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Me: Are you coming?
Grady, the oldest of us, jokes with Colin and Reid about Bianca’s dusty essay topics for her history major at the University of Oklahoma while Sheila pops up onto the screen. She mutes herself immediately, but not before the squalls of my three-month-old niece Ada and the shouts of my nephew Jacob blast everyone’s speakers. Grady pulls his earbud out with a grimace.
“Sorry, sorry. She’s colicky, he’s having a meltdown. It’s been a day.” Sheila unmutes to say, holding Ada as far away from the screen as she can. Her medium brown hair is piled up in a messy bun on top of her head, her V-neck shirt pulled half off her shoulder by the four-year-old in Black Panther pajamas climbing over her back.
My phone buzzes in my lap, and I glance down to see that it’s a response to my text to Eleanor.
Ells: Not today, I just can’t do it. Don’t say anything?
Me: Of course not. Anything I can do?
“Honey, where’s Mark?” Mom leans forward, peering at her screen as if she can see into the corners of Sheila's house through the camera. Her soft, round face scrunches in concern for my perpetually missing brother-in-law, the wispy blond hair none of us inherited floating around her like a halo.
Sheila rolls her eyes and opens her mouth to speak, but Jacob chooses that moment to fall into her lap, crushing the still unhappy Ada. Sheila’s screen goes black, and she disappears from the chat.
“I am never having kids.” Megan pipes up from her spot next to Dad on the couch.
“We’ll stick to these guys.” Colin and Reid hoist up their purebred Cavalier King Charles spaniels, Albert and Victoria, waving their paws at the camera. Albert licks Reid’s face while Victoria looks put out at her nap being disturbed.
I let the conversation of my family wash over me as I smile and listen. Grady regales everyone with a story about an elderly client of his who doesn’t drive or own a computer, so Grady’s been forced to take his real estate paperwork over to his house to be signed. Denver traffic’s nothing to sneeze at from the way Grady’s complaining about it.
Sheila hops back on, this time with Ada strapped to her front in a carrier and Jacob sitting on the floor beside her, munching on apple slices.
“So, Frankie,” Mom asks once Grady finishes with his story. “How was your weekend?”
I open and close my mouth a few times while I think of what to say.
I got princess-carried by my smoking-hot friend after his son smashed me in the face with a car door. And then he saw my bra when he walked in on me changing, and even though I was mortified because, hello itty-bitty titty club, the way he licked his lips in the split second before I turned around was hot as hell. Oh, and he’s doing me a huge favor by pretending to be my date to the launch party next month.
“Um, it was fine. I was at my friend Sophie’s kid’s birthday party on Friday.”
My mom claps her hands in excitement. “Oh, I love babies! Did they do a cake smash? Do you have pictures?” She doesn’t outright ask when I’m going to get a husband and give her grandbabies, but I don’t miss the way her eyes dart to another section of the screen, presumably to look at the now-sleeping Ada.
“It was a Sweet Sixteen party, Mom. No cake smashing.” Although there was that one group of boys who started chasing some of Emma’s friends around the yard with frosting on their fingers, but Theo’s dog Max interfered and ended up getting all the frosting for himself. I tell them the story and even get Megan to look up from her phone when I describe the way the pit bull stood on one boy’s chest after he’d tripped him and licked him all over while everyone else stood around laughing.
“Is that why you look so tired?” Bianca pipes up, her camera flipping on to reveal her dorm room. She also has dark circles under her eyes, but Bianca being Bianca, I guarantee they’re not from late night partying.
I smile and let the family discuss the state of my face and the terrible sleeping habits I must have now, with my fancy tech job, living in the hipster capital of the world.
I’m definitely not going to admit to them the reason I have a black eye and dark circles to match is because I tossed and turned two nights in a row thinking about the way Julian scooped me up in his arms.
I’ve been scooped up in a lot of people’s arms. Being five-foot nothing and barely a hundred pounds makes me irresistible to guys who want to show off for their friends. It’s been like that since high school—it was a running gag with Colin and his football buddies to pick me up and carry me down the hall whenever they saw me. Mostly to show off for their girlfriends, because I never made them jealous. Those were the years I hated having a brother only a grade ahead of me.
But there was something different about the way Julian held me. He wasn’t showing off. He wasn’t trying to look good for anyone, and I just happened to be convenient, feminine, and not too imposing of a challenge. He was actually taking care of me. Not just the sort-of-pretty girl who was nice to everyone, or his friend’s sister, or the only girl in the advanced computer science classes, or the only female on the software development team.
Me.
Ells: Not really, I just can’t put on a happy face for them tonight. Mom thinks I’m asleep.
Eleanor’s text snaps me from my daydreaming about Julian’s muscles, not that I should be. Past experience has taught me that guys date me for my brain, not my body. I shouldn’t be mad about it, but it’s frustrating as hell. Not that I would know how to be sexy if the occasion presented itself.
Besides, I’ve had enough drama from men at work. I do not need one more thing bringing me unwanted attention there. I force myself to focus on my family instead of my non-existent love life.
“Hey, Fart-Face, did Emma like her gift?” Megan interrupts the conversation.
“Megan Davenport, do not call your older sister Fart-Face,” Mom admonishes Megan, who grins and shrugs.
I slip my phone into the pocket of my sweatpants. “She loved the sweater, More-Vain,” I dig back at her, rolling my eyes at her fourteen-year-old idea of an insult.
