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“Kent, that you?” my mom calls back from the kitchen. “Oh, shit, piss, fuck,” she then adds as something hisses rather angrily at her from the stove.
I trade my irritatingly tight sailor pants for shorts, then fish around for a top. “Yep, it’s me, fresh from the bowels of bakery hell. Did I mention how much I hate tourists?”
“With your every waking breath!” my mom shouts out tiredly. “Is that funnel cake? That container?”
“Nope. Brought home some pastries and muffins just for you and Skip.”
“You’re gonna get in trouble with your boss if you keep sneaking away food for me and—” She changes her tone. “Actually, I don’t care, it’d be worth it. Does Skip really have to know? He isn’t here. It’s all for me.”
From the muffled sound of that last sentence, she’s already gotten to it. “Malik can suck it. He defended some rude customer over me, and—” Am I being petty? Yeah, I’m being petty. I find a tank. I give it a sniff, making sure it’s alright to wear before slipping it over my head. “Never mind. They usually just get rid of everything at the end of the day anyway. Why let it go to waste?”
“Hmm. Some rude customer?”
I glance at myself in the mirror, then frown at a weird thing my hair’s doing in the front. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You’re clearly obsessed. C’mon. Tell me more about him. Was he cute?”
I roll my eyes. My mom knows me too well. “I didn’t even say it was a guy.”
“Obviously it is. Fuck me, damn it,” she curses again as something else on the stovetop hisses and spits, and I hear her rushing back to the kitchen to stop it, kicking into something loud on the way.
I emerge from my room to find my younger brother sitting on the floor in front of the couch, muffin crumbs all over his lap, half a muffin in his fist. I sigh. “Skip, save some for Mom.”
“She doesn’t like the blueberry ones,” he says under his messy mop of hair.
“I didn’t realize you were here.”
“Just got in a few minutes before you did. Been in my room this whole time.”
“You’re home??” calls out Mom. “When’d that happen?”
I give his hair a ruffing up as I pass by, which earns me an annoyed scowl from him, then slip into the kitchen, its narrow cramped space filled with steam and questionable aromas. My mom, who could stand to eat a lot more considering her thin frame and skinny arms, stands at the counter in the middle of it all. Her waves of strawberry blonde hair are a tangled mess today, and from the look of her rosy skin, it seems like she just came in from a few hours on the beach.
“Mom, you’re giving the house a steam bath.”
“Hey, look, we’ve got running water today, I’m taking advantage before it goes out again. Besides, I saw a recipe on Twitter.” She adjusts a dial on the stove, then gestures at me. “Go on, baby. Tell me about this adorable asshole who almost got you fired.”
I lean my back against the counter and fold my arms. “He was … just some guy.” Just some cute, one-of-a-kind guy I can’t get off my damned mind. “He made this totally wrong assumption about me, got under my skin, and that was that.” I stare at my mom, who is frowning at the counter. “Are you even—?”
“I swear I’m listening, I just need to pay attention to the stove.” She runs a hand through her hair, then eyes the pot of—whatever that is that’s boiling—with a sigh. “I don’t know. Something’s bound to taste good out of this. If it all goes wrong, I’ll call Adrian, get him to drop us off something from the restaurant.”
I roll my eyes. Adrian. I push away from the counter. “I gotta do some shit before the thing tonight.”
“What was this ‘wrong assumption’ he made of you, by the way?”
I stop at the kitchen door. “That I’m a player.”
“Hmm, I see. Maybe you ought to ask yourself why it bothers you so much. Is there a granule of truth there?”
I eye her. “Mom, seriously? That’s Adrian, not me.”
“Hey, it’s not like I’m the authority on morality or good choices here.” She starts lazily stirring the pot, her other hand propped up on her hip. “After your dad left, I just about gave up trying to understand what’s going on in all your male minds. Y’know what he said to me last time we spoke? Said the beach polished me up too much. I lost my rough edges he fell in love with.” She shoots me a funny look over her shoulder, still stirring. “The hell does that even mean?”
“Better pay attention to that pot.”
“I mean, aren’t we all like sand out here? Just big rough rocks at first, then eroded over time by the constant crashing of waves ‘til we’re nothing but a bunch of tiny nothings? Ouch, fuck.” She pulls her hand away. “Damned pot just spat at me.”
