25. “We Are Family”
TWENTY-FIVE
“WE ARE FAMILY”
(SISTER SLEDGE)
L earn this from me.
When it rains, it pours.
No, really, it’s not just a saying. It’s the God’s honest truth.
I learned this the next day, after the Javi’s Dad Drama when we all decided to go to The Surf Club to make sure Dream would continue to be employed after the weekend. Reports were, her first day under Tex’s critical stare and Tito’s quiet support was a little rocky.
Truth told, I didn’t go for that reason. I didn’t think any of us did. Only Luna did, because she was a good sister even if that was far from reciprocated.
And Raye, Cap, Jessie, Eric, Shanti, Willow, Brady, Roam, Indy, Ally, Annette, Roxie, Mace, Stella and Javi didn’t go for that reason either.
The dudes, my guess: it was for the food (Lucia’s weekend replacement was given strict written instructions from Lucia so the food always maintained Lucia’s level of quality).
The chicks, no need to guess: it was for Luna.
We’d amassed a bunch of tables and were sitting in the middle of SC. Every once in a while, one of us would get up to show Dream the ropes about something, but it seemed she was getting the hang of it pretty fast.
Well, the work part of it.
The customer service part…uh, not so much.
Even if it might make me a bad person, I had to admit that I got a charge out of watching Dream try to be nice.
Maybe she didn’t have a problem with Luna.
Maybe she was just mean to everybody.
Sure, this often came Luna’s way, but I honestly hadn’t even seen her be nice to her parents, not really. Mostly with them, she was needy and whiny.
Maybe some people were just not nice people, and sadly for Luna, Louise and Scott, Dream was one of them.
It was also weird being at SC and not working (oh, also weird? Byron wasn’t there on Sundays—maybe he did have a life outside of SC).
In fact, I didn’t know if I’d ever been there when I wasn’t or I didn’t have an Angels confab to attend.
We knew the weekend crew, Joey and Gemma.
Joey did nails part time out of her mom’s garage, à la Steel Magnolias . Gemma did part-time home healthcare work during the week. We knew them because they sometimes filled in for us or picked up extra hours during the morning and evening busy times.
They were great. They were also peripherally in our posse (for instance, they often came to Oasis shindigs and were both on the waiting list to get units), and it was a huge bummer our schedules didn’t often align so we couldn’t hang out with them more.
And neither of them seemed to be Dream’s biggest fans.
I felt bad they’d been saddled with her, because they also had to help train her, and if you knew Dream, you could tell she was trying, but she still wasn’t very gracious about it.
Then again, they clearly needed help. The Surf Club on the weekends was a crush.
We were also killing time because Trev’s laptop had been hooked up since Friday, Arthur had been working on it, and he reported through Clarice that he might be getting somewhere soon.
So the Angels were poised to dash out at any minute.
And the Hottie Squad was poised to horn into our lead the minute we learned we had one.
I was watching Dream peel her lips back from her teeth in what I was suspecting she thought was a smile when Javi, sitting next to me, murmured, “Jesus.”
He wasn’t wrong. That grimace on her face was frightening.
“I think I’m gonna have nightmares about that,” Cap muttered.
“How did she manage to get knocked up three times?” Brady asked.
“Like dudes need a girl to be nice to get themselves some. Yeesh,” Jessie replied.
Brady and Roam shared a telling glance and a lip twitch before Brady said, “I would prefer they were nice.”
“It’s not a dealbreaker though, is it?” Luna inquired.
“I’d advise you not to answer that.” Eric, the oldest and wisest of us all, gave Brady some of that wisdom.
Brady just winked at Luna.
Luna rolled her eyes.
It was cute. And Brady was hot.
But I thought it was interesting Knox wasn’t there. When we had a hang, he usually showed.
Samesies with Gabe.
Hmm.
I was leaning into Javi to share this thought when we heard yelled, “I have a bone to pick with you! And you!”
We turned to see Shirleen storming in, with her husband, Moses following.
She was expected to join us considering she was a Rock Chick, and it was only her hunkering down at the NI&S offices to stake her territory with Marjorie that she wasn’t around on Friday.
As for Saturday, Roam had also had an offer accepted on a house, he’d moved in a few weeks ago, and Shirleen was intent to stake more territory and stamp her claim on her son’s place by meddling with his interior decorating.
I would have loved to have a mom who went out with me looking for fab things to put in my cute pad. That would be the best.
I didn’t know if men were into that, though I did notice that Cap and Roam pretty much let Shirleen be all that was Shirleen.
I got this, all that was Shirleen was pretty fabulous. But also, in this world we all picked our battles.
Then again, Shirleen being all that was Shirleen, they didn’t have much of a choice.
Javi had opinions about his blanket, and definitely his chair, and he’d picked out his wineglasses himself (and he chose well). Not to mention, he was the one to put his foot down about the top-of-the-line nutribullet.
So maybe guys were into that kind of thing too.
“It’s about time you got here,” Ally complained to Shirleen.
Shirleen barely glanced at her.
She was all about Raye. “How many times have I remarked on how fabulous your organization system is in your apartment?”
“Uh-oh,” Raye mumbled, getting big eyes and darting them to me.
“And how many times have you told me Harlow did it for you?” Shirleen kept at her.
“Shir—” Raye started.
“And how many times have you said you’d talk to her about coming over and sorting me and my Moses out?” Shirleen demanded.
I sat straight in my chair, a trill of excitement going through me.
“I’m sorry, I keep forgetting to mention it,” Raye said to Shirleen. Then to me she repeated, “I’m sorry.”
“And you .” Shirleen turned on me. “Nancy isn’t even in her house, and you’re at the casita, offering to Marie Kondo the shit out of her new place. Where were you when me and Moses were moving in?” She didn’t let me answer. “Here. But you didn’t offer that to me.”
“Well—”
I didn’t get any further either.
Shirleen started looking all around the ceiling, asking, “When’s the time you most need someone to come in and toss out your junk and get you situated? Oh, I don’t know.” Her laser stare abruptly landed on me. “When you move in!”
“Strictly speaking, you should throw out the junk before you make the move,” I educated her.
Her eyes narrowed.
Yikes.
Roam made a noise deep in his throat that sounded like half-laughter, half-something very different.
“I’m neck deep in Louboutins,” she outlined her very first-world problem. “Something has to give. And it’s not like I’m asking for a freebie. I’d pay you.”
Oh my God!
That was when Javi made a noise, also deep in his throat, but it was all happy.
“You will?” I chirped.
She pointed a perfectly manicured finger in my face. “Next Saturday. First, you come over and look at the mountain you gotta climb. Then we go to the Container Store.”
Outside of spending all day having sex with Javi, that was my favorite thing to do .
And I was seeing how she could be the operations manager for a bunch of bad-A’s and totally why Roam and Cap let her have her way (most of the time).
She could really lay down the law.
“You’re on!” I cried.
Javi, who had his arm resting along the back of my chair, started stroking the nape of my neck with a finger.
I shivered and got happier.
Suddenly, Dream was there, standing close to Shirleen.
Shirleen turned to her and instantly reared back, probably because that nightmare smile was on Dream’s face again.
“Anything I can get you?” Dream asked through clenched teeth.
Shirleen looked to the table, saw we’d broken the seal, and then she went back to Dream. “An appletini.”
“Any particular vodka you’d like in that?” Dream pushed out.
“Dazzle me,” Shirleen said.
“Sir?” Dream was addressing Moses.
“Just a beer,” Moses told her.
“Any preferences?” she pushed out.
“You got 405?” he asked.
“We do,” she gritted.
“That’d be great.”
Moses commandeered some chairs for him and his wife to sit down, and they joined us.
While he did this, I thought Dream was about to have a seizure, but then she controlled whatever was going on internally, nodded and walked away.
“I’m uncertain about the weekend crew,” Shirleen leaned in and whispered to the table.
Proving he had bionic hearing, Tex bellowed from the coffee cubby, “Me too!”
I turned to look at Tito.
He was concentrating very closely on his iPad, which he was poking at with a finger, so I suspected he was playing some game.
By the time I turned back, I jumped, because out of nowhere, Martha was there.
She was carrying one of Tex’s coffees.
“Good to see you’re alive,” she grouched at me. “You been gone so long, what with all the recent shenanigans, it’s a real unknown with you girls if you’re lying dead in a ditch or off on an impromptu joyride to Vegas.”
Sadly, and scarily, this was kinda true.
“I’m fine, Martha. I was just hanging with Javi,” I told her.
Her eyes bounced between me and Javi, regrettably landing on Javi.
“See you pulled your finger out,” she remarked.
Javi didn’t take any of that bait, but he did smile a smile I felt in my girl parts, and I knew he did because he very much liked to push his finger in, but he also enjoyed pulling it out.
“Boys,” Martha huffed then addressed the whole table, or specifically a certain subsect of the women at it. “So, officially, Jacob and Alexis are moving into the two-bedroom. Does this mean we’ll be getting another girl who’s mixed up in whatever crazy you girls have gotten yourself into?”
“No, all the crazy is already resident at the Oasis,” Jessie didn’t quite assure her.