23. Foster
TWENTY-THREE
FOSTER
LilWalsh
Heads up, I told Mom that you were bringing your new girlfriend to breakfast.
CASSANDRA she’s picking me up in 5 minutes.
And she’s not my girlfriend!
Hey, this way Uncle Phil won’t go on and on about how you’re a deadbeat that can’t even get a woman. You walk in with smokeshow Sophie and you’ll be laughing all the way over to the Hores for brunch.
She’s not wrong, but now I have to ask Sophie to lie about us again. She must think I’m supremely pathetic.
Also, I told her she has to play the girlfriend part already and she’s fine with it.
Well, that makes things a bit easier.
Can you at least run stuff like this by me before hard launching devious plans?
Pfffff nope, the surprise is half the fun!
Don’t say hi to the relations for me!
Sunshine
I’m here
Coming
“You really don’t have to do this you know,” I say as Sophie pulls into my parents driveway and parks behind my uncle’s obnoxiously large pickup.
“Do you not want me to? Is it going to be harder for you to be here if we pretend again?” Yes, but not for the reasons she thinks. Because it’s hard enough to keep my hands to myself when we aren’t pretending. Pretending means I get to touch her and then it’s nearly impossible to reprogram my brain when we’re alone again.
“No, pretending is very easy. And having you here will make everything more tolerable.”
She pulls her phone off the charge cord and swings the door open. “Excellent. Let’s do this, boyfriend.” Call me boyfriend again . Call me whatever the heck you want, just don’t stop . She doesn’t, but she does twine her fingers with mine when we meet in front of the car. This is equally nice, my body hums.
The front door swings open before we’ve even reached the end of the sidewalk, and my uncle Phil blocks the view into the house. Phil married into the family and brought with him his ignorant ideas and vocabulary. He’s such a walking stereotype that it’s almost boring at this point. Cass got sick of listening to him lecture her on her own sexuality and fully skips out on most functions he attends now because it stresses her out too much, and she’s the most unflappable person I know.
“Well, would you look at that, he does indeed have a woman with him,” he bellows, his gaze dragging hungrily from Sophie’s head down to her feet and back up again. “Looks like a bona fide one too.”
“Phil, give him a break,” Mom scolds halfheartedly, squeezing past him and rushing out to hug me. “Oh, I’ve missed you, baby,” she murmurs into my neck, and I reluctantly drop Sophie’s hand to hug her properly. When she pulls back, she finally looks over at Sophie, and the look of shock on her face makes me laugh.
“Sophie Hore, you’re the girlfriend?” She drags Sophie to her before she has a chance to answer. “When?” she asks, leaning back, her hands still on Sophie’s upper arms. “How long has this been going on for? And why the hell didn’t you say something?” She smacks my arm playfully.
“About a month, maybe?” I say, looking at Sophie for confirmation.
“About that, yeah.” She offers me a knowing smile that may seem flirty to those observing the interaction, but really it’s just an acknowledgment of the inside joke.
“I’d make him keep it quiet too, blondie,” my uncle remarks gruffly, giving me a look that can only be described as scathing before turning to go back in the house.
Sophie watches his retreating back with wide eyes, her mouth open slightly. “Why would I want to keep it quiet?” she asks, turning to me.
I shrug. “My uncle thinks I’m a failure because of my job.” Sophie doesn’t even try to hide her disgust. “That, and my hair color makes me less of a man or some nonsense.”
“He doesn’t think you’re a failure,” Mom says. “You know how he is.” She shrugs off his insult for the thousandth time.
It’s easier for her to pretend that he means nothing than to confront the problem. Everyone has let him get away with this stuff since my aunt passed five years ago. And my mom hates an uncomfortable family gathering.
“He’s the best EA at the school,” Sophie says, slipping her fingers back between mine. I feel like I could take on the world with her hand in mine. Certainly my uncle at the very least.
“I bet he is, dear.” Mom smiles tightly at Sophie as she leads us into the house.
My mom has never said she’s disappointed in my career path, but she does like to make comments about how it’s not too late to go to teachers’ college. There seems to be a general consensus that only women choose to be EAs.
Before we get to the door, I pull Sophie to a stop while my mom disappears inside.
“You sure you want to do this? You could go straight to your parents and avoid the roasting of Foster Walsh.”
Sophie looks from me to the open door and I see the minute she makes up her beautiful mind. “No, I think I’d rather be here with you. At least I can try and help control the temperature. Perhaps keep it to a light grilling rather than a full-on roast.”
If this was real, if she were mine, I’d pull her to me and kiss the ever-loving daylights out of her.
Sophie is working the room like she was made for it. And it’s not hard to spot her in the crowded space. Despite being the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, she towers over most of the others here. All the men in my family are over six feet while all the women are under five six. Three of my cousins have given me a thumbs-up when they walk away, and there has somehow been less talk about my lack of a real profession than usual by this time in a gathering.
“You know,” my grandmother whispers, while handing me a stack of plates, “I always knew you’d end up together.” I watch as her gaze swings to where Sophie is talking animatedly to my dad.
I should tell her the truth, but I’d really like to know what she thinks she saw. “Oh yeah? How’d you know that?”
“Well, when she was a kid, she only had eyes for you. She always smiled a little bigger, laughed a little louder, blushed a shade darker when you were around.”
“I am pretty great.” I wink at her.
“Then there was you.” She dips her chin and looks above her glasses at me.
“Me?”
“You. I want to say when you were about fourteen you were having a conversation with your grandfather, and she walked by with your sister. Your grandfather said you stopped speaking mid-sentence to watch her. ‘That boy’s got a bad case of the love bug for that string-bean friend of Cassandra’s,’ he’d said while we were driving home.” She reaches out and squeezes my arm, looking around me to where Sophie is still standing. “I’m glad she caught the bug too.”
I shake my head, not remembering this at all. Not believing I ever looked at her that way before I got home from camp. I think I’d remember if I had. Sophie was always at our house, so I obviously saw her a lot, but I didn’t really see her. But as I take the plates to the head of the buffet my mom has set out, I start thinking back.
A lot of my memories before I went away for school have her in them, and a lot of those memories aren’t of anything major. Sophie laughing in the kitchen with Cass, taunting me while she crosses the finish line in Mario Kart first, or playing road hockey with us and a couple other friends, friends I can’t even see the faces of.
“You just gonna stand there holding the plates, Foster? Maybe that girlfriend of yours knows how to reboot you. Although she may not want you. May want to find someone who’s a bit more of an equal, if you know what I mean,” my uncle sneers, roughly grabbing a plate off the top and immediately serving himself food before my mom has called anyone to help themselves.
Doing my best to ignore him, I set the plates down as gently as I can and head back into the kitchen to see what else I can help with only to find Sophie laughing with my grandmother.
“I was telling Sophie how your grandfather caught you staring at her.” Sophie looks at me with an eyebrow raised and a tiny smirk on her face.
“What can I say?” I shrug, walking up to her and pulling her into my arms. “I knew what I wanted from a young age.”
Sophie leans into me in response, and I swear my heart skips several beats. Nothing about this feels fake right now.
Easter breakfast is a chaotic affair at my parents’ place. It’s a “feed yourself and find a place to sit” kind of situation. My plate is sparse aside from the extra-large helping of my grandmother’s Swedish tea ring. My uncle eyes my plate with contempt; he’s allergic to pecans, and despite never admitting it, I’m convinced my grandmother refuses to change her recipe to spite him. As if I need another reason to love the woman.
Sophie smiles and does a little happy wiggle as she takes her first bite of the pastry. When she looks up and sees me watching her, she shrugs.
“It’s really good,” she mouths before going in for another bite.
Before I know it it’s time to head to the Hores’ for brunch, and for the first time in as long as I can remember I’m a little sad about leaving a family gathering. Sophie made the whole experience tolerable, enjoyable almost. The only thing that wasn’t was the way my uncle’s eyes would stay on Sophie for a little too long.
“Check your coat pocket,” my grandmother says as she squeezes me harder than anyone her size should be able to.
“Why?”
Her answer is a simple pat on my arm as she turns to give Sophie an equally tight hug. “It was so nice to see you again before I die,” she says with unnerving joy.
“Oh.” Sophie laughs nervously. “I’m glad too.” She looks up at me over my grandmother’s head, and I shake my head. I’m pretty sure this is a dig at me for avoiding family stuff.
“I’m sure you’ll see her many more times before that day, many years in the future.”
“Especially if whatever that thing you made is involved.” She smiles brightly down at my grandmother who pulls her back in for another hug.
“Your uncle is a real hodenkobold, eh?” Sophie says as she’s pulling out of my parents’ driveway.
“He does have certain hodenkobold qualities, yes,” I grumble.
“Hey.” She reaches over and squeezes my hand, her touch instantly making everything better. “You don’t believe anything that man says, right?”
I shrug because sometimes I do. “Sometimes I think I should have gone to teachers’ college or pushed myself to study something more like, I don’t know, engineering or medicine.”
Sophie looks like she smelled something bad. Her face is set in a grimace—a beautiful grimace sure, but a grimace nonetheless.
“Well, I can’t see you in something like engineering, and you hate blood so medicine is out.”
“Why not engineering?”
“Don’t you hate math?”
“You remember I hate math?” I ask, surprised.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Mr. Walsh. Throw a dart, and you’ll hit at least three people who hate math.” She smirks out at the road.
“True. Do you hate math?”
“Math to me has always been a bit like spinach or broccoli. I see the benefits and I use it, but that doesn’t mean I like it.”
“You don’t like broccoli?” I ask.
“I have a complicated relationship with broccoli,” she says as she concentrates on turning onto the road to her parents’ place.
“Go on,” I encourage.
She sighs. “Well, I don’t like when it’s in a stir-fry because it’s always overcooked and mushy. But I do like it in a soup where it is arguably mushy. I like it lightly steamed so it’s bright green, but I hate it raw.”
“So the cook on it has to be extremely precise?”
“Exactly. There is a fine art to cooking broccoli to my very exacting standards.” I file the information away in the mental folder I have for things about Sophie Hore.
She pulls into her parents’ driveway, and we are immediately greeted by several dogs. A small white one I recognize as Yogurt goes absolutely bananas when he sees Sophie.
I wish I could show affection like a dog , I think as I watch her drop down to fully absorb the canine love.
“Sophie Elizabeth Hore, you’re going to be covered in mud!” I hear Nancy shout from the porch.
“That’s the goal, Mom!” she calls back, cackling as another dog pulls her attention away from Yogurt.
Two seconds later, she’s on her butt and five more dogs take the opportunity to get in on the action. Her hand shoots straight up, and I take it as a sign she’d like help so I grab and pull. Except in my enthusiasm I pull her so hard she loses her balance and falls into me.
Deep breaths , I tell myself as every part of her body connects with me. Abort! Deep breaths mean I’m overwhelmed by the smell of her. Citrus and honey flood my nose, and I find myself pulling her in a bit tighter.
She’s got a small smudge of dirt on her forehead, and I reach up to wipe it off. As I do that, her eyes meet mine, and everything stops. My thumb on her head, my arm around her waist, blinking, my heart—heck, the earth probably stops spinning too.
“You don’t have to pretend here!” Cass yells from the porch.
Sophie blinks, and a small smile appears, so small one might call it sad. That’s what my delusional mind tries to convince me of, anyway. Her smile is reflecting my feelings about this all being pretend and also not getting to pretend a little longer today.
I reluctantly let her go and step back, missing the feel of her instantly.
“I’m going to have quite the bruise, I think,” she murmurs as we make our way to the house, the dogs circling our legs the entire way.
“Where?”
“My right cheek,” she says, and when I look over her face, she laughs. “Not that cheek.”
I feel the blood rush north and south as I realize she’s talking about her ass.
Don’t say you’ll check it for her, I warn myself. And stop thinking about her asking.
“How’s the fam?” Cass asks.
“They’re fi—” I begin to say, but the second I cross the threshold into the Hores’ home, I’m bowled over by the delicious smells wafting from the kitchen.
“He’s about to learn the real reason I skipped out on family Easter,” I hear Cass say, but she sounds far away. Can smells dampen sound?
The scent of warm spices fills the air along with pastry, butter, and bacon. I have to swallow again and again to keep from drooling.
“I think we’ve lost him,” Sophie murmurs.
The sound of her voice brings me back, and I look over only to discover she’s not next to me as there’s a tug on my foot. She’s kneeling in front of me, untying my shoes, and god help me I wish the sight of her down there didn’t do what it’s doing to me. There is nothing sexual about untying someone’s shoes in the presence of family, but that doesn’t stop my mind from trying to make it a thing. When her gaze meets mine, my knees literally wobble.
“Um, you don’t have to do that,” I stammer, quickly dropping to one knee to take over the task.
“My mom’s breakfasts tend to have a paralyzing effect on first-timers,” she whispers, her face level with mine.
So does that darn smile.
“Cass has bragged about her breakfasts for years. I should have been prepared,” I say as my brain starts to acclimate.
Sophie releases my laces and stands as I finish my right shoe and stand to toe each one off. I need to pull it together.
A high-pitched squeal has me nearly jumping out of my skin as a dark-haired woman steps into the foyer and enthusiastically embraces Sophie.
“Oh my god, I shouldn’t hug you so hard,” Sophie says, stepping back, her hands hovering over the other woman’s abdomen. “May I?”
The woman, who I now realize must be Marley, the Hores’ neighbor, shrugs. “I mean, not much to feel right now, but go ahead.”
Sophie lays her hands gently on Marley and smiles serenely. “I can’t believe there’s gonna be a li’l Bennett or Marley running around soon.”
Marley bursts out laughing. “You can’t? I still can’t believe I’m married and love it, let alone over the moon about becoming a mom.”
A look I can’t quite identify replaces Sophie’s joy briefly before her mask slips back on.
Marley looks up at me and holds her hand out. “You must be the brother and fake boyfriend, right?”
“Shit, sorry,” Sophie says, gesturing toward me. “Marley, this is Foster. Foster, Marley. I can’t believe you two have never met.”
“Feels like we have,” Marley says, gripping my hand tightly.
I’d have to agree with that. Cass gave me a play-by-play of how Marley and Bennett came to be shortly after she’d started working at the rescue. Since then, she talks about them more than she talks about anyone we’re related to. I don’t actually know Marley and Bennett, but I do know I like them more than almost everyone I share DNA with simply by the way they’ve treated Cass. The fact that Sophie speaks so highly of them doesn’t hurt either.
A call to come eat comes from somewhere deep in the house, and I follow Sophie and Marley as they talk about potential names.
In the dining room the table is piled with copious amounts of food, every dish more mouthwatering than the last.
“Foster?” a deep voice asks from beside me.
I look up from the food to see a guy nearly my height but who looks like he’d crush me easily if the chance arose.
“Bennett?” I dare a guess.
We shake hands and are then ushered to our seats before we have a chance to exchange more than names.
When Sophie sits down next to me, I clasp my hands to keep myself from reaching for her. It has become a habit now in the presence of other people where a meal is involved.
Being here feels right, but not touching her feels wrong.