I also had more food shoved at me than I’d eaten in a week (al of which I consumed so I wouldn’t appear rude) and I seemed to be carrying a mystical bottomless margarita glass.
Bottom line, no matter how ful I was, I was also quite drunk.
I kind of needed to be drunk because I found out the reason behind the big bash that included Christmas lights and tables groaning with food. In Eddie’s thirty-three years (yes, I learned that too), I was only the second woman he’d ever brought to meet “the family”.
Worse than that eek-worthy fact, I was the only one Blanca liked.
I also found out a lot about Eddie. Maybe too much.
See, there’s a reason Eddie seemed dangerous. Eddie had a chequered past. In fact, everyone, al the way down to the cousins, were stil saying rosaries in grateful thanks to the Holy Trinity that Eddie chose to enter the Academy rather than embark on a life of crime.
Though, from the many, many accounts of his escapades, he would have been pretty good at a life of crime.
I was listening in a drunken stupor-esque glaze of horror to one of Eddie’s aunties talking about one particular time (there were several) when Eddie stole a car, when a hand (there were several) when Eddie stole a car, when a hand wrapped around my arm.
I turned, then looked down to see Eddie’s sister, Gloria.
She said something in Spanish to the auntie and then led me away.
I looked over my shoulder.
The auntie seemed somewhat perturbed to be interrupted while scaring the bejeezus out of me, so I turned back to Gloria.
“I think that might have been rude,” I said.
“You should thank me. I’m saving you,” Gloria replied.
“They’re trying to scare you. See if you got grit. Any girl of Eddie’s has to have grit. You looked ready to bolt.” She wasn’t wrong, I was ready to bolt.
“You need another margarita,” Gloria decided.
That was the only thing I didn’t need.
“I’m already two sips away from blotto.”
In fact, I was finding it difficult to walk straight and could no longer feel my tongue.
Gloria laughed, “You need to be two drinks into blotto to deal with my family.”
I was thinking she wasn’t wrong about that either.
She led me to Indy and Al y and I col apsed in an unoccupied chair. Gloria whisked away my margarita glass and headed toward the nearest ful pitcher.
“You okay?” Indy asked. She was smiling.
Drunk or not, I didn’t find anything amusing.
“My life sucks.”
She laughed.
“This is the new definition of trial by fire,” Al y remarked, glancing around.
“You got that right, sister,” I said, Gloria handed me a fresh drink and sat down with us. “I’d rather be shot at,” I finished.
“The night’s stil young,” Al y said.
I wished she wasn’t speaking the truth.