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“I’ll hear nothing of it.” Mia had made up her mind, and was already opening the back door to scramble into the back seat.
“Goddamn it,” I mumbled, hurrying to open her door.
Why did she have to be so fucking stubborn?
She’d already crawled into the seat and started buckling up, so I closed the door and moved to open my mother’s, which pissed me the hell off. I slammed the door, just to piss her off, then moved to the drivers side because I was in charge of chaffering us to Louisville, which felt like it was going to be a long fucking drive.
It was a blur, the walk up to Mia’s parent’s house. I barely registered the blue paneling and the quaint look of the place before we were just going right in without knocking.
There was a bustle of people inside, moving here and there, and it took a solid fifteen seconds of us standing there at the door before someone noticed our little group.
“Mia!” a teenage boy shouted, which got everyone’s attention.
Mia embraced the boy, calling him Patrick as she did.
“So? This is the guy?” he asked, looking up at me with expectant eyes.
Then those eyes got…bigger.
“Are you fuc…freaking kidding me?” he shrieked.
I almost wanted to back up as the kid stumbled toward me, acting like I was some kind of hero or something.
“You’re Willie P. N—”
I smacked my hand across the kid’s mouth so he didn’t finish that sentence.
Mia’s eyes shot open wide just as a young woman joined us, putting her arms around Patrick’s waist as she looked at us with legitimate sparkles in her eyes.
“Are you Maria?” Mia asked, completely bypassing Patrick’s almost announcement of my pen name in front of his family, and my mother.
An older woman came over while Mia and the other young woman did their introductions, and she’s the one who broke up the traffic jam at the front door.
“Now, y’all come in and get comfy,” she said, having the cutest little southern accent. It was so thick, I could hardly understand her. That’s how you know she’s a real southern grandma.
“Gran Gran,” Mia said to the woman. “This is Owen. Did Mom and Dad tell ya anything about him?”
Gran Gran looked up at me and frowned, but nodded.
“Sure did. And I have a mighty lot of questions to ask you, but today is about thanking our Lord for our many blessings, so we’ll put it off until another day, hm?”
Mia nodded and smiled, then hugged her again.
“Man, I’ve missed you.”
“Well, you certainly don’t come home near as much anymore. No time to see your Gran Gran.”
Well shit, that was probably my fault.
The older woman looked up at me again and scrunched her nose.
“So, I hear you’re going to be joining the family, hm?”
My lips opened, but nothing came out. Luckily, Mia came to the rescue.
“Now, Gran Gran, don’t say things like that,” she said, cheeks burning with a blush as she led her grandmother back toward the kitchen where a man and a woman stood, somewhere around my age, though, I seemed to have somehow managed my years better, or maybe it was the LA water, filled with Botox and liposuction.
“Mama, Daddy, this is Owen,” Mia said nervously.
