“Are we swimming?” I asked her.
“I didn’t bring my suit,” she said. “I kinda thought we could slip away while they’re in the pool.”
“Good plan.”
Danica shook her head at me a little and smiled. “You’re amazing.”
I liked that.
But then it hit me… Maybe I was being an asshole about this. I didn’t mean to imply that I didn’t like her family or that I didn’t want to be here.
I just didn’t want to be hereall day. I’d already sat through almost three hours of lady talk.
A dude had limits.
“The tall aunt is nice,” I offered.
“You mean Mireille? Yeah, she’s kinda the mother hen.”
“She keeps refilling my drink and asking if I’m hungry. Like how could I possibly be hungry? I had an Italian grandmother who never fed me this much.”
Danica laughed. “Mireille likes to feed people. Plus, she’s probably sensitive to you being new here, and Dani and Margot and my mom being, you know…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Batshit.”
“I wouldn’t say they’re crazy,” I whispered back. “Just passionate. About very weird shit.”
At the moment, Danica’s mom was going on about crystals (again) and the reincarnated souls of dolphins, for real. I wasn’t sure anyone was really listening.
Danica sighed. “Thank you for enduring this. Really, it’s sweet of you.”
“No problem. They’ve been amazing hosts.”
“Yeah. But I realize it’s a lot to absorb, your first time meeting them all…”
“It is. And speaking of a lot to absorb, what’s with all the food? How do you all not weigh three thousand pounds?”
“Well, we don’t eat like this every day. It’s Saturday,” she added, like that explained it all.
“Right. And Saturday is…”
“The day we all get together. We have a family brunch like this almost every Saturday.”
My face fell.
I didn’t mean for it to, but it totally did.
“Oh. That’s… cool.” I tried to recover. “That your family’s tight like that.” It was cool. But… “You know I’m not coming back to this every Saturday, right?”
To my surprise, Danica grinned at me. “I’m just amazed you’d think you’d be invited every Saturday.”
I snorted. “Nice.”
“Anyway, you’re off the hook. I don’t even come every Saturday.”
I grinned back at her. “You know I’m invited back. They wanna get me shirtless in the pool so they can decode my tattoos.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s the reason they want your shirt off,” she said innocently and popped a strawberry in her mouth. She smiled at me, then wandered away to refill her champagne glass.
I watched her go, hips swaying in her long dress. I sipped my whiskey, wondering when my dick was gonna be ready to come out and play. And also, how the hell we were getting home from this thing.
