Zac snickered as he drove, and we listened to Guillermo and Luisa bicker the entire ride over to our aunt’s house. Of course, there were about a hundred cars parked on the street. He found a spot a few houses down. We piled out, and I spotted Boogie’s car as we headed over to the two-story house I’d been to about a hundred times over my life. The same one I had lived in while I’d finished high school and decided what I was going to do afterward.
At the front door, Connie rang the doorbell once and then threw the door open, not bothering to wait.
“I want to get food first and then go tell everyone hi,” I said over my shoulder. “Want to come with or are you going to look for Boogie?”
“Food,” Zac answered immediately, making me smile.
Except for a couple of kids hogging the living room who waved at us instead of actually getting up to give us a hug, there was hardly anyone in the house. Score for us. From the sounds of it, everyone was outside. My aunt and uncle had set up a trampoline in the back… even though they didn’t have a grandkid yet. In the kitchen, I grabbed a stack of paper plates and passed them around.
Connie followed after her kids, watching what they picked at and adding more to their plates. Zac followed behind me getting food. Just as I went to put a slice of cake on a small paper plate, a blur of a dark head came out of nowhere. A boy I recognized as Tony ran up to the tres leches and stuck his hand into the pan, scooping out a big mound of it and shoving it straight into his mouth.
“Eww, Tony, don’t use your hand. I’ll help you if you want some. Put it on a plate,” I griped, figuring I could cut the part out where his dirty little fingers had been. Seriously, they were dirty. Last time I’d seen him, months ago, he’d been digging boogers out of his nose and eating them.
The boy, probably nine-ish, sneered at me as he started to back up. “Mind your own business,” he said before running off.
I gasped even as my nephew said, “Mom!”
Staring after the little jerk, I could only shake my head. “I’m gonna fight a child today. I can feel it.”
Something warm landed on the back of my neck, and I knew without looking it was Zac’s hand. “You’re about the same size as one, so go for it.”
I looked up at him with a straight face. “You know what, Zac?”
Those blue eyes were locked on mine as he drawled, seriously, way too seriously for the sparkle in his eye, “Tell me, darlin’.”
“You’re a pain in the ass.”
His laugh filled my ears as he squeezed the back of my neck again. “Want me to pay your niece to trip him?”
I thought about it for a second before nodding. “If not, maybe my nephew can kick him in the face again.”
An amused eyebrow went up. “Do I wanna know how that happened?”
Connie chimed in as she spooned food onto Luisa’s plate, using her fingers as quotation marks. “Breakdancing.”
“Mom! It was breakdancing! I swear!” my nephew insisted.
Connie winked at him. “You keep telling yourself that. I’m not even a little mad at you.”
“But you were mad at me for the hole in the wall.”
“That was different.”
“Whose kid is that?” Zac asked.
“Do you remember Chuy?”
He made a thoughtful face and then shook his head.
I rolled a shoulder back. “Eh. It’s his kid.”
“Squinty eyes? Fat head? Little body?” Connie offered before screwing up her face. “Never mind, that’s like half our cousins.”
“What is?” a familiar voice asked from out of nowhere.
It was Boogie. I turned around to find him coming in from the living room, holding a stack of empty, used plates.
“Squinty eyes, fat heads, and little bodies,” my sister replied.
He groaned as he came forward, dropping the plates into a big, black trash bag first before making his way over. He hugged me, then Zac, and finally headed for the kids.
Luisa was in the middle of giving him a hug when she said, “Uncle Boogie, I called you a punk-a word, but I love you, and Tía Bianca paid me five dollars to say it.”
My cousin blinked, and I caught an edge of his smile before he held out his hand. “Give me half.”