I cluck my tongue and huff. “You guys are such middle schoolers, I swear.”
The whistles and hollers escalate, and I had no idea the biddies were so up-to-date on their crude gestures. Someone’s bound to pull a hip if they keep this up.
Rita hands me a glass with fat salt crystals on the rim, and with the ladies closing in and the temperature of the kitchen skyrocketing, I gulp down the contents, forgetting about brain freeze until it hits.
“What happened is,” I shout over the razzing, squeezing an eye closed and pressing a couple fingertips to my temple, “Dr. Vasquez offered to show me to the main office so I couldstart my new job, but halfway there we ran into you. At a protest.” Since we’re flinging accusations, I throw one of my own into the mix. “In your underwear.”
“We live here,” is Grandma Helen’s reply, and honestly, fair.
Still, what I say is, “Yeah, that’s what concerns me. That and what you get up to in your spare time.” I wince, wishing for the ability to revise my words as thoroughly as I do an email or text. People teased me about being the slowest replier on the planet, which isn’t even close to true.
I was just the grammatically correctest.
Headlines featuring the community drift up once again, their click-bait titles as irksome as they are clever.
Elderly Escapades: Study Reveals Senior Love Lives as Active as Their Twenty-Year-Old Grandkids!
Seniors in Lakeview Retirement Village Are Taking the Little Blue Pill in Bulk—and It’s Leaving Experimenting Residents UP for anything.
“Sorry, that came out judgy,” I try again, holding up my hands to show I don’t want to fight. When I sort through the tangle of emotions, I realize it’s mostly worry, so I pause and reframe. “I’m just concerned.”
“We are too, hon.” Wanda snags my hand and squeezes. “That’s why we’re so glad you’re here to stay for a while.”
Rita nods her agreement, causing her large beaded earrings to snag in her dark copper curls. “You work too hard, never taking any time for fun.”
“You’re so busy with your career that you’ve forgotten life’s for living and loving,” Grandma Helen says, and I can’t help my scowl. “You don’t want to wake up twenty to thirty years from now and regret the fun you never had.”
Would this be a good opportunity to bring up the tumbleweeds rolling acrossherdating life?
As fate would have it, I’m saved by the patio door. It slides open with a whir and puff of warm, sticky air, and in strides Nonna Sophia Cappelli. With a toss of her pink and gold Versace scarf and a minor adjustment to the giant, blinged-out sunglasses acting as a headband for winged caramel-and-espresso strands, each staccato clack of her kitten heels brings her closer to me.
As polished as ever, her olive complexion boasts a deep bronze from hours laid out reading by the pool. The buxom beauty once informed me she wears her tiniest swimsuit whenever she wants free landscaping or handyman help. Queen can slay and, much like my grandmother’s cat, is well aware of it.
“Ciao bella.” Sophia snags both of my hands in hers and pulls me into a hug and cloud of jasmine and mandarin perfume. With a grazing kiss on each cheek, she asks, “Did you hear about Edmund?”
Automatically, I glance toward Grandma Helen and Wanda for help. Last I heard, Sophia was dating Antonio from Cougar Lane, a real street in the neighborhood the Cronies joked should’ve been theirs.
I don’t realize I’ve got my head tilted like a confused puppy until I catch my reflection in the oval lenses of Sophia’s pin-thin frames—she always wears two pair, light and dark so she’s ready for every occasion, and I find that oddly comforting.
“I’m so sorry?” I venture as I peer into pale green eyes lined thick with charcoal.
“No need to be, darling. The man’s worth a fortune, and he proposed with a rock I couldn’t see without my glasses and a prenup smaller than his penis.”
Giggles erupt, and Grandma Helen asks, “Are you talking the document or the settlement amount?”
Sophia tsks. “Oh, I’ll kiss and tell every time, but I never settle.”
Attempting to stifle my chuckle causes a snort that makes everyone else giggle harder, and I stop caring if I should laugh and just do. Then we’re dabbing our eyes with napkins and advising one another to check for salsa shrapnelbeforeblotting.
“Anyway”—Sophia tosses her hair, but the grin that spreads across her face is missing its usual ease and glow—“if he’s shocked I refused, that’s on him.”
For all her talk about money and diamonds and penile size, the problem with every man Sophia dates and even goes on to marry is they’re not Fred. An Italian war bride, she lost her first husband in the Korean War and was left to raise three small children in a foreign country that threatened to deport her without them. While she claimed she’d never forgiven Fred for dying and leaving her behind, she loved him so intensely she never fully let anyone in again. With four subsequent marriages and divorces under her belt, she now dates for sport.
Men do the wildest things to win her heart, too. For instance, Antonio went by Tony his whole life until Nonna Sophia convinced him otherwise.
“Wait, we can’t go switching topics,” Gertie says. “Not before we convince Mia to—”
My pulse and blood pressure spike in unison as everyone starts talking at once, and I’m no longer in control of any situation.
