“Shit, sorry. I didn’t think. I noticed you often looked tense or upset like that but didn’t put two and two together.”
I felt guilty now over having made him feel bad over non-existent post-traumatic head injury headaches. Truthfully, unless I was newly injured or healing from a wound, I didn’t get aches or pains. One of the perks of being a lich. We healed fast. One of Uncle Stefan’s sons, Yosef, had even once told me a story about a Made man in the extended Family who healed up right as rain from being beheaded. His head was sat back in place and stitched on like Frankenstein and he had to be fed over a dozen souls, but he healed. Took him a whole month, supposedly. Yosef swore it was true, but `I certainly didn’t want to personally ever find out. The point is, I can’t get common headaches or migraines.
I reached across and patted his knee. “It’s okay. It’s nothing. I’m just a bit tired and I’m stressed over all the stuff my parents have scheduled.”
He nodded but didn’t look entirely convinced. “If you’re sure. Maybe you should try to take a nap.”
Raquel reappeared with our sodas and several bags of different types of potato chips, dried fruits, and nuts in a basket, all sat on a low cart. She pushed the cart so that it was even with my row of seats, then took the basket off of the cart and handed it to me. I placed it on the empty seat next to me.
“Do you want yours in the bottle or a cup?” she asked Shannon. “It’s already chilled.”
“Um, the bottle is fine,” he said, eyeing her curiously as she picked up a small glass bottle of pale yellow liquid and removed the metal cap with a bottle opener before passing it to him.
“Bottle’s fine for me as well,” I said, eyeing the nearly identical bottle of light orange liquid. She removed the lid and handed it to me.
“Thank you,” I said.
Shannon looked abashed, quickly swallowing the mouthful he’d just tried. “Thanks,” he murmured.
She smiled brightly at us, “You’re welcome,” she said, before pushing her cart away.
“This is really good,” Shannon said. “Never heard of this stuff before, though.”
I read the label on mine. Fentiman’s Botanically Brewed, huh? Made with mandarin and Seville oranges and nothing artificial, this definitely was not what I was used to. I glanced over at Shannon’s.
“Victorian lemonade. Ingredients are all-natural, like fancy homemade from scratch lemonade, only the water’s carbonated. It’s really nice,” he said, taking another swig.
I cautiously tasted my own. Damn. This was the soda I never knew I needed. I looked at the label again., reading the back. It was made and bottled in the U.K. Yup, schmancy, but this was one luxury I could get on board with.
* * *
The lunch meal had sounded like an elaborate version of an ordinary meal. It was precisely that. It didn’t look like the canned Chef Boyardee stuff I was used to eating at home, but it definitely appeared the same as the stuff as Micahel’s favorite Italian restaurant had served. Just the filling was seafood and there were fresh herbs scattered over it, and the salad was fancy leafy stuff that had a black pepper bite to it. Well, that and the flan didn’t come in a little plastic tub from the supermarket’s dairy cabinet. We ate, joked around, and ended up dozing after. Raquel gently tapped us on our shoulders to wake us up so we could put our belts back on to prepare for landing.
Disembarking was just as simple an affair as boarding. We climbed down the metal staircase they wheeled out to the cabin door, thanked Raquel and the pilot, went inside, and were met by ‘my’ mother and a man who looked as if he was the Family’s chauffeur. He grabbed our suitcases and the duffle bag full of gifts I’d ordered via my phone and had delivered to the dorm, plopped them on a luggage cart, and wordlessly began to wheel it through the airport.
Meanwhile, ‘Mom’ was air-kissing our cheeks, gushing how lovely it was to have us home for Christmas and that it was so terribly exciting to meet the oh so handsome boyfriend her son had found.
“Um, Mom,” I said, interrupting her. “Shouldn’t we be following him?” I pointed in the direction the driver had gone.
“Don’t be silly. Ramon’s gone to go move the car from short term parking to the loading zone to pick us up.”
Ramon, I told myself silently. The Family’s driver was named Ramon, mustn’t forget that.
“Yes,” I replied smoothly, “But shouldn’t we move out of everyone’s way and wait for him out front.”
She smiled indulgently at me. “He’s in such a hurry to get home. He was always like that, ever since he was a child.” Someone should give this lady an Academy Award. She wound her arm around my waist and said, “But, he’s right. The airport is absolutely heaving at the best of times, and during the holidays, it’s just a chore. He’ll no doubt be there vying for space among all the Ubers and Lyfts and taxis and everyone else by the time we make it through this crowd. We began to move away, her arm still around me. Shannon smiled brightly at her and walked slightly ahead of us, craning about to see if he could spot Ramon within the throng.
Mrs. Montgomery leaned in. “I can’t get over the resemblance. Not identical by any means, but close enough. It’s like having a son again.” Then she kissed my cheek for real, let me go, and caught up to Shannon.
Wow. Just, wow. I felt for poor River if he was so easily replaced within her affections. I expected awkwardness as his parents fought to hide their sadness while pretending to be happy their son was home. Not find that I had slipped into his place within their personal lives like a store exchange.
“There he is!” I heard her say, pointing. “See, he’s going out the doors now.”
The ride to the condo wasn’t any less weird. She insisted that Shannon call her Mom, ‘the same as River does’. She had Ramon play carols and firmly pressed us into singing along. I brought up the issue with the tableware and she excitedly agreed to give us a ‘refresher’ course. Then we were finally there, Ramon stopping the car so we could get out and enter through the lobby before continuing to the underground parking lot.
“Oh, my gosh, when I heard it was beachfront, I thought it meant you walked to the end of the road and there was the beach. Not, like, the building was actually on the beach.”
“Oh, my, yes. They have been getting stricter about people building on the beach these days, but this was built in 1967, before all the environmental nonsense.” She sniffed. “All those people taking bottles of sand home led to erosion issues.” Shannon and I looked at each other as we realized she was serious. That was a severe problem, but it wasn’t the leading cause of coastal erosion. “And all of these timeshare places and hotels went up everywhere in the eighties, so it’s nice we have this spot without any of that spoiling the neighborhood view.”
