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Their cats, unsurprisingly with this going on, were nowhere in sight.
Their couch sat against the wall with a coffee table in front of it laden with bowls of hummus and pita chips. And not only that, there was also salsa, corn chips, a platter of cheese slices intermixed artfully with crackers, olives, nuts and grapes, another platter of carefully placed finger veggies, a bowl of tzatziki, a display of what looked like two different kinds of tortilla-wrapped pinwheels, and finishing this spread were puff pastry shells filled with some cheese mixture inside.
I suddenly didn’t know if we were at Dream’s intervention or Cap’s and my impromptu engagement party.
I braced for fifty people to jump out of their hiding places and shout, “Surprise!”
“What do you drink?” Louise asked Cap. “Scott has ten thousand different types of beer. I’ve got a bottle of white opened. We also have some sparkling water and strawberry iced tea.”
“Iced tea would be great, Louise. Thanks,” Cap said.
She shot off like a dart.
“Mom’s nervous Cap isn’t gonna like them,” Luna leaned in and whispered to me.
Cap heard, I knew, because he turned and smiled at me.
I smiled back, realizing belatedly the common denominator to all these people was me.
So I should never have worried.
“So!” Scott boomed, clapped his hands, then clamped them together, pumping his palms while he did. “How ‘bout them Diamondbacks!”
“Dad’s nervous too,” Luna added.
I heard Cap’s swallowed laugh.
I liked he was amused.
But this felt.
It felt…
Really fucking beautiful.
I’d never told a guy about Macy, and, as mentioned, I’d never brought one “home” to Scott and Louise.
That they got what was happening, and it meant something to them, meant everything to me.
We settled in, and Louise, knowing me so well, brought me a glass of white, Cap’s iced tea, and the men talked baseball while Louise fidgeted, and we waited for Dream to show.
Normal people would give the interventionee a later time so they could get their ducks in a row before they arrived, but I figured they told Dream three o’clock because she was going to show a half an hour late (at least) no matter what time they said.
The thing was, we weren’t getting our ducks in a row.
“Um…she’s your daughter,” I butted into the baseball discussion. “And your sister,” I said to Luna. “So maybe it’s not my place to say. But shouldn’t we get our ducks in a row? Or did Cap and I miss that part?”
“This is how it’s gonna go,” Scott declared. “I’m gonna tell her the Bank of Nelson is closed, the Tempe branchand”—he jerked his head at Luna—“the Phoenix branch. She needs to get a job. She needs to find decent daycare. And she needs to cease dumping my grandchildren on us, her sister and you while she flits around getting needles poked in her and shit. She also needs to contact those clowns who helped her get into this situation and tell them they’re in for five hundred bucks a month, and if they’ve got a problem with that, she’ll see them in court. And if she doesn’t like any of that, tough shit.”
“I think maybe we should go a little more cautiously,” Louise said, then elevated her ass out of the armchair she was in to lean forward and lift the plate of pinwheels Cap’s way and ask, “Cap, doll. Care for a pinwheel?”
Out of courtesy, I could tell (he’d had a big plateful at Hash Kitchen), he took one.
He and I were on the couch together, me sandwiched between him and Luna. I nabbed him a napkin because they were out of his reach.
And I did this trying not to giggle at Louise calling Cap “doll.”
“Going cautious got us in this predicament,” Scott pointed out.
