Loren runs a finger under her eyes, still laughing. “You should see your face right now.”
“What is happening?”
Dad steps around me, offering Loren his plate. “Do you want to tell him, sweetheart, or should I?”
Loren steals one of his wings, gives it a little dip into the sauce, and takes a bite. “I had the pleasure of meeting your dad when I asked him where the bathroom was.”
So what she’s saying is that they colluded to pull one over on me. Loren really should know better after what we did to August. But if she wants to make me her enemy, then so be it. I will make her pay in the most delicious ways.
Dad hip-checks me. “You have yourself a keeper.”
I think so too. I grab them some napkins held in place beneath a concrete frog. One down, one to go. “Where’s Mom?”
Dad swings a wing toward the water. “Guarding lives down by the lake.”
One of my great-uncles calls my dad’s name, lifting two fishing poles over his head. Dad launches his plate of bones into the trash bag tied to one of the balustrades. “It was lovely to meet you, Loren. Hopefully, my son won’t be too ashamed to bring you by the house sometime.”
She beams. “One can only hope.”
I fold my arms across my chest, waiting for her to finish cleaning her fingers. The longer she takes, the redder her cheeks get. When she finally looks up at me, her eyes sparkle with sunlight and happiness.
“You were gone for five minutes.”
She shrugs. “What can I say? People like me.”
People do like her—and for good reason. She is the sunniest, warmest, and most welcoming woman I’ve ever met. “Because you’re amazing.”
“You say this as if I don’t already know.”
August waves when he sees us and carefully extricates himself from the grandma table where he’s probably been hiding since he arrived. He shoves his lime-green sunglasses onto hisforehead. Between those and the salmon-colored polo shirt, he looks like a frat bro from the nineties. “Hey. You’re late.”
“Traffic.”
“Liar,” he snorts, opening his arms for a hug. Not from me, that’d be weird. But Loren steps right up and hugs him back. “You’re a brave woman, Loren Piper.”
She draws away, catching her hair and throwing it over her shoulders. “I don’t see what the two of you were so worried about. Everyone has been lovely.”
August’s brows rise as he shoots a glance my way. “Has she met your mother yet?”
“Not yet.”
“You’ll get it soon enough,” he says to her before nodding at me. “Did you see Kelly?”
“Sure did.”
“Knocked upagain. You may want to avoid the punch, Loren. I hear it’s catching.”
She laughs into her glass, not realizing that for once, August isn’t joking. Couplesdohave a habit of getting pregnant after the family reunion, but I think that has more to do with how much they drink, not what’s in the punch.
Then again, my grandma refuses to tell anyone her secret recipe, so maybe there is some truth to it.
Turning his head slightly, August talks out of the corner of his mouth like a creep. “So, weird question, but is that our cousin over there in the green bikini?” He tilts his chin at a woman with dark hair braided down her back.
She looks familiar, but it isn’t until I see the woman with gray threaded through her hair sitting on a lawn chair next to her that I realize why. “I’m pretty sure that’s Leah Norton’s daughter.”
“Damn.”
“Why?”
