5. Cecelia
FIVE
CECELIA
“I can’t believe you’re already brawling at frat parties.” My brother Will looks like he can’t decide whether to laugh or be dismayed by us. “You’re only what, a week into the semester?”
“Oh, it’s worse than that,” Ash cuts in, reaching for a bowl of chips in the center of the table. “The brawl happened before the first day of class, so technically, the semester hadn’t even begun.”
“It wasn’t a brawl,” I mutter, but no one seems to be listening to me. Par for the course around here.
It’s not that my family is intentionally ignoring me. It’s just that there’s too damn many of us to make your voice heard most of the time. And this afternoon is about as chaotic as it gets.
A weekend lunch get-together is a long-standing tradition in our family. Our parents rotate hosting duties and everyone who happens to be in town gathers to eat a bunch of food, catch up, play with the babies, and, once the sun goes down, sit around a fire and play music.
I’d been tempted to skip this week, knowing we were going to hear endless shit about the party mishap, but my brother Will and his wife Eva are finally back in town after a publicity tour for Eva’s new album release, and I haven’t seen him in ages.
Which is why I’m now sitting at a crowded patio table in my parents’ back yard. And, just as I expected, everyone is giving us shit.
“What I want to know,” my Uncle Reed says, glaring at his youngest daughter across the patio table in our backyard. “Is what the hell you were doing at a frat party in the first place?”
Vega rolls her eyes. “Give me a break, Daddy. I’m twenty years old. I’m a junior in college.”
“Just because you’re twenty doesn’t mean you should be putting yourself in dangerous situations.”
She laughs. “It was a party. I was with three of my cousins. We were dancing.”
“Yeah, until you decided to throw beer at some guy,” Ash says, smirking.
“It wasn’t beer, it was punch,” Vega says, making a face at him—he’s totally playing up the fact that he was the only one of us to miss the party, and thus the drama.
As if that makes him more mature than us, or something, when I know for a fact that he was smoking pot with his poetry friends that whole weekend.
“Such children,” Ash goes on in that haughty tone, then curses when Violet kicks him under the table.
“See?” Will grins. “The Littles are even violent right now in front of all their parents. Feral monsters.”
I pointedly ignore him. We used to get pissed when our siblings and parents referred to us—the five youngest Ransome children—as the Littles, but we’ve decided to embrace it in the past few years.
Ash, Violet, Cade, Vega, and I might be the youngest, but the Littles kick ass.
I turn to Ash. “You should be thanking me. I was defending your twin sister.”
Ash just rolls his eyes. “Pretty sure Violet could handle that punk herself.” He looks over at her. “I told you he was an asshole.”
She shrugs. “He was hot.”
“Violet!” her dad cries, horrified, making me and Vega cackle.
Our fathers are ridiculous. They’ve had a hard time with all of their kids growing up and leaving home, but it’s been a lot worse for the five of us, being the youngest and all.
Anyone who followed Ransom back in the day probably wouldn’t believe how domestic the four brothers would turn out. My dad and uncles enjoyed the rock and roll lifestyle—probably my dad more than any of them—but settled down a lot once they met their future wives.
Settled down and had a bunch of kids. There are seventeen of us cousins and they used to drag us all around the country in their tour buses.
Eventually they cut back on touring to start up their own record label—and stop wrangling a herd of children from city to city.
That’s when they bought houses within blocks of each other in this gated community in the Hollywood Hills.
There’s never been a time in my life when I wasn’t surrounded by family.
Between my three brothers and all of my cousins, there’s guaranteed to be someone around.
Some of the older Ransome kids have struggled with that, wanting more independence, but I’ve always loved it.
I thrive on the noise and chaos of our big family.
I can’t say it doesn’t get annoying on occasion. Like right now, when half the family is gathered around to either lecture or laugh at us about the whole kneeing Vi’s ex in the junk thing, followed by the throwing a drink at a stranger fiasco.
Violet and Ash’s oldest brother, River, slings an arm around my shoulder. “Well, I for one am proud of you, Ceece. That guy had it coming, and you stepped up for Vi.”
“I was involved, too,” Cade protests. “I tripped that asshole on the sidewalk and gave him a bloody nose!”
I hold out my hand to bump his fist and our dads groan. “The two of you are a terrible influence on each other,” Cade’s dad—my Uncle Lennon—mutters.
Cade turns a smirk in Vega’s direction. “And Vega tried to help.”
“Hey! I totally would have spilled that punch on him if CeCe hadn’t kicked him so hard that he was writhing in agony.” She shifts in her chair. “It’s not my fault it landed on a stranger instead.”
An image of that stranger immediately jumps to my mind, but I force it out. I’ve already spent too much time this week remembering the way his ab muscles had flexed when he pulled off the stained t-shirt.
He was an asshole to Vega and Vi, I remind myself. A hot body doesn’t make up for that.
Uncle Reed rubs a hand over his face. “I can’t believe the five of you haven’t ended up arrested yet.”
“See, Daddy?” Vega asks brightly. “It could be worse!”
He glares at her. “No more frat parties.”
“Sure thing,” she says sweetly.
“Hey,” my mom calls from the grill where she’s standing with my aunts. “Is someone planning on cooking this meat or are you all going to sit around and gossip all afternoon?”
My dad immediately jumps up to go help her.
I swear that woman could snap her fingers and he’d come running.
It’s pretty cute. Reed, Lennon, and Daltrey go too, since the Ransome brothers treat grilling like some kind of competitive sport.
They’re competitive about pretty much anything, as a matter of fact.
That’s probably why they had so many children.
The table clears out after that. River goes to help his wife wrangle their three kids. The other Littles decide to jump in the pool before lunch is ready. I think about joining them, but my nephew Theo comes barreling over to the table, flinging himself at me.
“Hi, buddy.” I pull him up into my lap, enjoying the brief moment he’ll let me snuggle him before he starts squirming. The kid is an unstoppable ball of energy. No wonder my brother Will always looks so tired these days.
“You smell good,” I tell him, kissing the top of his head.
Theo giggles. “You smell stinky.”
I gasp in mock-outrage then start to tickle him. “I don’t stink! You stink!”
“You stink like farts!” he squeals in between yelps and giggles.
I can’t help but laugh as I look over his head to Will. “I didn’t realize having nephews would be like having annoying brothers all over again.”
He grins at me. “Please. Just because you were the only girl doesn’t mean you weren’t annoying.”
“You were all annoying,” Wyatt says, collapsing into one of the vacated patio chairs, his one-year-old daughter curled up asleep against his chest.
Will scoffs. “Dude, you put a live snake in my underwear drawer when I was in kindergarten.”
“It was a garter snake,” Wyatt scoffs, then winces. “And I got grounded for like, two weeks for that.”
When I laugh, they both turn slightly narrowed eyes on me. “The little princess over there wouldn’t know anything about that,” Wyatt says. “You never got punished for anything, even though you were definitely the worst one.”
“Spoiled,” Will agrees.
I shrug. “I can’t help it if Mom and Dad loved me more than you.”
As expected, Theo decides he’s had enough of cuddling with his auntie. He starts wiggling in my lap, tugging at my hoodie strings. “CeCe play soccer?” he asks.
“We can play soccer after lunch, buddy.” Will says. “We’re going to eat in a few minutes. Why don’t you go find Poppy?”
That’s the magic word—Theo is obsessed with his older cousin Poppy. He immediately slides off my lap and runs off in search of her.
“It’s so weird,” I say, watching him go. “All these babies running around.” There are six, so far, in the newest generation of Ransomes. Three of them come from our branch of the family tree—my brother Will has two kids, Wyatt has one.
“You’re just jealous because you’re not the youngest anymore,” Wyatt says, tugging on the end of my braid. Then his face grows more serious. “What’s this I hear about you getting into a brawl at some football party?’
I roll my eyes. “It wasn’t a brawl. And it was a frat party, not a football party.”
“Oh, that makes a huge difference,” he says.
“We already went over all this. Uncle Reed was pissed, Dad thought it was hilarious.” I shrug. “We can drop it now.”
Wyatt ignores me. “Why’d you punch this kid?”
“I didn’t punch him. I kneed him in the balls.”
Wyatt laughs. “Fuck, CeCe. You’re nuts, you know that?”
I hold up my hands. “He was cheating on Violet,” I snap. “And saying horrible shit. What was I supposed to do?”
Will narrows his eyes. “I didn’t hear anything about him talking shit. What’d he say?”
I scan the patio, not wanting to get into this with any of the dads around. They’re super sensitive about this kind of thing. “He said he was only sleeping with her to meet Uncle Daltrey,” I say softly, anger flashing through me once again. “I should have kneed him in the balls twice, honestly.”
Something hard has come into both of my brother’s eyes. “Maybe you should tell us his name,” Will says, voice dark. “And we can go have a word with him.”
“I took care of it,” I say tightly. “He won’t bother her again.”
“You tell us if he does,” Wyatt says, looking every bit as menacing as Will.