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Of course she was. There was no way in hell she didn’t know I’d gotten home. The little pain in the ass.
“Who is Ceci?” Kulti asked, holding a piece of broccoli in his hand.
“My little sister.”
He blinked.
I shrugged. What else was I going to say? That my sister hated my guts during different moon cycles?
Fortunately he didn’t ask anything else. I know Dad took it personally when Ceci acted like a turd, and then my mom would get mad that we weren’t more understanding and patient with her. I was patient with her. I hadn’t punched her yet despite the dozens of times she’d deserved it.
My mom took a seat at the table and started asking if we had any plans for tomorrow, and then saying how my aunts and cousins wanted to see me. Pretty soon it was close to ten and I was yawning up a storm, wondering how the hell my dad hadn’t cracked a single sigh when I knew damn well he was used to going to bed early, too.
The silence was just weird, with me trading looks with Kulti and my mom while Dad avoided everyone’s eyes.
All right, I’d had enough.
“You want me to show you where you can sleep?” I asked the German.
He nodded.
There was only one guest bedroom and since my little sister wasn’t even going to bother coming out to tell me hi, I guess sleeping in her room was out of the question. As Kulti followed me out of the kitchen and we passed the small living room with its hard couch that had been bought for durability rather than for comfort, I felt my eye twitch a little. That thing was unforgivable, but there was no way I was going to banish my friend to that cloth-covered rock.
What had once been my brother’s room long, long ago, had been painted and converted into a guest room for whoever was in town. My parents weren’t fans of buying new things if the old things still worked, so I knew exactly what I’d be walking into. Ceci and I’d old furniture back when I’d lived with them before college.
Bunk beds.
It was a full-sized frame at the bottom and a twin at the top. I almost smiled when Kulti didn’t even blink an eye at the accommodations. “Welcome to Hotel Casillas,” I held my hand out in presentation mode, letting him take in the black metal bunk beds, the thirty-something-inch flat screen mounted on a dresser and the various posters and articles of Eric and me on display that my parents had moved in there after Ceci had ranted her mouth off. She couldn’t live with our achievements constantly in her face, or something like that. She acted like we’d been given what we had. Ha.
‘Natural talent’ and genetics only went so far.
“Where are you sleeping?” he asked, dropping our bags on the floor.
“Umm—“
“In there,” my dad piped up as he walked past the bedroom; his was at the end of the hall. Like he’d been talking all night, he said over his shoulder, “Buenas noches!”
Sleep in the same room with him? The two times I’d brought my ex with me, Dad had made him sleep in the living room, but with Kulti over? I seriously doubted my age had anything to do with why he was throwing us together in the small bedroom. If he would have known I was bringing him, I’m sure he would have taken the twin mattress out.
Typical.
I could have argued, but did I really want to sleep on the floor in my parent’s bedroom or squeeze onto the couch? No thanks.
“You mind if I sleep on the top one?” I asked.
Those hazel-green eyes took in the bed and I could see either amusement or something similar in the way he looked at it. He shook his head, still eyeing it. “No. You can have the bottom one.”
“You’re too tall for the top one,” I explained to him. “Take the bottom. The mattress is newer too.”
He gave me a side-glance and nodded before scooting our bags deeper into the room and then crouching down to dig through his.
“There’s a bathroom right next door. Get whatever you want from the kitchen, my house is your house. Everyone sleeps solid so you won’t bother anybody.” I drummed my fingers on my leg, trying to figure out if there was anything else I needed to tell him. There wasn’t. “I want to see if my sister is up before I get ready for bed.”
The German just nodded and mumbled something I didn’t completely understand.
My little sister’s bedroom was on the other side of the bathroom door. The slit beneath the door was lit up and the television was loud enough for me to hear it, so I knocked pretty loud. “Ceci?” I rapped my knuckles. “You up?”
No answer.
