I knew it.
While she’s busy grabbing dessert, I look around for my son. He’s talking to Shane’s, Nico’s, and Alex’s kids. Nico has, thankfully, finished dazzling the guests with his moderately impressive professional singing voice.
Which means…
Shit.
Here they come.
The Lazy Wingmen approach, grinning. Silently singing “We Three Married Men of Hollywood are Assholes.” Well, I don’t need their smug married-people help tonight.
Cleo is about to take a bite of my aunt’s rugelach when she notices the three exceptionally handsome dickheads advancing toward her.
And in a move that makes me fall in love with her just a little bit, she chooses to stuff the entire crescent-shaped cookie into her mouth before they arrive.
“Hey, assholes,” I say, heading them off at the pass. “This is my date, Cleo. Go away.”
“We aren’t going away,” Shane Miller, superstar actor with hair that stands up on its own, says. “Hi, I’m Shane. So you’re Elijah’s date?” He mumbles into his tumbler as he takes a sip of whiskey. “You know he has all twenty of his original fingers and toes, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” she says without missing a beat. “His digits are legit.”
“Have you seen how his shoes fit his feet?” Nico Todd says, yawning. “Exactly the right size.”
“Oh, is this a comedy bit?!” Cleo is way too delighted, and I have no idea how she got that it’s a bit already.
They aren’t that funny.
They aren’t funny at all.
“Have you ever seen one of this guy’s movies?” mutters Alex Vega as he coughs. Guy’s an exceptionally talented director who is not as successful as he could be if he’d lower his idiotic standards and direct one of my movies. “They have a beginning and an end.”
“Okay, this was fun,” I say. “My girl’s gotta eat.”
“I like how both of his eyes are on the front of his face,” she says as I take her hand and lead her away from those jackals.
They laugh, and I hear Nico humming the Wedding March.
I hope they finally agree to work for me one day, so I can fire them.
Placing the plate full of food down on an empty table, I point to a chair and direct Cleo to sit in it.
It is alarming how pleased I am that she does so, without hesitation.
She looks up at me, eyebrows arched, smirking. She’s about to point out that she doesn’t have any utensils when I present the fork, knife, and spoon I had put in my pocket. Take that, Curly. She does take it. She takes the fork and starts shoveling mashed potato and gravy into her mouth. “I met your parents,” she tells me with her mouth full.
“Oh, yeah?”
“They’re still good friends with your ex-wife’s parents?”
So she remembers that? That’s interesting. “Yes, they’re still good friends. That’s why they’re here tonight.” I do not want to talk about my parents, and I really don’t want to talk about my ex-wife. “You want something from the bar?” I ask my fake date while placing a napkin on the table in front of her.Bam. I got that for you too. How you like me now?
She nods and frowns.
Before she can answer, I say, “Amaretto sour with Sprite, no egg white?”
She frowns and then nods again.
Same drink. She still likes the same drink my bubbe likes. The cocktail my bubbe used to drink at Studio 54 with Mick Jagger, if she is to be believed. As cool as my paternal grandma is, I must erase her from my mind tonight. She does not belong in there with fantasy images of Cleo Jones naked and the half-remembered sound of her moaning into my mouth in a dark hallway.
