Page 102 of A Matter of Time

“Oh fuck you, Mitchie. I could kill you, man. I didn’t mean to fuckin’ hit Jen. I meant to bitch-slap Michael, not her.” The man I didn’t know roared.

“I told you not to invite him,” Michael yelled across the room. “But you never listen, Mom. Jesus Christ! You know he’s a total deadbeat and you invite him anyway.”

I saw her eyes fill as she held Jen’s head back.

“Shut the fuck up,” Sam yelled at Michael before shaking him off and striding across the floor toward the guy trying to twist out of Levi’s grasp. “Mom wants to help, let her fuckin’ help. But we deal with this shit right now. This bullshit is gonna⁠—”

“Sam!” Nora shouted at him. “Don’t be such a mindless brute. We don’t just beat people.”

“Watch me,” he said, shoving Levi off and grabbing the guy around the throat.

“Sam!” Thomas barked at him.

“Sam!” his mother yelled at him. “That’s your cousin, leave him alone!”

“Hey,” I called over to Sam.

He stopped and looked over his shoulder at me.

“You’re gonna end some guy in your mom’s kitchen?”

His eyes locked on mine.

“Maybe we just put him in a cab, huh?” I smiled at him.

You could have heard a pin drop in the room. I saw the look on the guy’s face, the terror there, knowing how close he was to being put on the floor.

“Fine,” Sam growled, shoving the guy hard away from him before he went to check on his sister. “Call a cab, Mike.”

His brother pulled out his cell phone and was on it seconds later. I leaned back against the door as everyone scrambled around the kitchen. When Regina moved Jen over to the small table in the kitchen to sit down, I took my place back at the sink to start the dinner cleanup.

“Hello.”

I looked sideways and found Nora. “Hi.”

“I didn’t meet you yet.”

“I’m Jory.”

“Well, Jory, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Usually when Sam’s that mad, we don’t get him back. I remember a guy once cut us off in traffic, and he followed him all the way home—with me in the car no less—and beat the crap out of him.”

I shrugged.

“How long have you and Sam been friends?”

“Not long,” I told her as someone turned up the radio, and suddenly Jen was beside me.

“Hey, you.” I smiled at her. “You all right?”

“I am now that Sammy didn’t kill poor Charlie. It was an accident.”

“I’m thinking he shouldn’t have been trying to touch Mike either.”

She chuckled, and it sounded nasal from the blood in her nose. “True. Can I help you?”

“Only if you sing along with me.”

She heard the beginnings of the Dionne Warwick song. “Jory, we’re both too young to know this song.”