“Woot! I did it again!” Mama D jumped up and started a little victory dance around the table. “I killed the party! I killed the party!” she sang, swiveling her hips to the music only she could hear as she celebrated.
Mama K was half asleep on the couch, having been one of the first casualties of the night. The rest of us were seated around the table in various stages of exhaustion. Kaine was typing away at his laptop, rolling up a new character, while Bishop was scribbling away in a notebook. The boys ignored her and just sighed as they listened to their mom’s victory dance as she destroyed yet another unsuspecting adventuring party. Apparently, this was a fairly regular occurrence.
“No fair, Mom,” Lee said, glancing over her shoulder and pointing at the laptop screen open in front of her. “That was way too many creatures to be attacking such a low-level party.”
“Hey, hands off!” she exclaimed, darting back to her seat at the end of the table and slamming the top of her laptop down, hiding the contents from Lee’s suspicious gaze.
“I am not the one who decided to open the dwarven sarcophagi with runes on them that said, ‘Doom to Any Who Disturb My Rest’,” she answered cheekily, winking at me and shooting a glare over at Kaine.
“How was I supposed to know?” he groaned. “We need better equipment, and there’salwaysmagical loot in old graves!”
“Well, wedidkinda tell you,” Lee said, patting his brother on the back, “But did you listen?No…”
Lee jumped back as Kaine’s hand flashed out to playfully punch at him.
“Watch it, old man. Keep up the ‘I told you so’s’ and we’ll find out who knows better on the mats. I can’t help it if I have a low wisdom score,” Kaine countered, pouting at his brother and pointing to the character sheet for his now-deceased rogue. “Or rather,had.”
Lee laughed and ducked around his brother, sitting back down in the chair next to me.
“You want some more?” he asked, looking down at my glass. We’d been drinking home- made Sangria for a couple of hours now, and I was feeling pleasantly buzzed.
“No, thanks,” I said, “I’m good.”
My early fear of meeting Lee’s family had dissolved under the relentless friendliness of his parents, and the playful shenanigans of his brothers. Kaine and Lee were a lot alike which surprised me, since Kaine was a lot younger than Lee, probably early- to mid-twenties.
The twins had called early on and said they had changed their minds and were just going to head home and call it an early night – they were going to have a lot of restocking to do first thing.
I sat back and just reveled in the feeling of relaxation that washed over me. Usually when I met new people, I was anxious about everything, but not here. I felt more at home in this room than I did in my own apartment. The living room was large, almost the entire width of the first floor. The walls were a warm beige that seemed to glowwith the firelight. The furniture was a mix of soft leather and well-worn tapestry cushions. The paintings on the walls and the pictures of the family placed here and there documenting a lifetime of memories.
I watched as Mama D closed up her laptop, then went over to join Kyra on the couch, reaching out to playfully comfort her partner on her loss. On the front of her laptop were post-it notes with pictures of the whole party – some drawn by me, others by Bishop, who was a pretty decent artist. The post-its had each player’s name on them, and whenever we rolled initiative (the order in which each player would take their turn) she would reorganize them to reflect the new party order.
The sangria had been delicious, but I realized I might have imbibed a too much when I started giggling as I looked at the names written across the laptop. Lee looked at me, obviously enjoying my state of relaxation, and said “What’s so funny?”
I giggled again and pointed at the post-its. “Hicks. Bishop. Kaine. All you need is Sigourney and a few space marines, and you’ll have the cast of Aliens.” I giggled again as Lee froze, then rolled his eyes.
“Yep,” he said in resignation, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Pretty much. Check, andcheck.”
He pointed first to himself, then to pictures around the room of his absent siblings.“Rip-Lee.” He emphasized. “My sister, Weaver,” he said, pointing at a photo of a red-haired woman in an Air Force uniform. “Hudson,” he said, point to a picture of one of the twins, then at another. “Hicks.” He paused a moment and peered closely at the pictures then switched their order on the shelf. Then he pointed at a final picture of the whole family together on a boat, the name “Nostromo” written in large letters on its side.
“Oh my god,” I said, staring at the pictures, my eyes going wide as I looked at him. “You’re ‘Aliens’ freaks.”
Diana and Kyra laughed from their cuddle spot on the couch where Kyra had settled after her victory dance.
“…I mean that in the most respectful way possible?” I said, as I realized that either woman could have put me in the hospital twice over. Plus, they’d given me this wonderful sangria. I took another gulp.
“Just us, sweetie. I think the boys would have gladly changed their names when they were kids,” Diana said.
“Sonny absolutely freaks out if you call him ‘Hudson’,” Kyra responded. “And Ripley got teased for his name so much when he was younger, he made us call him Lee,” she said, sipping her drink.
“Diana and I met at one of the first showings of ‘Aliens’ back in ’86. We were the only ones who thought Ripley would make it out alive,” she said, smiling at her partner. “She was an absolutely bad-assedmotherfucker.”
The incongruous picture of such colorful language coming from such a delicate looking woman made me laugh even harder, proof once again that I'd had too much to drink.
“I’ll never forget hanging out at Chapel Hill Mall afterward, so jazzed over the ending and working up the nerve to ask Di if she wanted to go to the bookstore with me to see if they had the novelization of the movie,” Kyra said. She leaned over and laid a gentle kiss against her partner’s lips. “We’ve been together ever since.”
“Uh oh,” Lee said. “You might want to cover your eyes,” he whispered in my ear.
“Here it comes…” Said Kaine and Bishop in unison,
