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Mark and Luke lose their foreheads to their eyebrows. Brody’s lips quirk in amusement without giving away that I’m fucking with them. He knows I’m full of shit since he saw me pack away a huge corndog at the car show today.
“Just kidding. Take me to the beef show.”
The Barn Door Boys breathe a sigh of relief as Brody chuckles. But they quickly set him right, Mark telling Brody, “Shay made a pot roast today.” Again, such simple words, but everything Mark says seems to have three more meanings, each deeper than the last.
“Shiiiit.” Brody’s horror doesn’t equate with the dinner menu, and that confuses me until he asks the guys, “What’s she been up to?” Mostly, he’s giving a hairy eyeball to Luke, and I remember Brody said that he’s married to Shayanne.
“Little bit of this, little bit of that. Ranting about you quite a bit. But don’t worry, I distracted her for you.” Luke’s grin is back in full force as he offers a wink to go along with the day’s report.
I elbow Brody, sensing his torture and piling on the way only friends can. “Cowboy, I think that means he was dicking your sister to shut her up.”
Blink. Blink. Blink.
Three cowboys look at me blankly for a long, slow heartbeat as they process whether I actually said what I said.
Brody, used to me already, unfreezes first. “Damn it, Erica. Don’t say shit like that about my sister.”
Mark snorts and Luke points at me. “I like her, Brody.”
As we head into the house, the Barn Door Boys stomping their boots to get the dirt off, Brody whispers in my ear. “I like you, too.” The sweetness is tempered when he nibbles my earlobe a little hard, a nip for my own biting words.
I take a steadying breath as we walk in the back door, ready to face down the monster inside if the guys’ description of Mama Louise is accurate.
From behind the wall of the Barn Door Boys, I’m invisible because I hear a woman’s voice say, “Well, where is she?”
Mark and Luke step apart like curtains opening for a great reveal, but it’s just me. I swear a record scratches in the air as I get a glimpse of Brody’s family and they get a first look at me. Shayanne is doing some fist-punching, boot-kicking air fight thing from her chair that looks to be a celebration at my arrival. There’s a blonde woman holding a big bowl of mashed potatoes, another blonde at the sink, and a brunette holding a baby with crazy pigtails. A child that small should not have enough hair for pigtails, but this one does. A young boy is making faces at the baby, who laughs in delight. There’s also another edition of a blonde Barn Door Boy, a threesome then, and two more tall, dark, and handsomes who must be Brody’s brothers. Each and every one of them looks from me to a petite blonde woman standing by the stove with a spoon in her hand.
Mama Louise.
That has to be her. I know who the commanding officer is in any room. It’s not by size. It’s not by age. It’s purely by presence. And she’s the fucking Commander in Chief here.
“Nice to meet you, Rix. Come on in and have a seat. First-timers don’t have to help.” The implication is that next time, because she’s already deemed there will be one, I’ll be expected to help with dinner. I’m not sure how I feel about that yet.
Brody guides me to a chair and sits down beside me. Everyone else falls into what seems to be their usual places. Brody goes around the table, giving me everyone’s names, and I make a joke that there’d better not be a pop quiz later, but really, I learned them all. Barn Door Boys plus one are Mark, Luke, and James. Their wives are Katelyn, Shayanne, and Sophie, who is holding Cindy Lou. The other kid is Cooper, and his mom, Allyson. Brody’s brothers are Bobby and Brutal. I don’t ask about the nickname, but Shayanne has no such filter.
As soon as grace is said and food starts passing, she asks, “Why Rix? I’d get Ric or Ricki from Erica, but Rix? What’s the story?” She’s plopping mashed potatoes on her plate, never missing a beat as she passes the bowl to Luke and takes the plate of pork chops from Sophie.
I swallow a bite of cinnamon apple chutney, testing it alone before adding it to my pork chop because I don’t even know what a chutney is. Cooking is definitely not my strong suit. It’s pretty good, though, so I spoon it over the meat. “It actually was Ric when I was a kid, but I went through a grabby mine-mine-mine phase when me and my sister were around four. Anything Emily got her grubby little hands on, I wanted it and would rip it from her, saying ‘Ric’s.’ Apparently, toddlers tend to talk about themselves in the third person?” I shrug at the memory and the story I’ve told several times before. “Before long, ‘Ric’s’ became ‘Rix’ and here I am.”
