I didn’t realize Kaia was breaking up with her girlfriends intentionally to avoid long-term relationships. Maybe this is why she always appears to be so chill: she cuts off anything and anyone that could distract from her career. Kaia has the type of personality that comes with a fence; you don’t want to push her for details about her personal life. I’ve been trying to imitate it with no success, sincemylife is frequently turned inside out and dissected. But when Kaia settles her attention on you with placid aquamarine eyes, not a negative vibe in the wide blue sky of her mind, you mind your business.
Grandma levels a finger at Kaia, dark eyes fastened intensely on her. “You remember what I said.”
“What’d she tell you?” Dad glances between them, circumspect.
Kaia peers at him over her iPad. “When I was six, Grandma yanked me into a closet and told me to wait for my career to be established beforepopping them out.” She uses air quotes.
“Oh, for God’s sakes.” Dad throws his head back in exasperation. “Bettie!”
I jump. “What?”
“Not you!”
“Not her, what?” Mom is halfway listening. “What did Bettie do?”
“I’ll tell you what Bettie did,” Felix says mutinously. “Shesprang some guy on us out of the blue, telling us they’re engaged even though none of us had heard of him before.”
“Well,nowyou’ve heard of him,” I retort.
“You all knew Marilou for months before I proposed,” he prattles on, refusing to let this go. “Why don’t you have any pictures of Hall on your Instagram? It isn’tyouat all, to not put a thousand pictures of your boyfriends online.”
I’m beginning to sweat. “So what if I don’t? My relationship is nobody’s business.”
“What are you suggesting?” Kaia asks our brother. “Are you trying to say that Bettie and Hall aren’t a real couple?” I’m grateful for the expression she throws my way, like,can you believe this nonsense? But since it isn’t actually nonsense, my stomach tightens.
“No,” Felix replies defensively. “But I think the engagement was obviously rushed. It just seems like something she’d do to get a reaction out of us.”
I stand up. “I didn’t get engaged for attention.”
I absolutely did, but you’d never know it from the impassioned flames being ignited in me right now. Felix is feeling bad about himself because he didn’t give Marilou her dream wedding, so he’s poking holes in my love life, and I don’t want to hear it. I’ve rapidly grown protective of my sham relationship and our future sham marriage. “Leave me alone, Felix. You thought the sun and the moon were the same size until you were thirty years old.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” He stands up, too. “You launched a perfume that made people’s hair fall out! And you melted the face off Athena’s Celine Dion Barbies when we were kids.” An entirely irrelevant cheap shot.
Athena gasps, eyes narrowing viciously. “Those were limited edition.”
“Bettie, be honest,” Felix interrupts, loud enough to steamroll Athena as she mutters to everyone that I pretend my eyes are green on social media and nobody ever calls me out on it. Which is throwing stones, if you ask me. I saw her in a commercial last week pretending she dyes her hair at home with Nice ’N Easy when I know for a fact that her platinum tresses are the work of a dedicated stylist. “Did you convince him to get engaged right before you came here?”
Someone else responds“Excuse me?”before I get the chance. There’s a loudthwick, and quite suddenly, Felix can no longer argue.
As his head is covered in tinsel.
Directly behind me, Hall’s armed with a T-shirt cannon stuffed with tinsel, wielding it like a machine gun.
“Bettie did not have toconvinceme to propose to her,” he tells my brother darkly, an uncharacteristic hardness in his gaze. He doesn’t glance at me, keeping that dangerous glare leveled on Felix. “It is all very well if you want to pass remarks about me, about my clothing or hobbies, but I won’t sit by while you imply that I wasn’ton my kneesin front of this woman, absolutely gone for her, hoping with every fiber of my being that she would say yes to being mine forever, and to letting me be hers.”
The authoritarian tone shuts everybody up.
“It is an honor to be Bettie’s fiancé,” he informs the stunned room. “Just as it was an honor to be her boyfriend before that, and her friend beforethat. I count myself lucky every day that I get to be the man who makes her smile, that I’m the one she wants.”
Everything about my mother softens as she regards him, as if she always liked him but now her esteem is irreversibly fixed.
“Have we reached an understanding?” Hall asks Felix, more steely than I’ve ever heard him.
Felix blanches. Grandma’s chin has dropped, appraising Hall with a delighted gleam. This is the best excitement this kitchen has gotten since she successfully drove a wedge between Liam and Noel Gallagher of the band Oasis.
I think something strange is happening to my face—it’s somehow hot, cold, and also losing feeling. All I can do is gape at Hall, in disbelief that he would go to bat for me with this sort of fervor, all to deny an accusation that’s actually true.
Felix blinks a few times. “I’m sorry.” He’s clearly guilt-ridden when he turns to me. “I don’t know why I doubted you. I guess I was—”
