AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Well now, those are quite the hairdos,” Dad said, then nudged Mom in the side while she was trying to add tiny holly leaves to her triple layer cake. Each layer was a holiday color, red, green, and white, and the icing was that super sweet fluffy stuff she only made on special occasions. Like hockey royalty coming to eat tiny meatballs. Adults were super weird. “Why don’t I finish icing the cake, and your mother can work on the girls’ hair styles.”
“If you reach for this cake once more, Terrence, I will not be responsible for the fate of your fingers,” Mom snarled in warning. Dad and I exchanged looks. “Girls, let Dad do your hair. I need to finish this cake.”
Three young misses began whining at the same time. Dad wiped his hands on the apron Mom was wearing over her pretty gold cocktail dress. I let him take the girls back upstairs, then slipped in beside my stressed mother. She gave me a smile, then blew a strand of blonde hair from her face.
“He so badly wants to write something goofy on top of this cake with my fancy fake holly leaves,” she explained then let her head come to rest on my shoulder. “I refuse to have Soren and Tyler’s families eat a cake with ‘Don’t get your tinsel in a tangle’ on top of it. Imagine what his supervisor would say if he saw that.”
“People would probably laugh. Mom, seriously, everyone coming tonight is just normal people, you know?”
“I know, but I want…” She paused, blew out a breath, then turned to face me. She had a smear of icing on her cheek. “I’m trying to make a good impression. I know that most of the kids that go to Chesterford are wealthier than we are, and I want them, and the people Dad and I work with, to see that even though we might not have mad cash to burn, we can still put on a fancy shindig.”
“Well, that cake is the fanciest thing I’ve ever seen. So, you’re already above and beyond.”
She smiled at me so brightly it nearly blinded me. “Thank you, Jonah.” She took a moment from holly leaf placement to adjust my tie. We’d been granted a blessing of not having to wear a jacket, but trousers, tie, and a dress shirt had been mandatory. “Now, can you go grab the good dishes out of the cupboard and put them out by the food on the dining room table?”
“Sure.” I wiped her cheek with my thumb. She rolled her eyes at the frosting on my finger, then got back to work, her shoulders a little less tense than before.
Carrying my grandmother’s fine dishes to the table, I paused to listen to my dad arguing with Lana about wearing her new winter boots with her party dress. While they haggled it out, I moved around the table after placing the good dishes by the silverware and fancy plastic cups. Mom had been cooking for days. There were about a dozen casserole dishes sitting in warmer trays, all covered with foil to keep them warm. Swedish meatballs, macaroni and cheese, baked ziti, some sort of cheesy broccoli dish, Spanish rice, mixed veggies, creamed corn casserole, and a dish of what looked like stuffed cabbages. How Mom had gotten all of this made while working and taking care of us, I had no clue. No wonder she was frazzled. And that was just the entrees. There were pies in the fridge, and of course, the winter cake she was hurrying to finish.
The doorbell rang. Mom yelped in alarm. Gemma raced down the stairs with one side of her hair done and the other loose, Polly in close pursuit clutching a Raggedy Ann doll that had somehow lost its leg in a mysterious manner we’d never been able to fully flesh out. The suspects were Lana and Gemma, but that was all conjecture.
“Girls, get back up here!” Dad yelled.
“Yes, get back up here you dummies!” Lana screamed down as she glared at the younger girls as if she were the one in charge. Which, most times, she was.
“Don’t call your sisters dummies!” Mom and Dad corrected in perfect unison. I stepped in front of Gemma, then pointed up the stairs.
“You’re not the boss of me!” the six-year-old huffed before spinning on her bare heel—where her shoes were was a mystery—then stomped back to my dad. Polly grabbed my leg as I opened the door to see Soren, his dads, Arlo, and Lottie, as well as Felix and his dad, and Tyler and Mrs. Corrigan. They all made smiley faces at Polly hiding behind me.
“Welcome to the madhouse, aka our home,” I said, lifted Polly to my hip, and stood back to let them all enter. Cold wind filled with tiny flakes of snow blew in with Tyler as he slipped to the back of the pack to sneak in a kiss. To Polly’s cheek.
“Jo-bah give me to Ty-nerd,” she commanded.
As her lowly servant, I could do no less, so I handed her to Tyler. She had won him over the first time he’d visited, and she knew she had him wrapped around her pudgy little finger.
“Ty-nerd, that’s fitting,” Felix whispered, then gave Tyler a poke in the side. I glanced at the exchange but said nothing as I gauged Tyler’s reaction. He smiled and stuck his tongue out at Felix before giving me a warm look. My protective urges calmed.
“You look nice,” I told Tyler as folks removed their snowy coats. The bell rang again. “I’m the doorman. The last time we had a party, Gemma snuck to the front door before we could get to it and told the new pastor of our church that Lana was a demon for taking the last lemon cookie and could he please send her to Hell.”
Soren’s dads laughed out loud. “That sounds just like something Lottie would say about her big brothers,” Jared said.
“Yeah, that’s true,” Soren chuckled.
Dad jogged down the stairs, Lana behind him, and led our guests into our humble home. Tyler gave me a wide smile, then toted Polly into the living room as I opened the door to welcome Dad’s co-worker Steve and his wife. My job as doorman lasted a steady thirty minutes or so, and by the time all the guests had arrived, you could barely move in our house. The girls were charming the pants off everyone—Lana explaining how our tree was a good one because, when we’d picked it, we’d found a bird nest in the boughs.
I slid up beside Tyler, glad to see he was at ease as he sipped the pink punch for those of us under twenty-one. His green eyes lit up when he looked to the side to see me there.
“Hey,” he said as another Christmas song blared from the stereo. Soren and Felix joined us in the corner by the lucky bird nest pine tree decorated with only handmade ornaments made by us kids over the years and twinkly white lights. The glitter star I’d made in kindergarten sat at the very top, appearing a little worn, but still glittery. “This is a great party.”
“I’m glad. Mom has worked her backside off.” I nodded at Soren and Felix. They were holding hands. “We can go to my room after we eat to hang out. The girls will be going to bed soon, and it will be the adults down here. I haveRocket League. We can play that while we wait for the parental units to stop talking about taxes and the price of food.”
“Sounds great.” Soren smiled, then peeked over to his boyfriend.
“Yeah, I loveRocket League,” Felix piped up.
Tyler gave me a sideways nudge, his gaze glowing, and I had to give him a fast peck on the cheek. Mom called out that the food was now ready. We moved to get in line, the girls scurrying in front of me as they always did. I hoisted Polly to my hip so that she could tell me what she wanted, while Mom and Dad dished up food for the other girls. Polly wanted mac and cheese. That was all. She was growing tired, and so she got kind of upset there were no hot dogs to go with her mac and cheese. One simply did not serve mac and cheese and not have hot dogs to go with them. Silly Mom.
“I can nuke you one. Would that be okay?” I asked, and she nodded, then tucked her head into my neck. I left the line, carrying my sister into the kitchen, where I sat her in her booster, buckled her in, then hustled around to microwave a hot dog. She was waiting for me to cut it up when it was done, so I did that for her, then I sat down to supervise her eating.
