daddio was champing at the bit for grandbabies. “And don’t even start in. We just got Mom to swear. Do not ruin this for me.” It was a rare occasion when her potty mouth came out to play, but I was rather good at coaxing it out. Actually, the best.
“Hear me out a minute, Alexis.” Full first name. He was serious. “We want to see you happy. You and your brother are the lights of our lives. You can’t blame us for wanting that for you.”
I couldn’t blame them for loving me, so I kept my typical argument that Beep and Boop were their grandkittens—who they neglected—out of the dialogue.
But some choices we didn’t get to make for ourselves. My life certainly wasn’t exactly how I’d once planned. A single mother, raising two cats on her own. But there were times when you could either let life run you over or hide, and hiding was sometimes easier.
Those days, I mostly hid from myself.
It was getting too deep though, and in self-defense, I forced myself to daydream about the hot FedEx guy as they both blathered on. It was easier to just let them get it out every now and then anyway. As if telling me about everything I was missing out on was ever going to help me get any of it.
So there I sat, in the sun, nodding and eating the last of my chips, fantasizing about the deliveryman as my parents got it all off their chests.
Who knew? Maybe one day, I’d be sitting there with someone and not pretending like there wasn’t a massive hole in my chest.
“The wave was so big it nearly ripped us both out to sea,” Cal said with wild storytelling hands slicing through the air.
Smiling, Vanessa hooked her arm through her husband’s and cuddled into his side. “But then my hubby saved the day. Did you know he used to be a lifeguard?”
Of course we knew. Back when Vanessa was still debating which sorority to pledge, Lex and I had been creating a fake email account and forging a dress code policy to inform Cal that the uniform for the lifeguards at the country club pool had switched to speedos. We were also there—front and center—to witness the horror in his eyes when he reported for his first day on the job in the aforementioned speedo while everyone else was in trunks. It was a personal highlight in my life.
But reminiscing on it now, I let out a silent groan.
Vanessa always did that crap. When they’d first started dating, I’d hadn’t thought much of it. She was proud of her man. Good on her. Most of all, good for Cal for finding a woman who wanted to dote on his adolescent achievements. As time passed though, it became more and more apparent that Vanessa’s pride was nothing but a pop quiz to prove who knew him best. A competition she couldn’t possibly win when going toe-to-toe with his sister and his best friend of over fifteen years, but that never dissuaded her from trying.
I did a lot of pretending when Vanessa was around.
Pretending I didn’t know things about Cal to allow her a victory.
Pretending she didn’t grate on my nerves.
Pretending I wouldn’t rather throw myself in front of a bus than listen to her talk.
But she made Cal happy. So I bit my tongue.
Lex on the other hand…
“A lifeguard? No way!” she gasped, sarcasm dripping so thick in her tone that it was a wonder it didn’t puddle in her lap.
I swept a leg out to the side to kick her under the table, but Cal beat me to it, catching her right in the shin.
“Ow!” she exclaimed.
“Shit. Sorry about that,” he lied, shooting her a quit-being-a-dick smile. It was his very own signature mixture of his what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you glare and his how-am-I-related-to-you grin.
Never one to be outdone, Lex leveled him with a I-will-murder-you-in-your-sleep scowl.
Ahhhhh, the joys of family.
No, really. I fucking loved this shit. Finally having Cal and, yes, even Vanessa back for our weekly ritual of beer and darts was a welcome return to normalcy. Outside of work, I didn’t have much of a life, but when I didn’t have Jack, I could always count on something going down at Huey’s.
Okay, maybe “something going down” was an exaggeration. The up-all-night, wake-up-for-work-still-half-drunk days were long gone. But they were typically good for a couple of hours of bullshitting in our favorite booth, a shared pitcher of beer, a basket of wings. You