“I didn’t know it was my job!”
“Emma literally texted you!”
“I get a lot of texts!”
“From who?” I ask with a laugh, unable to help myself. “The man-bun poet?”
Allie’s eyes narrow to slits. “His name isDevonand for your information, he’s very talented.”
“I’m sure he is.”
“You don’t even know him!”
“I know he has a man bun.”
“So?”
“So that tells me everything I need to know.”
“You’re such a snob, Emma.”
“I’m a realist.”
“Can we focus, people?” Michalis, still standing at the cheese platter, has somehow eaten half of it. I don’t know how. I’ve been watching him the entire time and I still don’t know how.
Cori claps her hands together, the sharp sound snapping everyone to attention. “Okay. Here’s the game plan.” She’s in full crisis-management mode now, the same energy she probably uses to run her high school classroom. “Michalis, you’re going to the caterer right now to pick up the food and the extra decorations. The address is in the group chat.”
He salutes, already reaching for his keys. “On it.”
“Allie and Phoebe, you’re going to Party City—or wherever—and getting better decorations. Real ones. Not whatever this is.” She gestures at the sagging banner, the sad balloons, the entire aesthetic catastrophe of the living room.
“We don’t have a car,” Phoebe points out.
“Take mine. It’s out front.” Cori tosses her the keys. Phoebe catches them one-handed, because of course she does.
“What about me?” I ask.
“You’re staying here to help me make this”—Cori waves her hand at the room, at all of it—“more presentable. We have two hours before people start showing up.”
“Two hours?”
“Two hours.”
I look around at the crooked banner, the limp balloons, the three mismatched vases of sad, wilting flowers. “We’re going to need a miracle.”
“We’re going to need industrial-strength tape and a lot of wine.”
“Same thing, basically.”
Before anyone can move, the front door opens again. Yiayia walks in like a general returning from battle, arms loaded with Tupperware containers stacked so high I can barely see her face. She sets them down on the coffee table with a dramatic thud that rattles the frames on the wall, surveys the living room with a slow, sweeping gaze, and lets out a sigh.
“Panagia mou.” She crosses herself quickly, the habit so ingrained it’s automatic. “What is this? What am I looking at?”
She gestures at the banner. At the balloons. At the entire room. Her hand moves in a circular motion, taking in all of it, the gesture somehow encompassing not just the current state of the living room but the state of the world, the decline of civilization, the failure of the younger generation to meet basic standards of competence.
“Thank the heavens above I bring food.” She’s already rolling up the sleeves of her cardigan—she’s always in a cardigan, even during heat waves that have the rest of us melting into puddles. “Because this? This is pathetic.”
“We’re trying to get it together before Leo and Annie get back,” Cori explains.
