Badger to the Bone (Honey Badger Chronicles #3) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,116
Is that what I’m supposed to understand?”
“Yes!” Finn nodded and smiled at Shay. “Is it me or do you think the kid finally gets it?”
chapter TWENTY-ONE
Xavier Vargas opened his front door and found his grandson standing there, filling up that doorframe as he always had since the time he was fourteen. He wasn’t alone today, though. For the first time since high school, he’d brought a girl home.
Some Chinese girl with purple hair and sneakers that matched. She didn’t even reach Zé’s shoulder she was so short.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“We need to talk,” Zé said, pushing his way past Xavier and entering the apartment they’d called home the kid’s entire life.
“About what?” he asked, closing the door.
He started to follow Zé, but a knock at the door had him opening it again. The purple-haired girl stood there.
She gestured toward Zé. “I’m kinda with him.”
“Then get in here,” he told her and waited until “her majesty” made her grand entrance.
He pointed to the room he used as his living room and office. Yeah, the apartment was small but it was better than what he used to have growing up.
Xavier went to his kitchen, took three bottles of beer out of the refrigerator and grabbed an opener from the drawer, then took the extremely short jaunt to the living room, which was about two inches away from the kitchen. Although a wall did separate them, which was nice and a feature not everyone in the building had.
He handed out the beers and took the top off his grandson’s, then his own, then was about to do the same for the girl but she had already used her teeth to remove the cap.
Deciding not to focus on that bit of tacky for longer than was necessary, Xavier faced his grandson.
Zé began to speak but Xavier stopped him. “You know what we have to do first,” he reminded his grandson.
With that damn eye roll, Zé touched the top of his beer bottle to Xavier’s, then to the girl’s. Xavier followed suit.
She seemed to enjoy that bit of politeness Xavier insisted upon, grinning like a happy idiot before downing some of her beer.
“It’s American beer,” he told her when she grimaced a little after swallowing. “None of that fancy foreign shit in my house.” He looked at his grandson. “So what do you want?”
“Wow,” the girl said. “You two are not friendly to each other? Is this the typical dynamic between you? Because I love my Pop-Pop. He’s like the greatest guy! So sweet and funny and—”
“Stop talking,” Zé ordered.
“Okay.”
She wandered away, going to the bookcase that took up the entire wall that separated the living room from what Xavier still considered to be Zé’s bedroom. She studied the titles of the many books there. Books he’d been collecting—when he could afford to—since he was a child.
“How could you not tell me?” Zé asked.
“Tell you what?” Xavier asked.
“Don’t try that bullshit with me, old man. You know exactly what the fuck I’m talking about.”
Xavier stepped into his grandson. “Listen to me, you little shit. You might be ten feet taller than me and wider than this apartment, but talk to me like that again and I will put you down.”
“You know what would be nice right now?” the girl suddenly said, quickly stepping between Xavier and his grandson. “Chili. Chili would be soooo nice right about now. You see, my sister’s mother—we’re half-sisters so I’m not being weird by calling her ‘my sister’s mother’—she used to say that so many problems could be easily rectified if people just sat down over a big meal and talked to each other. She used to say that World War Two would have never happened if”—she took a moment to swallow at this bit—“Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, and all the rest actually sat around a big table and talked over a delightful meal of beer and chili. I’m not sure I agree with her,” she added. “Hitler seemed pretty determined, but, ya know . . . the general spirit of what she was saying is true. Especially when dealing with family. So why don’t I see what you have in your refrigerator and maybe I can whip up something we can eat while calmly and rationally discussing all this, like the loving family you are. How does that sound?”
Xavier looked up at his towering grandson and his grandson glowered down at him.