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“Ach. I am old lady now. I’m forgetting!”
“Don’t let her fool you, she’s as sharp as a tack. Knows exactly what’s going on and keeps everybody in line.” Gus stepped forward to shake Lucky’s hand. “Good to see you again, Lucky.”
Gathered around the typically raucous Vasilakis dinner table, I noticed Lucky sat perfectly at ease. Amber and Ruby’s family cooked up the same flavor of noise and chaos as his own.
In my house, calm reigned supreme. For the first time, I wondered if my parents had always been like that or if they became like that for me. Because I so desperately needed peace, routine, and stability.
My attention wandered to George and the accommodations I knew Ruby and Vander had made to ease him through his transition to living with them.
Vander made accommodations for Ruby.
Gus made accommodations for Amber.
That willingness to adjust and adapt, support and stand by, was what made a family. Not blood. Not birth. But the belonging that comes from commitment and claiming.
Throughout the meal, I witnessed it firsthand. When Yiayia placed a plate down in front of me with the meat already on it, Lucky deftly scraped it onto his own. And each time Yiayia pushed me to eat more food, Lucky intervened. “That looks good, Yiayia. Put it on my plate and we’ll share.”
In truth, he played her like a fiddle. She had a weakness for her boys, and she’d just adopted Lucky.
With dessert, I had no issue eating my share, and managed to finalize a date for Yiayia to come to the house to bake with Ezzy, me, and the girls.
Amber and Gus insisted on cleaning up while Yiayia excused herself to lie down for a while.
Then Gus grabbed a few beers and went out to the porch with Vander and Lucky. Amber, Ruby, and I sat on the couch.
“I saw the way he took care of you at dinner,” Ruby commented happily. “He’s very sweet.”
“Does he take care of you in other ways?” Amber’s eyes crinkled.
I laughed. “He does.” Then I remembered this afternoon. “You know what he did?” I explained and watched as Amber laughed knowingly while a look of horror passed over Ruby’s face.
“Gus has done that before when I’ve been ‘bad’.” She smiled widely. “The key is to make sure you’re bad enough to warrant a better punishment. One that is mutually beneficial in the end.”
Ruby stared at us both, her mouth gaping indignantly. “That’s...that’s...that’s clitoral abuse!”
Amber leaned forward and spit her wine across the coffee table, choking on her laughter.
Ruby patted her on the back, then grabbed a napkin to wipe up Amber’s mess, her shoulders beginning to shake.
“Clitoral abuse,” I repeated, my mind delighting in the new phrase and my eagerness to accuse Lucky of it later.
“You should buy one of those cock cages,” Ruby nodded, agreeing with herself.
Amber fell sideways on the couch, and I snorted with laughter as I slapped my hand down on my thigh, remembering his horror at the art installation ofThe Goddess at Play.
Lucky
Cackling. Not the light, tinkling laugh I’d grown accustomed to hearing from Minty, but outright cackling complete with thigh-slapping and snorting.
The three of them sat in a huddle in the living room while we sat outside on the porch having a beer. Yiayia had long since gone to bed though how she could sleep through that noise was beyond me.
I jerked my chin up in their direction. “What the hell could possibly be that funny?”
Vander snorted. “You don’t want to know.”
“Why not?” I asked, surprised.
Gus grinned. “It’s about us. Or sex.” He shrugged. “Or a combination of the two.”
