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It was only as I hopped up onto the metal counter, spun my legs around, and stayed there, that she ‘got serious.’ And I only knew she got serious because she said so.
“Listen, I’m about to get serious,” she informed me. “Don’t make me do it.”
I added cream even though there was some at my table and watched her the entire time.
Her eyes narrowed.
Then she opened her mouth and called my grandmother.
“Abuela!” Harleigh cried out. “There’s a large man sticking his hands into your display cases!”
My Abuela appeared as if she was conjured by God himself.
Her eyes narrowed on me, and her hands went to her hips.
“What do you think you’re doing, boy?” Her accent was particularly thick when she wanted it to be.
I held up the now-empty coffee creamer and said, “I didn’t want to interrupt you. I had a feeling you were putting stuff into the oven.”
She looked at the pot holders on her hands, and then back at me.
“You lie. Again.” She shook her pot holder hand at me, and I had a feeling that she was pointing, but I couldn’t quite tell due to the pot holder.
“Me? Never!” I placed the coffee creamer canister back onto the counter and turned to her. “Are you ever going to give me a hug?”
She frowned. “Are you ever going to come over here more than you’re doing right now?”
“Actually?” I asked. “Yes. I’m going to work for you part-time. I told someone I was going to, and I don’t want to be made a liar.”
“I don’t need any help,” she lied.
I rolled my eyes.
My grandmother likely didn’t. At least, she didn’t think she needed any.
She probably did but was so used to doing everything herself that she’d convinced herself that help wasn’t needed.
Up until a couple of years ago when Izzy started seeing Rome, she’d had help from our other family members.
However, when Izzy decided to leave the family business, my grandmother had been forced to choose sides.
She’d already been wavering due to how my family had treated me after I’d announced that I was marrying Vanessa, but how they’d treated Izzy when she’d informed them she was taking time off to help with a dying child? Well, my grandmother was done.
She washed her hands of them, which meant no more help from the children who really only wanted food in exchange for helping her for an hour during rush hour.
“I’ll be here at five every morning and leave around noon. I have another job I’ve been forced into working,” I explained.
I heard a cute little growl from behind me and turned to see Harleigh with her eyes narrowed, sending death-glares at me.
I hadn’t forgotten about her, I just found it fun to give her hell.
“You know this person, Abuela?” Harleigh asked. “Want me to call the cops?”
Abuela seriously looked like she was considering it for a moment before shaking her head. “No. He’s my grandson.”
Harleigh gasped. “Y’all look nothing alike!”
That was true.
I was the black sheep of the family.
My grandmother moved to the United States from Mexico when I was fourteen as had my father’s parents. I, on the other hand, had the dark hair like my family—but that was where the resemblance ended.
I didn’t know Spanish well because I had lived in the United States my whole life. My parents had spoken Spanish, so I knew more than I was willing to admit, but at the age of fourteen, I refused to answer to Spanish. When my grandparents moved in with our family, all they did was call me names and demand stuff of me – in Spanish- so I refused to answer. My skin tone was light, unlike my siblings—meaning I looked like the red-headed stepchild of the family. Speaking of red hair, even my beard had a hint of red to it when in the right light.
I was tall—much taller than the rest of my family—by at least a foot. I had muscles compared to my father and brother’s short stockiness—almost fat.
And my eyes weren’t the brown of the rest of the family, but hazel. They changed with my emotions, the weather, or whatever shirt I happened to be wearing at the time.
My grandmother, however, liked to point out that the man she slept with to conceive my mother had the same jade green eyes and red hair.
“I slept with a Highlander,” my grandmother said. “Slate here is all him. Down to the red tint to his hair when the sun hits it just right.”
My grandmother’s eyes shined with amusement as she said that.
“You were married to a Highlander?” Harleigh gasped.
“Slept with,” she corrected. “I was young and dumb. But that man was the best mistake I’ve ever made.”
Harleigh snickered. “One of my dad’s friends looks like a Highlander. He has the red beard and the green eyes you speak about. His name is actually Lachlan.”
