A Very Bossy Christmas - Kayley Loring Page 0,38
hand-in-hand, up the long driveway.
They’ve got the usual Christmas lights up. Clear white around the roof because my nonna insists colored lights are ostentatious. Colored lights around the covered porch because my ma thinks white lights are boring. It doesn’t look like Aiden and Brady are here yet, so I breathe easier. “Yeah. They don’t need a house this big anymore, but my dad refuses to move.”
“Stubborn?”
“Secretly sentimental, I think.”
I can feel her soft gaze on me as I stare up at the house.
She squeezes my hand, reassuring me when I’m the one who should be reassuring her. I’m an asshole for not telling her about Brady and Hannah sooner, but I didn’t want her to come because she felt sorry for me. I just wanted her to be here. With me.
“It’s a nice house,” she says. “Seems like a nice, quiet neighborhood.”
“Yeah, well. We’ll see how you feel about that when you’re inside with my family.”
She guffaws. “You clearly have never been to Christmas dinner with my extended family on Staten Island. Or dinner with my family on any night, anywhere.”
I really want that. I want to have dinner with her family on Staten Island or anywhere. But I don’t think that’s on the table.
We walk up the steps of the front porch and stand in front of the door. I can hear Dean Martin blaring from the speakers in the living room—the only acceptable singer of Christmas songs in the Cannavale house because he was an Italian-American from Ohio. I can hear my ma yelling at my dad about something. I look down at Maddie, who’s straightening her coat and fidgeting with her gift bags. “They aren’t here yet. You ready?”
“Yep. Let’s do this.”
I ring the doorbell. I have a key, but I’m hoping my ma will stop yelling if she knows we’re out here.
“It’s on the top shelf!” she bellows. “Tony! No—the middle top shelf!”
No such luck.
The door flies open, and I already know from the look on her beautiful face that they somehow found out that I was in town yesterday and didn’t tell them. Fuck. And now I just have to wait for someone to bring it up.
“Awww, there’s my beautiful boy” is what she says though. “And who’s this beautiful lady? Come in, get inside! It’s colder than your nonna’s icy black heart out there.” She ushers us in, closing the door behind us while yelling at my dad. “Casey and them are in the family room watching a movie. Eddie’s here, Nonna’s in the kitchen of course, but no one else yet.” She clears her throat.
The living and dining room are decorated exactly like they are every year. I can see the Rudolph ornament I made when I was seven hanging on the fake white tree. My old stocking is hanging from the mantle, in between Casey’s and Eddie’s as always, and it isn’t filled with coal. I take a deep breath because I’m home, and I’m actually happy about it. But I feel more at home now than I have in years, and I wasn’t expecting that. I finally let go of Maddie’s hand to hug Ma. And then I watch these two women hug each other, and it’s pretty great. I’m way too much of a badass to tear up, but if I were ever going to tear up, it would be right this second.
The air in the house isn’t smoky exactly, but it’s thick with the aroma of several gallons of boiling hot cooking oil, seven kinds of seafood, tomatoes, basil, parmesan cheese, and four decades worth of unspoken cultural and personal tension between my Irish-American Ma and Nonna. But in a good way. And every now and then you get a whiff of all the sugary deep-fried dough as a reminder of the sweeter things to come if you can survive dinner and make it to dessert.
Tonight, I need to not only make it to dessert but back to the hotel and Maddie Cooper’s delicious pussy.
But I can’t think about that right now.
“Hiya, Maddie—welcome to our humble home. My name’s Mary Margaret, but you can call me Mamie.”
“You have a lovely home,” Maddie says, holding up one of the gift bags. “Merry Christmas. Here’s just a little something from the hotel gift shop. I’m so sorry I didn’t have time to go shopping before we left New York.”
“Ohhhh! Lookie lookie!” She tears into it immediately and holds up the Cleveland, Ohio tea towel and a Cleveland souvenir Christmas tree