“Oh gosh, no,” I muttered.
Mark laughed into his drink. Across the clearing, Seth stood from the table and wandered a little farther out toward the edge of the trees where the noise softened.
Without thinking, I tracked him with my eyes. Protective instinct stirred low in my chest before I could stop it.
“I’ll be back,” I muttered.
Mark looked entirely too knowing. “Mmhm.”
I ignored him and headed after Seth. I found him near the edge of the clearing, watching the crowd from a slight distance.
The sun was dipping lower now, throwing everything into gold and orange. Fireflies blinked lazily near the trees. Seth glanced over when he heard me approach.
“Escaping?” I asked.
“Briefly,” he admitted.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” He smiled faintly. “The pack’s amazing, so is your family.”
I leaned against the nearby fence beside him. “They can be a lot.”
“They’re good, though.” Seth looked back toward the cookout. “Everyone just fits together.”
My gaze followed his. Mark had an arm slung around Zack’s shoulders near the drinks table while the two of them argued about whether hard seltzer counted as real alcohol.
Chris was unsuccessfully trying to stop Pampi from stealing hot dogs off a paper plate abandoned by one of the kids.
A small group of younger pack pups hovered impatiently near the grills, clearly waiting for the next batch of burgers like starving little vultures.
One of them was already trying to convince my dad to hand over food early.
“It’s still cooking,” my dad said for what was probably the tenth time.
“But I’m starving over here,” the kid argued.
Levi laughed beside him while flipping ribs on the second grill. Nearby, my mom stood with three pack aunties around one of the picnic tables.
All of them were deep in conversation that probably started with recipes and somehow evolved into pack gossip and unsolicited life advice.
Every few seconds, one of them would laugh loud enough to carry across the clearing.
The whole scene felt deeply familiar to me. Loud and crowded, a little chaotic around the edges. It was home.
Beside me, Seth watched it all quietly, his expression softer now. And suddenly, unexpectedly, I found myself wondering what his family was like.
Did they do things like this? Big gatherings and noisy dinners and too many people talking over each other? Did Seth have siblings?
Was his mom the kind who fussed over him too? Did someone in his family embarrass him regularly for sport the way mine did?
The realization caught me off guard a little.
Sure, Seth and I had shared things about ourselves over the last few days but they were small details like our favorite drinks, work stories, dumb complaints about customers.
Surface-level things, but not much beyond that. I didn’t actually know Seth that well, not yet. The thought should’ve made this whole arrangement feel more temporary.
Instead, it did the opposite. Because I realized, with a quiet sort of certainty, that I wanted to know.
