“Kay, I think this is the first time I’ve seen you eat actual food at a party since your eleventh birthday,” Hunter says.
There’s a series of thuds, and Hunter yelps. “Ow! What the heck, guys?”
“Are you an idiot?” Wes hisses. “The girl has butter dripping from her chin.”
“Be cool, bozo,” Gray adds.
Kayla’s cheeks are red, but she’s laughing, holding her corn in front of her face.
“Iambeing cool,” Hunter says. “This is cool. Seeing her actually eat. Remember how Aldridge said she was so ‘elegant’ for barely grazing on the vegetable platter at their engagement party?”
“Elegant is overrated,” Kayla says. She locks eyes on her brother and takes a huge bite. Then she chews with her mouth open, and her whole family laughs. “But you’re still a bozo.”
“Such a bozo,” Lawson says under his breath.
Jolene puts her arm around her daughter, and we all keep eating.
But it’s the glow on Kayla’s face that fills me up.
She looks so happy, so comfortable in her own skin.
Is there a chance that’s really because of me?
After lunch, we play baby shower games. Taste-testing melted candy bars in diapers isn’t my idea of a “game,” exactly, but Kayla’s brothers don’t get a single one wrong. When we play a “pin the mullet on the baby” game, they don’t miss a beat, either.And their “baby bottle ring toss” skills have even Duke—the top quarterback in the NFL—gaping.
Her brothers are definitely twerps, but their hand-eye coordination could make them rich.
Technically, I think it would be a pay cut, but still.
At the end of the shower, Jane insists on a Carville family photo. Kayla’s parents pull me in before I can even object, before I can share a look with Kayla and make sure she’s okay with this. She smiles when her mom nudges us together, looking more vulnerable than uncomfortable, like she knows this means something and hopesI’mokay with it.
I thread my fingers through hers, hoping she senses this is a promise, not a pose.
Everything about us—this—feels right.
Real.
After the photo, Kayla hugs everyone goodbye, even though the Mudflaps have a game in a couple of hours and her family’s all joining us for it.
But that’s who she is, when she’s allowed to be. She’s a hugger. She cares about people bigger than anyone I’ve ever seen.
On the way out to the car, Kayla slips her hand in mine. Such a simple, familiar gesture, but with no one watching, it always feels huge.
It feels like her choosing me, not because she has to, but because she wants to. Which makes me think maybe my worries last night were overblown.
“Thanks for being amazing today,” she says when we’re both in her car.
“I was just eye candy,” I tease. “You did all the heavy lifting.”
She snorts. “All I did was eat and play games. Hunter was right: it was the first time I’ve enjoyed myself at a party since before I had braces.”
I pull her hand up to my mouth and kiss it. “Exactly.”
We’re halfway to Mullet Ridge when she speaks again. “I like seeing you with my family.”
“I like being with them.”
“Really?”
