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I've been doing a damn good job of avoiding her. Staying at the gym, spending time at the station, stopping by the homestead under the pretense of helping out my grandparents with the goats.
When I walk into Abu's kitchen, it smells like it always has-- the comforting smells of home cooked meals, fresh baked cookies, and three decades of love and happy memories...memories I'd been planning on making more of; making my own contribution to the next generation of rowdy kids that will be running through these rooms, stealing cookies and getting scolded for putting grimy hands on Abu's clean walls.
Abu finds me with my hand wrapped around two of the peanut butter cookies that were cooling on the rack.
"Why didn't you put that ring on Robin's finger, Mijo? You've been planning it for months; we were all waiting and then you chickened out."
"I didn't chicken out, Abu."
"You think you're going to find a better one? You're a damn fool. Give me back my cookies."
"I'll never find another woman like Robin. I know that. But I can't give her the life she deserves. This is for her own good."
Judging from the way she slams the back door behind her as she enters the kitchen, Terra must have expected to find me in here when she saw my truck outside.
"You are such a fucking idiot," she scolds as she takes the cookies from Abu that just got commandeered from my own hands. Obviously, she overheard what I just said.
Abu doesn't even flinch at my sister's profanity, instead she moves so she's shoulder to shoulder with Terra, creating a united front of disapproval scowling at me from across the kitchen island.
"So what now, brother? You're going to trash the best thing that ever happened to you and break Robin's heart because you're feeling sorry for yourself?"
Terra grabs two more cookies off the rack while Abu pours her a glass of milk to go with them. She does not offer me one.
"You're just a kid, Tare. You've never even had a serious boyfriend. You're looking for a damn fairytale," I snap back at my little sister. "You have no idea what marriage is."
Somewhere in my brain I know I'm being just being a jerk, while somewhere much closer to my consciousness, I know I'm about to get my ass handed to me by my kid sister and, judging from the harsh glare and tsking noise my grandmother makes, probably her too.
"I grew up watching Mom and Dad work out their problems, I see how Abu and Pops are with each other, I'm not the one that doesn't know what it means to make a fucking commitment to someone, Mes."
"You aren't planning on breaking up with that sweet girl, are you?" Abu's pissed. "She sat in the hospital waiting room for seven hours while you were in surgery when you first got there-- she was straight off the fire, still in her gear. She didn't sleep for 39 hours-- just to make sure you were alive, Mijo.
"Your mother had to physically pull her away from your bedside and make her go to the hotel for a shower and sleep. She has been there with you through this whole ordeal...and you repay that by leaving her now?
"That's not love, Mijo, that's chicken-shit cowardice...you think any of you would be here now if your grandfather had done something so stupid when he came back from the war with a bullet hole in his chest? When he kept me awake with night terrors for years after he returned? Because he thought he'd be doing me a favor?... this is commitment Mesa. This is marriage. This is life. This is the reason we fall in love and build our lives together, so we can stand beside our partner when they need strength and so we know we have their strength when it's us who are weak.
"What kind of man are you to decide for Robin? She's proven her loyalty and you repay her by running away like a frightened pup."
Abu follows up her lecture with a muttered string of Spanish words. None of them are something sweet little old ladies that bake cookies should say at all, let alone in front of their grand-children.
"At least you're showing your true colors now." Terra's voice has cooled to an icy sarcasm as she chews a bite of cookie. "Instead of leaving her high and dry with bills and babies to complicate her broken heart when you bail at the first hint of a challenge.
"I think you're the one who wants the fairy tale, brother. I expect a man to have a fucking clue what 'for better or worse' means. I need to know he's going to man up and handle things when shit gets real. Because no one knows what's going to happen. One of us could get hurt. We could lose a child or get really sick. We don't know how bad it could get, but I need to know that my partner is going to have my back and that we'll be facing it together...and I need him to let me have his back too.
"And 'I broke up with you for your own good' Is. Not. That."
Terra wiggles her fingers in the air to make quotation marks when she mocks me.
"When you find your person, you don't make their decisions for them. That's how I expect it to work."
Terra pulls a few more cookies from the rack and gives me a look that matches the force of her lecture.
"But I'm just a kid. What do I know about being married?"
Abu and I watch in silence as Terra marches out of the room.
"Your sister is right, Mijo." Abu says softly, watching me head for the cookies before they're gone. "You're fucking up."
7
