Chapter 4 The Song of Potato Salad
FOUR
THE SONG OF POTATO SALAD
SEBASTIAN
My sister was a bitch. I mean, I still loved her, but that was pretty much the only word I could think of to describe her.
Why did she have to bring up my stupid past to Alex?
All I wanted was a casual chat about the instruments he played, not to tell him what a fucking failure I was.
But, of course, Mila had to barge in and ruin our conversation.
She probably thought she was doing us a favor, as if it must be horrible for Alex to be stuck with me, or as if I needed the push.
“Well, that was quick,” Mila said, staring at the spot where Alex had been sitting moments before. “I guess that’s a new record for you.”
“How can you say that when you—”
“Why are you always so angry?” She cracked her knuckles. “I mean, it must be exhausting for you, too, right?”
I wanted to yell at her, but I bit my lip and kept quiet. Screaming would definitely not make things better.
A thousand thoughts rushed through my head: maybe I should yell at her and everyone else to stop treating me like a child, or maybe I should leave now before things get worse.
That was exactly why I stayed away for so long. During a phone call, you can make an excuse and hang up if things get too heated. Here, though, I had to endure that shit, listen to them accuse me of being an asshole when they were all nothing but bullies.
“Exhausting is a fitting word,” I eventually said, keeping my voice low.
Mila interlaced her fingers and rested them on the table. “Then why all the rage?”
“Because!” My voice flared up automatically, but I managed to stop myself. Because you ruined my chance to get to know Alex on my own terms.
I would never say it out loud, but if I saw him in a bar, I would try to get his number. That smile where the lips tuck in to hide his teeth? The curious eyes that kept flicking toward me whenever he thought I wouldn’t notice? The fact that he made music, too? He was just my type.
If it weren’t so ridiculous, I’d think Mila was trying to set us up, but that couldn’t be the case.
After all, she and the rest of the family didn’t know I was gay.
The topic never came up when I still lived here, mostly because I didn’t figure it out until college, and after everything that happened later, I didn’t see why I should bother telling them.
It would only add to the pile of disappointed looks Dad would give me, and I could easily live without that.
My eyes searched for Alex, but I couldn’t find him—and somehow that didn’t feel right. Mila blamed me for him being gone, even though it was her fault.
“I like Alex. To answer what you asked half an hour ago,” I said, my voice barely louder than a whisper. “We had a good conversation.”
Mila narrowed her eyes at me. I avoided her gaze.
“I was just starting to warm up to the idea of telling him about myself,” I went on, “but then you barged into our conversation like we weren’t capable of having one.
” I looked at the flames of the candles burning before me.
“That… hurt. I’m not a kid anymore. I can decide on my own when I want to open up and when I don’t. ”
We sat next to each other in silence for a minute. The room around us was filled with polite laughs and shallow conversations.
“I…” Mila drew in a breath as if she were about to yell, but then her head sank down as she slowly deflated. “I guess that makes sense.” Mila gave me a sideways glance, a sad smile tugging at her lips. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” I said firmly. “And I’m sorry I yelled at you.” Which was the truth. I hated screaming. It’s bad for your voice, and it never helps win anyone over. “Sometimes I just feel like nobody’s listening if I don’t.”
“Maybe that’s not too far from the truth.”
We watched the family together. Dad slapped his hand onto our nephew’s back. Mom hugged her sister with a tear in her eye. And out of nowhere, Mila leaned her head against my shoulder.
“How about instead of talking like everyone else, we just stay quiet together for a little bit?” Mila asked. “It’s better than fighting, right?”
“I’d like that,” I said, leaning my head against hers. “But I also want to hear about your internship at that magazine. Promise me you’ll tell me everything about what’s going on in good ol’ NYC in a bit, okay?”
“I promise,” she whispered, and then we sat like that, enjoying a moment of peace before the hours of small talk we still had ahead of us.
I was stuck in a conversation with my great-aunt Darcy when I finally spotted Alex again across the room.
He was talking with my aunt’s husband, his hands tucked into his pockets and his ears hidden by his long hair.
He chuckled at something my uncle said, pointed behind him, and, without anyone complaining, slipped out of the party room again.
Let me tell you, this guy was a mystery to me. For over three hours, he would talk to someone for five minutes—never initiating a conversation himself, by the way—then disappear outside for ten, only to repeat the whole thing.
The entire time, I tried to sneak away and catch him alone to ask if he was okay—and to find out if I was actually the reason he left earlier. Judging by his smiles whenever he talked to someone, he seemed fine, but I wouldn’t know for sure unless I asked him.
The problem was, I couldn’t get away. Every time I stepped away from someone, another family member would rush up and start interrogating me.
Everyone kept asking me the same questions, like “How’s college?
” and “Do you still sing?” and “Have you met anyone interesting yet?” And I was like, “Good. Nope. Definitely not. Who would want a guy like me anyway, right?”
Not even pretending I had to use the restroom worked. I had tried that ten minutes ago, but my great-aunt Darcy had caught me and pulled me into a conversation I still hadn’t escaped.
“…so I thought, you know what? I’m going to make that potato salad for everyone.” Her face turned red as she huffed the words right into my face.
As expected, she mostly talked about food.
(To be fair, she is a chef and works as a cooking teacher at the YMCA in Ashbourne, the next-largest city near Seastone.) The only non-food-related thing she told me was that my coming back was one of the things she had wished for when she blew out her candle last year.
Not even for my sake, but for my parents, who were apparently pretty bummed that I stayed away.
“…and then she said she’d bring a potato salad, too! Can you believe it?”
“Not a potato salad,” I said, just so I’d at least said something in the conversation.
“The exact recipe I had shown them the week before! So I had to come up with a new idea.”
“And?” I asked, pretending to care while glancing at the door to see when Alex would come back in.
Darcy was the last person I needed to talk to before I had spoken to everyone for at least a few minutes.
Meaning no one could keep me from talking to him anymore. Once he was back, I’d take my chance.
“I made a brisket, of course! You should’ve seen her face!
No one even looked at her tiny bowl.” Darcy jabbed her elbow into my ribs.
Whenever she got upset about something, she also got physical and used whoever she was talking to as a stress ball.
Maybe she should take it up with the people she’s actually mad at and see how that works out for her.
“She deserved it.” I laughed to show her I’d been listening.
“You understand me,” Darcy said. Her elbow came for my ribs again, but I stepped back just in time.
“It was nice chatting with you, but talking about food has made me hungry.”
“Oh, you should eat something, boy! You’re just skin and bones.” She pinched my arm as if I were a piece of meat on a grill and she wanted to see if I was done.
And how done I was. Done talking to everyone, at last.
I turned to the buffet behind us. As with the candles, no one had to wait to be allowed to eat, and since I had eaten nothing more than an airplane burrito so far, my stomach was looking forward to Mom’s food.
Constantly glancing over my shoulder at the door to see if Alex was finally coming back, I piled all the side dishes onto my plate, including some of the potato salad Darcy had brought and some falafel.
Ignoring everyone to my left and right, I made my way to the table, where my candle was, and…
stopped. My sister was already sitting there, her hands folded next to an untouched piece of red velvet cake.
Her eyes were locked on me. She turned her right hand into a finger gun, pointed it at me, and fired an imaginary bullet.
“Sit, baby brother.”
“Do I even have a choice?”
“Nope.”
I sat down on the side of the table where Alex had been sitting earlier so I wouldn’t have to sit directly next to her. She sometimes copies Great-Aunt Darcy’s elbow tackles, and I was done with physical contact for the day.
“So, you survived the brisket story.”
I lifted my plate in response, showing off the potato salad that now had an entirely new meaning.
Mila tilted her head so her left ear almost touched her shoulder, her eyes piercing through me, her smile so sinister she was either about to blackmail me or force me to listen to Darcy’s brisket story again.
“Please say what you have to say, but stop looking at me like that,” I barked, plunging my fork into a falafel.
“Will you ever learn to loosen up?”
“If they served alcohol, I might.”
“I don’t even want to know what you’re like when you’re drunk.”
“Thanks to this event being alcohol-free, you won’t find out anytime soon.”
“Remind me to thank Mom and Dad for that later,” Mila said, picking up her fork as well and bringing it to the edge of the cake.
“Well, I still have to make it up to you for barging in on your conversation with Alex earlier, so…” Her eyes fixated on someone behind me.
Just as I turned around, she jumped up and yelled, “Yo, Alex! Come sit with us!” Her loud voice startled me so much I jumped up, making the bench scrape across the floor.
“You don’t have to yell,” I groaned.
Her face pinched together. “Are you immune to all the noise in here?”
Now that she had mentioned it, all the chatter around us stood out more, but it didn’t bother me. Growing up in a lively home had made me used to ignoring irrelevant noise.
Alex walked up to us with a plate holding only two spoonfuls of potato salad. He climbed over the bench and sat down next to me, close enough that our legs could’ve touched if I had wanted them to.
“How have you been?” I asked, trying not to be too obvious about how curious I was about where he kept disappearing to.
“It’s been nice getting to know everyone better, although I don’t quite understand your aunt Darcy’s obsession with potato salad.” He looked down at his plate. “I mean, it’s good, but it’s still just potatoes and mayo.”
“That’s the Drapers for you,” I said, smiling in sympathy. No one outside the family should be forced to endure our boring stories.
“The only thing I have to admit is…” Alex scrunched his face. “…the constant chatter is giving me a headache.”
“That’s also the Drapers for you,” I said, lowering my voice as I finally understood why he left so often.
Alex shrugged. “Every family has its quirks, don’t they?”
“Not as many as ours, though.” I turned to him. “Did you know, for example, that every time someone marries into the family, they have to take the Draper name?”
“Stop telling half-truths.” Mila kicked my shin. “Everyone has at least gone with a hyphenated last name, but that doesn’t mean they have to. Just like not every boy’s first name has to start with a D anymore.”
“Oh!” Alex’s eyes opened wide. “Now I get it. Dorian, Daniel, De…bastian,” he said, pulling his lips in as he corrected himself so he wouldn’t say the name he had promised me he wouldn’t use.
He took a bite of the potato salad. After chewing for a second, he swallowed and pointed his fork right at me.
“I guess you don’t, but I like your traditions.
” His eyes asked for forgiveness. “I didn’t grow up with fun quirks like this. ”
“Sure, I’d love them too if I could leave whenever I wanted to,” I blurted out.
Mila kicked my shin again, this time hard enough to make me slide back in my seat. The entire bench moved with me, and therefore, Alex too.
“Ouch!” I said, rubbing my shin.
Alex looked under the table and chuckled. “Did you just kick your brother?”
“Someone had to,” Mila said, glaring at me. “He knows why.”
Alex shot me a look that made it clear he was on my side, but then he shoveled more potato salad into his mouth and didn’t comment further.
“So, guys, since my timing earlier was pretty bad,” Mila said, “why don’t you talk a little bit about music?” She grinned and, without a care in the world, got up and left the two of us alone.
We looked after her, then at each other, both wrinkling our noses at the strange turn of events.
“That wasn’t awkward at all, sis,” I said, as if she could still hear me.
For a moment, we sat there, not exactly in silence because the noise of the party washed over us. Alex’s shoulders rose up to his ears as he grimaced.
“Still got a headache?” I asked.
He took a few breaths, then nodded. “I really enjoyed talking to everyone, but…” He glanced at me, then at his plate. “It’s tough.”
“Do you need some alone time?”
“Oh, no. I’d love to keep talking to you. I don’t know what Mila told you, but I was kind of sad we didn’t get to talk about music, especially after hearing that you also… you know?”
A big laugh from my dad from behind him made him flinch and shut his eyes until it died down. He blinked only his right eye open.
“I really can’t watch you suffer, Alex.” I leaned closer. “I’ve already talked to everyone else. We could sneak away for a bit, if you want.”
“Sneak away?” He turned his head left and right, as if he needed permission. “Even if we went to the main house, I’d still be able to hear everything, I assure you.”
“Well, lucky for you, I know the perfect place to find some peace and quiet. So, what do you say?”