“Who’s the baby daddy?” her aunt with bracelets asked.
Reg chimed in. “She says it was another one of those so-called American college students at the center for rainforest research. She’s always getting knocked up by conservation biologists. Why is that? Are they super fertile? Or super sexy?”
“Dad!” Ronnie glared at him and gestured across the table at Rainbow. The girl still had a book over her face. Smart girl.
“Like the last one, who may or may not exist, he buggered off back to the states,” Reg continued in a stage whisper. “I gather it was more of a casual hookup situation.”
“End of your party days, then?” her uncle asked. “No more wild oats?”
Nev coughed, and went in search of the toilet.
Ronnie watched her go. “You’re making her uncomfortable. She’s not used to being teased in public. Her family didn’t do that. She’s had a traumatic experience, probably drank a liter of my blood when she was trying to inflate my dead meat suit, and now she’s turning into a vampire, which must be difficult. It’s bringing up stuff from her work in Africa with the UN.”
Her relatives agreed.
“Obviously, we’ve got something going on, right? I’m really into her, ‘cause look at her, she’s bloody hot, but she’s kind of aloof and says I’m too young for her. She’s extremely skittish for whatever reasons, it doesn’t matter, and I’m trying not to scare her off, if you don’t mind. If I wanted you guys to talk about itin front of her, I would broach the subject first, but I didn’t, so don’t. She and I are just good mates.”
Several of her aunts and uncles made air quotes with their fingers and winked theatrically at each other across the table.
“Back to what your dad said, I reckon you’re too old to be sleeping with Americans,” her aunt with the purple hair said.
Ronnie’s eyes widened. “No one says that to Mattie!”
The relatives responded in a chorus. “Yes, we do!”
Blaise patted Ronnie’s arm. “We do.”
“I don’t believe it,” Ronnie said.
“Let her be,” Reg warned. “Nev’s harmless. I think it’s sweet.”
“Don’t make it weird.”
“Sleeping with your boss is…a choice,” her uncle said. “None of us are surprised. This is very you, Brum. Reg, I’m surprised you don’t have anything to say about this.”
He shrugged. “I’m more concerned with how she’s going to find a place to live so she doesn’t take up my guest bedroom for the rest of her life. If she moves in with Nev, at least she won’t be my responsibility.”
She couldn’t lean around the empty chair to whisper in his ear, so she touched his shoulder. “Don’t talk like that in front of Rainbow. She doesn’t know you’re joking.”
“Who says I’m joking? I want to put roadkill babies in there! Am I the only one thinking about the wallabies?”
“Yes!”
The waitress came by. “Sleeping with our boss, are we? Who is?”
The relatives pointed at Ronnie, who folded her hands over the menu. “I’ll have two orders of scones with clotted cream and jam, please, with a side of eggs. Do you have cheerios?”
“Fresh from the Toowoomba butcher this morning. How do you want your eggs?”
“Not exploding,” her uncle said.
“Over easy, please.”
“Cheers, love.”
Everyone else’s food arrived. Nev returned from the bathroom, then reached for the black coffee that had appeared at her spot and downed it. Ronnie put her arm around her friend’s chair. “It’s an ambush.”
“I should go,” Nev said, setting the empty white mug down on the white tablecloth.
