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I had no idea there were mother-sheeping cameras in my house. That I was under surveillance, and my life was currently being turned into a reality show to entertain my family over their morning and afternoon coffee.
I have no idea what my dad would say about this. He wouldn’t like it, so he likely doesn’t know. I could threaten to tell him, but that would make me a tattler, and I can’t stand it. I really can’t. I’m a grown man. I don’t need my dad to fix my problems for me.
“I have to feed the animals,” I grouse. It’s a good excuse. Well, not so much an excuse as it is a part of the routine here that I can’t just put off because I have unwanted guests.
Three of them, to be exact, unless there are aunties and cousins or Nina’s family here that I don’t know about. There very well could be more. My dad isn’t here, and neither is my grandpa. They don’t like meddling, so they try to keep the peace by staying clear of things like this, which doesn’t help at all.
“Breakfast first,” Granny tuts at me.
“Not until I’ve fed everyone.”
“We know you do breakfast first. We’ve seen the footage,” Mom has the balls to say. God, it’s such a horrible thought, but it just pops into my head. That her balls are ten times the size of mine. My granny’s too. Shudder. Ugh, so much shudder. Ultra shudder.
“Besides, Nina is up and making omelets for everyone.”
At those words, I nearly tip over sideways. “Oh my god, you talked to her!”
Granny looks completely scandalized. “Of course! We weren’t just going to go in there and watch her sleep. What kind of voyeurs do you think we are?”
“Rich.” I shake my head. “Darn rich, Grambutt.”
“The cameras are for your own good,” Mom tries to say again, but I cut her off by holding up a hand.
“So you broke into my house and—”
“Broke in?” Granny scoffs. “It’s impossible to break in when you never lock the door.”
“And you wonder why we had to get involved with the monitoring.”
My jaw is going to snap, or I’m going to pulverize my teeth with all the grinding. I’m not sure which is going to happen first, but something not so great is going to happen if I don’t get out of here and chill for a few seconds in the open air.
I stride to the door, and Granny and Mom rush after me, looking like tracksuit and bowl hair twinsies.
“She woke up when she heard us talking. We didn’t mean to scare her. She figured out right away who we were,” Granny tries to explain as she power walks after me.
“She’s so sweet,” Mom adds. “And she’s beautiful. Perfect for you, honey. Why don’t you give her a chance? Convince her to stay? I think you two have more in common than you know.”
“The only thing we have in common is our desire to have our lives to ourselves and to be rid of the getting-shoved-together-into-holy-matrimony-by-our crazy-grandmothers thing.”
“Psshaw. Like you could choose better for yourself?” Granny boldly walks all over that raw and exposed nerve. They know all about what happened the last time I did try to choose for myself. Obviously. They were the ones who figured it out long before I did.
“The least we can all do is sit down to breakfast when it’s being made for us,” Mom insists. She’s trying to appeal to the gentleman in me, but that would be implying she raised one and just—oh, for fuck’s sake. She’s right. I can’t just let Nina work her butt off in the kitchen and not show. Even if it’s going to be stiff, horrible, and awkward as all get-out of a breakfast, the least I can do is put in an appearance, shovel some eggs into my mouth, and rush off to feed all the animals.
I can make the feeding take an extra long time.
But that would mean leaving Nina alone with the bowl-cut baddies, and they could literally say anything, and anything could happen.
I could take her with me and tell them I’m teaching her how to do the chores. But that would imply she’s learning in order to stay, and I don’t want to open up that stubborn jar of pickles. They’d be rotten pickles anyway—botulism pickles.
This feels a lot like a lose-lose situation.
“Fine.” I spin around before sliding open the barn doors. “I’ll sit down with you all for fifteen minutes.Fifteen. You control yourselves, and then you leave. I’ll also take down all the cameras in the house. But don’t even dare think about installing more. We agree to never mention this incident again because it’s far too damaging for our relationship. I try and forgive you both, and you try and respect boundaries. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
My mom elbows my granny right near her Grambutt patch. “We have fifteen minutes. We had better make it good.”
My granny’s answering smile is pure devious evil. “Oh, it’ll be good, honeypants. Don’t you worry. It will be real good.”
Fuck on a boot. What the hell kind of boobytrap have I just sprung now?
