The problem was, I couldn’t get away. Every time I stepped away from someone, another family member would rush up and start interrogating me. Everyone kept asking me the same questions, like “How’s college?” and “Do you still sing?” and “Have you met anyone interesting yet?” And I was like, “Good. Nope. Definitely not. Who would want a guy like me anyway, right?”
Not even pretending I had to use the restroom worked. I had tried that ten minutes ago, but my great-aunt Darcy had caught me and pulled me into a conversation I still hadn’t escaped.
“…so I thought,you know what?I’m going to make that potato salad for everyone.” Her face turned red as she huffed the words right into my face.
As expected, she mostly talked about food. (To be fair, sheisa chef and works as a cooking teacher at the YMCA in Ashbourne, the next-largest city near Seastone.) The only non-food-related thing she told me was that my coming back was one of the things she had wished for when she blew out her candlelast year. Not even for my sake, but for my parents, who were apparently pretty bummed that I stayed away.
“…and then she said she’d bring a potato salad, too! Can you believe it?”
“Not a potato salad,” I said, just so I’d at least said something in the conversation.
“The exact recipe I had shown them the week before! So I had to come up with a new idea.”
“And?” I asked, pretending to care while glancing at the door to see when Alex would come back in. Darcy was the last person I needed to talk to before I had spoken to everyone for at least a few minutes. Meaning no one could keep me from talking to him anymore. Once he was back, I’d take my chance.
“I made a brisket, of course! You should’ve seen her face! No one even looked at her tiny bowl.” Darcy jabbed her elbow into my ribs. Whenever she got upset about something, she also got physical and used whoever she was talking to as a stress ball. Maybe she should take it up with the people she’s actually mad at and see how that works out for her.
“She deserved it.” I laughed to show her I’d been listening.
“You understand me,” Darcy said. Her elbow came for my ribs again, but I stepped back just in time.
“It was nice chatting with you, but talking about food has made me hungry.”
“Oh, you should eat something, boy! You’re just skin and bones.” She pinched my arm as if I were a piece of meat on a grill and she wanted to see if I was done.
And how done I was. Done talking to everyone, at last.
I turned to the buffet behind us. As with the candles, no one had to wait to be allowed to eat, and since I had eaten nothing more than an airplane burrito so far, my stomach was looking forward to Mom’s food.
Constantly glancing over my shoulder at the door to see if Alex was finally coming back, I piled all the side dishes onto my plate, including some of the potato salad Darcy had brought and some falafel.
Ignoring everyone to my left and right, I made my way to the table, where my candle was, and… stopped. Mysister was already sitting there,her hands folded next to an untouched piece of red velvet cake. Her eyes were locked on me.She turned her right hand into a finger gun, pointed it at me, and fired an imaginary bullet.
“Sit, baby brother.”
“Do I even have a choice?”
“Nope.”
I sat down on the side of the table where Alex had been sitting earlier so I wouldn’t have to sit directly next to her. She sometimes copies Great-Aunt Darcy’s elbow tackles, and I was done with physical contact for the day.
“So, you survived the brisket story.”
I lifted my plate in response, showing off the potato salad that now had an entirely new meaning. Mila tilted her head so her left ear almost touched her shoulder, her eyes piercing through me, her smile so sinister she was either about to blackmail me or force me to listen to Darcy’s brisket story again.
“Please say what you have to say, but stop looking at me like that,” I barked, plunging my fork into a falafel.
“Will you ever learn to loosen up?”
“If they served alcohol, I might.”
“I don’t even want to know what you’re like when you’re drunk.”
“Thanks to this event being alcohol-free, you won’t find out anytime soon.”
“Remind me to thank Mom and Dad for that later,” Mila said, picking up her fork as well and bringing it to the edge ofthe cake. “Well, I still have to make it up to you for barging in on your conversation with Alex earlier, so…” Her eyes fixated on someone behind me. Just as I turned around, she jumped up and yelled, “Yo, Alex! Come sit with us!” Her loud voice startled me so much I jumped up, making the bench scrape across the floor.
“You don’t have to yell,” I groaned.
