20 #2
“No, no, we voted on this, and we overruled you. You’re staying with Ava,” Laura says, then rolls her eyes. “If she’ll take you back, that is. Didn’t sound like she would.”
Elise puts in, “We’re just saying we liked her a lot, and you shouldn’t feel pressured—”
“You also voted for that,” Shawn interrupts, and she shoots him a glare.
Aiden raises his voice over all of them, “Yeah, that. Like, before you continue with your miserable asshole thing—”
Their voices all overlap, to the point that I can’t follow what any one person is saying. Shawn and Elise are only adding to the confusion, now involved in their own little back-and-forth. Maybe I won’t have to explain anything, if they just keep doing all the talking.
No one notices when Ava appears in the kitchen doorway, or as she slips into the room, crossing directly to the coffee to pour herself a cup.
Aiden catches my eye, gesturing emphatically about something I’ve missed while he talks. They’re all so focused on making their point, voices growing louder and more insistent as they all find different ways to say more or less the same thing.
Ava sets the coffee pot down, tries a sip from her mug.
“Ava,” Laura squeaks, glancing a double take back at the counter, the first to realize she’s there.
The kitchen falls silent as Ava crosses over to my side, raises up on her toes to peck my cheek. “Morning. Where do you keep the sugar?”
“Uh, over here,” I murmur back, but I might as well have shouted with how quiet it is.
“Oh, you guys have that fancy kind,” she mutters to herself, swiping her fingertip along the sugar bowl’s rim, tasting it.
My breath stalls as I watch her, her downcast lashes as she adds a spoonful to her mug, stirring it in.
Standing so close to her, I can’t help but be wrapped up in her presence, the baggy white T-shirt still sporting some dirt and grass stains, the pair of boxers she’s borrowed in place of the torn yoga pants.
She’s so effortlessly at ease, her presence is grounding. Any nervous restlessness in my spine, any tension in my jaw dissipates when she sighs and leans her shoulder to mine.
Her attention shifts back to the people staring at her, as she taps the spoon on the edge of her mug, shaking drops of coffee off. It might as well be a gavel.
“What? I’ve been here. Where were all of you?”
She’s met with the same stunned stares, before the spell of silence breaks, all of them looking amongst each other, realizing their intervention isn’t needed.
“Oh, the bacon is burning,” Elise mutters, turning back around to the stove. Aiden turns pink and excuses himself to go stare into the fridge, Laura still looks shocked, frowning. She crosses over to Ava for interrogating, no doubt.
I pour myself a coffee as Shawn sidles over. He gives me a sheepish eyeroll, leaning against the counter next to me.
Still, I can’t resist elbowing him. “You were saying?”
“Nothing, nothing at all.” He shakes his head, and glances over at Laura, who’s aggressively cornered my mate with her arms crossed. Ava seems relatively unbothered.
“So, she knows?”
“She knows.”
Shawn frowns and squints at me. “How does she know? What does she know?”
“Nothing. I only told her a bit.”
“A bit?”
“Some bits.”
“Just some bits.”
He nods slowly, letting out a measured breath. “So, everything?”
“All of it.”
He grumbles something that sounds like “fucking unbelievable” into his coffee.
Somehow, that was a lot easier than I thought it would be.
There’s something almost ridiculous about it, actually.
But I look around now and realize all of my favorite people are in the same room, yawning and shuffling about.
The morning sunlight is coming in strong through the windows, casting the room in a soft golden glow.
It’s nice. I’m quietly grateful to sit at the counter and just listen to all of them.
Elise might have a point about big family breakfasts. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so terrible if we did more of these. I might even look forward to it.
Elise has now roped Aiden into helping her crack a number of eggs into a big bowl, while she flips the bacon over in the pan.
Ava first abandons her coffee on the counter and then me with a little smile as she follows Laura out of the kitchen, my cousin telling her, “I’ll show you where the towels are, and there’s this weird thing with the shower handle . . . ”
I watch her disappear, as Shawn leans over and mutters to me, “Listen, we’ll figure out how to tell Mom.”
“ . . . Yeah?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a little mileage on that. Besides, showing up for you in the way you didn’t show up for me is what being big brother of the year is all about,” he says, taking a moment to wink at me.
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “And who is giving you this award?”
No one, because the devil works faster than Shawn. Our mother’s voice catches our attention from the stair landing, with a soft, surprised, “. . . And who are you?”
There’s a delayed beat, in which Shawn, Aiden, and I turn to peer through the slim vantage of the kitchen doorway at the staircase, the three people stopped halfway on it. Elise turns off the stove to come eavesdrop with us.
“Oh! Hi, I’m Ava.”
“Yeah, uh, you know Ava, Aunt Dea?” Laura adds weakly, doing her best to continue past my mom, tugging on Ava’s arm.
“Ava, yes, we’ve met before. You were at the wedding?
” Deanna says slowly, looking her up and down, unsure why this stranger is in her house.
Ava offers her free hand to shake, and Deanna pauses and inspects the bite mark there.
She releases Ava’s hand and with a voice so even it’s a little concerning, tells her, “You did a lovely job with the flowers, dear.”
“Oh, thanks, yeah I meant to take photos of it for my boss. We’re redoing the website.” Ava nods awkwardly, moving past my mother standing resolutely in the middle of the staircase.
Laura finally succeeds in dragging Ava away. My mother stays put for a moment, watching them disappear down the upstairs hallway.
Then her attention swivels back toward the kitchen.
Four adults scrambling back into the room to pretend to act casual succeeds only partially; Aiden’s chair screeches loudly across the floor as he hops into it, the back of my hand knocks my coffee over, spilling it out onto the counter.
There isn’t time to clean it up before our mother stops in the kitchen doorway, casting a sweeping look between all her children. We’re each holding our breath, anticipating any hint of her displeasure from her assessment, while a thin river of coffee drips off the edge of the counter.
“Logan,” she pronounces, fixing me with a look.
“What?”
“Darling, she’s wearing your underwear.” My mother sighs in a way that makes me wonder if I’ve ever successfully fooled her, even for a second.
“. . . She is.” I nod and add nothing else. I don’t have anything to say to defend myself because I haven’t done anything that needs to be defended. I think.
Deanna holds my stare a long moment, before she arches an aristocratic eyebrow, and tsks. “Find her some real clothes, please. Poor girl must be mortified.”
I nod and push back from the counter. Aiden retrieves a dishtowel to mop up the floor and the counter with, and my mom steals my seat barely a moment later. “She knows?”
“She knows,” Shawn echoes in a way that he probably thinks is reassuring, but our mother doesn’t take it that way. “If it helps, we all like her a lot.”
“Yeah, a lot more than Celine,” Aiden echoes.
She elbows his arm. “What do you mean, ‘we’? Did all my children conspire to keep me in the dark?”
“I—well, I mean . . . ”
Their chatter fades as I step out into the hall, taking a few moments alone to just breathe. I pause and glimpse into my dad’s empty study.
I thought I was going to be trapped in this house, burdened by family and a legacy I did not wish to continue.
The scale of my problems seems so different now that they’re behind me.
Everything I thought would be world shattering came to pass, and yet, none of it has destroyed anything. Anything that matters, I guess.
All the changes are for the better.