“It could if you come back here.” Beau throws it out too casually, like he’s not suggesting the terrifying possibility of a future together.
And I’m not drunk enough for that conversation. Maybe after three more dirt-cheap drinks I can start to think about approaching the topic.
“No wonder you’re staying at The Plaza when you visit New York,” I mumble, not letting the prices go. “You’ve been saving all this money drinking down here.”
“Wait till you see the housing prices,” Beau says.
“Shut. Your. Mouth. Please.” There are things I don’t need to see in life, especially when my own mortgage payment is due soon.
More songs that I don’t recognize come on, with Annabelle dancing along. But she’s a mother, so she’s an expert at multitasking. “Is your family going to miss you so close to Christmas?” she asks me.
“Probably a bit. I’m the most obsessed with Christmas, so I’m sure my cousins, aunt, and uncle might miss some of the events I drag them to. But most likely they’ll be glad to get a break this year.”
“What about your parents?”
“Don’t be so nosy.” Beau tries to intervene on my behalf.
“It’s fine. We’re not really that close since they live in India, so they won’t notice that I’m here. They usually visit in the summer.”
The first time they decided to not come around Christmas I was disappointed, but I didn’t ask them to change it. I already knew it wouldn’t have made a difference, like it didn’t make a difference when I was young and cried for them to stay longer during their visits.
“That’s messed up,” Annabelle says.
Now her husband intervenes on my behalf, tossing an arm around his wife’s shoulders and pulling her in for a kiss. “She has no filter. Sorry.”
“It’s fine. It is messed up.”
I’m usually okay with it. Chachi and Chacha treat me like another kid, and the cousins treat me like a sibling. I do have a loving family. I don’t know what I’m missing until I hang out with other people’s families, and they start asking about mine. It’s hitting me extra hard spending time with the happy and loving and functional Abbots. Because no matter how wonderful Chachi and Chacha are, that doesn’t change the fact that my own parents left me.
Annabelle changes the subject by dragging me on the dance floor and teaching me some of these intricate moves. There’s so much to remember, and these cheap drinks are not helping my mental ability any.
Which is why my guard is down (more like distracted), when Annabelle decides she wants a drunken heart-to-heart.
“He won’t move.”
“What?” I yell at her. Partly because the music is loud and partly because she didn’t introduce this topic. And partly because I’m trying to do a kick ball change.
“Look, you seem nice and you get along with Beau well. But I’ve known my brother my whole life, and he loves home. He won’t move. So unless you and your city stilettos want to move here, I don’t think this is going to end well.”
“Oh.” That stops my dancing.
“I’m not trying to be mean. I just don’t want you guys to get hurt.”
The pang in my heart region says she did succeed in affecting me, whatever her intention was. “Don’t worry, it’s not like that. We know it’s casual.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so.” Now whether or not I fully believe it myself is another story.
“Shhh. You’re gonna wake up your parents,” I whisper as we sneak into the house after Tucker dropped us off at the end of the night.
“We have really good walls here. You don’t have to sneak in like we’re in high school,” he whispers, bumping into a side table and proving he enjoyed the thrifty alcohol prices as much as I did.
“Shhhh!” I whisper-yell at him.
I did end up getting a lot of drinks. And in solidarity, so did Annabelle. Her warning forgotten with the alcohol, we found out we both loved reality television, bonding over the most memorable storylines we could remember. And Annabelle taught me even more line dances. Why they want to make dancing so complicated they have to count during it is beyond me; just move your bodies to whatever feels right.
All in all, it was a good night.
