hours here and there. The good thing was, I was off tomorrow.
Squirming deep into the couch, I scooped some food into my mouth, and with it full, grumbled, “I really don’t think I need a date. It’s a freaking quince, Connie, not…. I don’t even know what the hell you’d need a date for. Nothing. I can go anywhere by myself.”
“Bianca,” my sister muttered, something banging in the background. She had to have pulled the phone away from her face because her yell was muffled. “Yermo! What the hell are you doing up there? Breakdancing? Don’t you dare break the sheetrock again!”
I snorted into the phone and waited until I could hear her breathing before asking, “He broke the sheetrock?”
She huffed something that sounded like fuck under her breath before coming back onto the line. “I didn’t send you a picture? He did it last week. Stuck his whole damn foot in the wall.”
I laughed. “I love that kid. Tell him to record himself and send it to me.”
That got me a groan. “He kicked Tony in the face a week ago when they came over and gave him a black eye.”
Imagining my little cousin Tony with a black eye made me snort again. Tony was a pain in the ass and always had been. “He could be into crack, Con, and Tony probably needs another kick to the face. Anyway, I really don’t think I need a date. I might be there for an hour or two max before someone gets on my nerves and I sneak out.”
My sister didn’t say anything for a second before saying, “My money is on Tía Licha.”
“So is mine.” A memory of the last time I’d seen that aunt came to me all of a sudden, and I snorted again. “What did she tell you when we saw her last time? That you needed to start using under-eye cream?”
My freaking sister growled. “No, that was the time before, two Christmases ago. Last time, at Maggie’s wedding, she came up to me, touched my chin and asked if two weren’t enough.”
I had to grip the shit out of my bowl so that I wouldn’t topple it as I started laughing my fucking ass off. Yeah, that was exactly what had happened.
“Shut up.”
I didn’t. “Don’t forget she came up to me and pinched my stomach and tried to hand me some fat-burning pills she’d smuggled,” I tried to tell her… knowing she’d definitely still had it worse. I’d been standing across the room from her when the aunt we both had always dreaded had cornered her, and I’d left her to suffer through it.
Mostly because she would have done the same thing if it had been me she’d gotten.
At least one of us had gotten away unscathed.
Still.
I fucking laughed at the memory of Tía Licha poking at Connie’s chin while she bitchfaced her, trying her hardest to be polite and not whack her hand away like she had really wanted.
“So you want Tía Licha to get all judgy about you getting old and not having a boyfriend?”
I laughed as I chewed my food. “She’s just jelly I’m single and have my whole life ahead of me.”
“She is. I saw Tío Rudy in his underwear that one time, remember? She’s been missing out. Like… big-time.”
We both cracked up.
“Mooooooom! I forgot! I need to take cupcakes to school tomorrow! Can you make some?” my niece yelled from somewhere in the background.
Connie growled into the line. “Holy fuuuuu… Peewee, let me call you back.”
We both knew she wasn’t going to call me back.
But I laughed. “Okay, be nice to my girl. Bye.”
“Bye,” she said. I heard a slice of a “Luisa, what the—” before she hung up.
I was smiling to myself as I hit Play on the remote and settled in to watch another episode of the Turkish drama I still hadn’t gotten through.
As soon as I finished eating though, I grabbed my laptop and went through the list of recipes I had been slowly working on for the book I was hoping to release. Someday.
No, not someday. One day soon. I’d publish it myself since none of the agents I’d sent queries to had responded, I’d decided months ago.
And that one day was what kept me working on my computer, rewriting a couple of summaries at the top of the recipes I was planning on using because I didn’t feel like doing much else.
At least until I passed out on the couch with my laptop. I woke