“Your father almost killed you, David,” my mom reminded him.
“He would have had to catch me first.” Mischief sparked in his green eyes as he winked at me.
“Anyway,” my mother said, shifting the conversation back. “You said Maggie was having a boy. He’s going to have them wrapped around his little finger from day one.”
“Just like Prince Calvin,” I quipped. Mama’s boy.
A sweet smile spread across her face, and she tossed her napkin onto her plate. “Do I need to remind you that your daddy slept beside your crib for the first three weeks after you came home from the hospital?”
She didn’t need to remind anyone of that story. It was her favorite—and one of mine too. Regardless, we knew the next words that were about to come out of her mouth.
In unison, my dad and I squawked, “Only four pounds. One ounce.”
I’d been born a few weeks early and had stayed in the hospital for a week or so before coming home. That’s probably why I couldn’t even reach the top of my refrigerator. Being a preemie had stunted my growth. Or maybe not. But it was a pain in the ass being five foot three and three quarters.
“Oh, shut up. Both of you.”
“Mother, we don’t say shut up in this house.”
She laughed. “Yeah, well, maybe we should have. You smartasses always have some bullshit to say.”
“Judith Millicent Draper Lawson, your language.” I wiped an invisible tear from my eye. “It’s amazing.”
Dad sat back in his chair, rubbing his full pot belly, with a smile that could light the Olympic torch. “I miss this.”
“Don’t you go soft on me now, old man,” I said. One would think my mother was the biggest advocate for my reproductive journey, but one would be wrong. My daddio was champing at the bit for grandbabies. “And don’t even start in. We just got Mom to swear. Do not ruin this for me.” It was a rare occasion when her potty mouth came out to play, but I was rather good at coaxing it out. Actually, the best.
“Hear me out a minute, Alexis.” Full first name. He was serious. “We want to see you happy. You and your brother are the lights of our lives. You can’t blame us for wanting that for you.”
I couldn’t blame them for loving me, so I kept my typical argument that Beep and Boop were their grandkittens—who they neglected—out of the dialogue.
But some choices we didn’t get to make for ourselves. My life certainly wasn’t exactly how I’d once planned. A single mother, raising two cats on her own. But there were times when you could either let life run you over or hide, and hiding was sometimes easier.
Those days, I mostly hid from myself.
It was getting too deep though, and in self-defense, I forced myself to daydream about the hot FedEx guy as they both blathered on. It was easier to just let them get it out every now and then anyway. As if telling me about everything I was missing out on was ever going to help me get any of it.
So there I sat, in the sun, nodding and eating the last of my chips, fantasizing about the deliveryman as my parents got it all off their chests.
Who knew? Maybe one day, I’d be sitting there with someone and not pretending like there wasn’t a massive hole in my chest.
“The wave was so big it nearly ripped us both out to sea,” Cal said with wild storytelling hands slicing through the air.
Smiling, Vanessa hooked her arm through her husband’s and cuddled into his side. “But then my hubby saved the day. Did you know he used to be a lifeguard?”
Of course we knew. Back when Vanessa was still debating which sorority to pledge, Lex and I had been creating a fake email account and forging a dress code policy to inform Cal that the uniform for the lifeguards at the country club pool had switched to speedos. We were also there—front and center—to witness the horror in his eyes when he reported for his first day on the job in the aforementioned speedo while everyone else was in trunks. It was a personal highlight in my life.
But reminiscing on it now, I let out a silent groan.
Vanessa always did that crap. When they’d first started dating, I’d hadn’t thought much of it. She was proud of her man. Good on her. Most of all, good for Cal for finding a woman who wanted to dote on his adolescent achievements. As time passed though, it became more and more apparent that Vanessa’s pride was nothing but a pop quiz to prove who knew him best. A competition she couldn’t possibly win when going toe-to-toe with his sister and his best friend of over fifteen years, but that never dissuaded her from trying.
I did a lot of pretending when Vanessa was around.
Pretending I didn’t know things about Cal to allow her a victory.
Pretending she didn’t grate on my nerves.
Pretending I wouldn’t rather throw myself in front of a bus than listen to her talk.
But she made Cal happy. So I bit my tongue.
Lex on the other hand…
“A lifeguard? No way!” she gasped, sarcasm dripping so thick in her tone that it was a wonder it didn’t puddle in her lap.
I swept a leg out to the side to kick her under the table, but Cal beat me to it, catching her right in the shin.
“Ow!” she exclaimed.
“Shit. Sorry about that,” he lied, shooting her a quit-being-a-dick smile. It was his very own signature mixture of his what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you glare and his how-am-I-related-to-you grin.
Never one to be outdone, Lex leveled him with a I-will-murder-you-in-your-sleep scowl.
Ahhhhh, the joys of family.
No, really. I fucking loved this shit. Finally having Cal and, yes, even Vanessa back for our weekly ritual of beer and darts was a welcome return to normalcy. Outside of work, I didn’t have much of a life, but when I didn’t have Jack, I could always count on something going down at Huey’s.
Okay, maybe “something going down” was an exaggeration. The up-all-night, wake-up-for-work-still-half-drunk days were long gone. But they were typically good for a couple of hours of bullshitting in our favorite booth, a shared pitcher of beer, a basket of wings. You know, real wild shit.
Lex and Cal were still locked in a glare-off when another chair suddenly appeared at the end of the table.
“Hey, guys,” Lauren chirped, giving my shoulder a squeeze before sitting down.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” I glanced around her. “Where’s Jack?”
“Ah, he couldn’t get in, so I ditched him with the bouncer. We really need to get him a better fake ID.”
“What?” Cal exclaimed, knee-deep in his lifelong struggle with sarcasm.
“I’m kidding,” Lauren said. “He’s actually with Judy and David. They called and asked if they could take him to see a movie.”
Like a good uncle, Cal visibly relaxed.
Vanessa clutched her heart. “Awww. That’s so sweet. Those two are desperate for more grandkids.” Tilting her head back, she silently asked Cal for a kiss. “We better get working on that, hubby. We might be their only hope left.”
I didn’t even have to look at Lex to see the verbal slap hit her. I also didn’t need to wait to see how she was going to react.
Tossing an arm around her shoulders, I cupped a hand over her mouth and kept talking to Lauren. “Ah, so you’re free tonight and decided to finally grace us with your presence? How generous of you.”