose such a heavy course load.”
“Mhm,” he murmured, exhaustion dragging his eyelids back down. “No regrets. Just…so…tired.”
“You want to go upstairs and sleep in your bed? It’ll be quieter.”
Willow, now free from time-out, raced past us, squealing in delight.
Michael was hot on her heels, firing a nerf gun at her back.
Sofia and both grandmas had music going in the kitchen as they worked.
Dad and Jacob sat nearby, watching the news and arguing about foreign policy. It was borderline raucous in here.
Charlie shook his head, mussing his hair even more on the couch cushion, and snuggled back down. “No. This is nice.”
I looked around us, at our loud, boisterous family. At our usual semi-organized chaos. “Yeah, it really is.”
I left him to his nap and went in search of our missing family members.
I found Anabel in her room. It had been painted lilac this time last year.
Now it was a deep, charcoal gray, with posters of her favorite rock bands plastered on the walls.
She was dressed in all black, sprawled out on her bed with her face in her phone.
By looking at her, you’d think she was deep into her rebellious teenage phase, that her moods were as dark and broody as her choices in clothing and decor. You’d be dead wrong.
“Psst,” I said from the doorway.
She saw me and leapt from her bed. “Oh, thank God you’re here.
” She gave me a quick hug and then shoved her phone in my face.
Much like myself at sixteen, she spoke at Mach-speed.
“What do you think this text message means? It’s from Tucker.
That boy I told you about? The senior? On the soccer team?
With the eyes? And the hair?” She grabbed my arm. “The hair, Ella.”
I did my best to remain serious. “Oh, yes. The hair. I remember the picture. Let’s see the text.
” Not that I was the authority on text messages.
Clearly, I needed as much help with them as she did.
But she still saw me as her cooler older sister, and I’d be damned if I did anything to spoil that prematurely.
She plopped the phone in my palm, and I dutifully looked at the screen. The text read: We should hang out during break, with a smiley face emoji after it.
Oh, I so had this.
“I think he likes you,” I told her.
“Really?” She made a high-pitched noise that nearly popped my eardrums.
I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and yell something stupid like, “Of course he does! What’s not to like?”
She was easily our most attractive family member, and this was a family filled with good-looking people.
She was several inches shorter than me, thin, but athletic, with a curtain of dark hair that fell nearly to her waist, the kind of flawless skin I would have killed for at her age, a heart-shaped face with a pert nose, a cupid’s bow mouth, and deep brown, hooded eyes.
She was also maintaining one of the highest GPAs in her class, was a star athlete, and had a circle of friends that included jocks, punks, stoners, and outcasts, so, she was, like, perfect?
Okay, maybe there was some sisterly bias in there, but if this Tucker kid rejected her…
I would find him.
Anabel stopped squeeing. “What happened? Your face just got weird.”
“Nothing,” I said, wiping all thoughts of murder from my mind. “You seen Mom?”
She rolled her eyes. “She’s probably out on her and Dad’s balcony smoking pot with Meg, Dave, and Grandpa.”
So that explained where they all were. “Thanks. I’m going to say hi and then help Sofia and the grandmas in the kitchen if you want to come down.”
“Sure,” she said, looking at her phone. “I’ll be there in a bit.”
“Anabel, he likes you. Trust me. That’s a pretty straightforward text from a teenage boy.”
She grinned at me.
This boy better deserve her.
I slipped into the hallway before my expression gave away what I’d do to him if he didn’t.
As Anabel predicted, I found our last four family members on the back porch, bundled up in heavy winter jackets, smoking dope.
Grandpa imbibed because of his glaucoma, Dave for inspiration – he was a staff writer for one of Maine’s larger newspapers, Megan because it calmed her down, and Mom because it soothed her hippy soul.
“Hi, guys,” I said, trying not to breathe too deeply. It smelled like Woodstock out here.
Grandpa held a joint toward me. “Want a hit?” he asked in his drawling Okie accent.
I waved it away. “No thanks. There’s a beer or two downstairs with my name on them, and if I smoke, I’ll just pass out.”
Mom stepped next to me and slipped an arm around my waist. She was short enough that she could rest her head on my shoulder.
I kissed the top of it and wrapped my arm around her back.
Like Anabel, she wore her hair long and loose.
The difference was that hers was a medium brown shot through with gray that cascaded down to her elbows in a riot of coarse curls.
“Long week? Lots of orders keeping you busy?” she asked me.
Megan shot me a sly look from beside the railing and exhaled a plume of smoke. “That and her boyfriend, Stan.”
My newfound inner dragon reared her scaly head.
I would incinerate her.
“Oh, yeah?” Dave asked.
“Oh, no,” I told him. No, no, no. The last thing I needed was a journalist interested in the new guy in town. The best course of action here was to keep completely quiet about this.
“Is he handsome?” Mom asked, her voice dreamy.
“Okay, I think that’s enough for Mom,” I said, turning her toward the door. “We still have to get through dinner.”
“But I want to hear about my soon-to-be-grandson-in-law,” Grandpa said.
I stopped to point at him. “Don’t you start.”
He grinned, unrepentant, and took the joint from Megan. I came from a family of smart-asses.
“Everyone calm your tits, I was just trying to get a rise out of her,” Megan said. “Her friend is hard up, and she’s being her typical, I-must-rescue-all-things self.”
Thank you, I thought, leading Mom inside. Though that seemed slightly insulting there at the end.
“Yeah, but is he handsome?” Mom asked. She lifted her index finger and booped me on the nose. She was definitely cut off.
“Grandma really got to you, huh?” I asked her once we were safely inside.
Mom straightened, her expression sobering. “Bless her heart,” she said, deadpan.