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Anita inched closer to me as the pair of them just stared at us. Honestly, I could kind of see why Laki had made up that witch rumour about them. Indi was wearing a long, flowing black skirt and a cream shirt with puffy arms and some kind of frilly thing around the neckline. Both of them wore their blue-tinged hair long and loose, the streaks of white growing more pronounced in recent years. They were staring at us with identical expressions. I was pretty sure they even blinked at the same time.
“Uh… Auntie, this is Anita,” I eventually said, cupping Anita’s shoulder to draw her closer to me.
“Well I would hope it’s Anita,” Indi said imperiously, settling her hands on her hips. “Anita is the only ‘girlfriend of Nuni’s’ that your mother tells me about, seeing as you are apparently far too busy to ever call your loving aunt yourself and update her on your life.”
“C’mon, Auntie,” I whined, ears fluttering with embarrassment as I glanced at Anita to see her mouth twitching. “Mom tells you everything we tell her anyway.”
“It would just be nice to hear from my oldest nephew directly every now and then.” Indi sniffed, then stepped forward and clasped Anita’s shoulders to dip down and kiss her cheek. “Lovely to meet you, Anita. Aren’t you beautiful? Has Una offered you a drink yet?”
“Oh, don’t start, Dee,” Mom said in exasperation, gesturing us through to the living room. “You brought champagne, darling? You didn’t have to.”
“Anita wanted to bring something,” I said quickly, seeing as it had been Anita’s idea, “for Beryl and Greid.”
On cue, Mom teared up and placed a hand on her chest. “I still can’t believe it. My little baby.”
“We’re all your little babies, Ma.”
“I know,” she said defensively. “But Greid was my literal little baby. My tiny kushka. And he is the youngest.”
“Only by, like, a minute.” I spotted Kiti on the couch as we walked into the living room, so I added, “A minute after this jackass entered the world.”
She pulled a sardonic, faux-amused face. “Nice to see you too, douchebro.”
“Just—” Mom pinched the bridge of her nose as she let out a sharp breath. “Just for an hour at least, so Anita doesn’t think I raised my children to be complete monsters, can we please be civil?”
“How are we not being civil?” I asked, sharing a glance with Kiti who looked as genuinely bewildered as I was.
“I haven’t even called him Pooni yet,” she said, her expression morphing into a smirk.
“That was vetoed ages ago, assface,” I snarled, but Kiti just gave me a saccharine smile.
“I’ll call you Pooni for as long as you called Greid ‘Grode’. So that’s about… thirty years. Ish.”
My jaw worked as I tried to think of a decent comeback. I couldn’t. She was right. I deserved a shitty nickname, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. “You’re the worst.”
Kiti snickered, stepping forward as she turned her attention to Anita. “You have spent time with this d-bag, right? And you still want to be with him?”
Anita chuckled, shaking the hand Kiti held out. “The heart wants what it wants, I suppose.”
I grinned, and kept grinning as Uncle Bax introduced himself to Anita, then Tuvin appeared from the kitchen to meet her. Laki wandered in from outside, the scent of shade clinging to their clothes, and clapped me on the shoulder.
“Sick T-shirt, bro.”
Anita had met Laki plenty of times now, so I took the opportunity while they were chatting to run into the kitchen, put the champagne in the fridge, grab several more bottles from the car as well as the nightberries, then pour Anita a glass of water.
By the time I was returning to the living room, Sorin had appeared, so he helped me get the rest of the champagne from the car. We waved at Daga and Elern as they arrived, and while they were getting the four babies out of the car, Suni turned up in a cab and grabbed a niece or nephew—honestly, I couldn’t tell them apart—to carry into the house, shouting a hello at us as she passed. Daga and Elern followed her in with the other three kids, and it was quiet once again.
“We’ll be getting more of this soon for your celebration,” I told Sorin with a grin as we grabbed champagne bottles. “Not long now.”
The grand opening of Sorin’s bakery was fast approaching, pencilled in for the end of September.
“Don’t.” He pressed a hand to his stomach. “I am getting extremely drunk today to try and forget about it for a little while.”
“Dude, you can’t internalise stress.” I squeezed his shoulder. “It’s so bad for you. Find a productive way to work through it. Maybe kickboxing.”
“Getting drunk is a productive way to work through it.” He held up a bottle. “Getting drunk on champagne is the classy productive way to work through it.”
“Or maybe badminton?” I offered, following him back up the drive, our arms loaded.
