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Kit laughs at their banter. “I think he’d be pretty chuffed about me fighting. He’d have been terrified, probably holding Bobby’s hand and crying foul every time I got hit, but he would’ve supported me. And he would’ve been my biggest and loudest cheerleader.”
Mom’s eyes twinkle with inside knowledge. “He sounds so wonderful.”
“He was.” She leans into me. “He was amazing.”
“He was always so immature,” Jack adds with a laugh. “Remember how he’d buy us toys, like remote controlled cars or whatever, buthe’duse them. We knew they were really for him.”
“Remember when he bought those little peewee motorbikes?” Tink adds. “A grown man trying to ride a bike made for five year olds…”
“Or that time he strapped an old hood to the back of his car,” Jack throws in with a laugh. “He’d speed around the lake on the mud and we’d ride on the back. Remember when Callum broke his finger?” He snickers. “Dumbass was riding on the hood and his hand went too close to the edge. It got caught under andsnap!”Mom’s eyes pop wide in shock. And a little disgust. “We dropped him off at home with an ice pack and instructions not to tell his mom.”
“He wasn’t the most responsible adult,” Kit adds with a giggle. “That same day, he misjudged the turn and the car ended up in the lake. Only a couple feet in the water, but still, enough that the floors of the car got wet and we had to bust our asses to push the damn thing back out. Then he tried to vacuum the water out,” she adds with a snort. “He broke the vacuum, too.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t know him,” Mom tells her.
“Me too. He would’ve loved you all. Well, except Bobby.” She looks up at me with a laugh. “He would’ve hated you on principle. But it wouldn’t have been personal.”
That thought should probably worry me, but it doesn’t. I know I would’ve won him over. I love his daughter, and he would’ve seen that eventually. There’s no one in this world who’ll love her more or take care of her as well as I will. That’s all every father wants for his daughter, right?
“Where’s Izzy tonight?” Mom asks.
Jon’s face turns sour in a heartbeat. “She’s on a ‘date.’”
The girls at the table smile at this news; the guys, not so much. Even Jack’s face scrunches in disapproval.
“On a date?” Jim asks sourly. “With who?”
“Dunno. Some asshole, probably.”
“Jon!” Mom tosses more bread.
“Sorry. I mean to say, I don’t know who thisbutthole is, that he thinks he deserves two minutes of her time. She met him at school, I think, so he was able to sneak under our radar, unlike all the otherbuttholeswho come through the gym and ask after her. I’ll ask her tonight when she gets home.”
Home.
Iz’shomeis nowhere official. She stays with Jon more often than not, or she stays with one of us. She has clothes and stuff in every house, but her legal address is still across town at her piece of shit folks’ trailer.
Their dad is an abusive drunk, and their mom is an abusive enabler with a gambling problem. Jon and Iz spent almost every day of our childhood in our house just so they could eat something more substantial than dry crackers for dinner, and when they weren’t there, they were at the fort we built one summer forever ago.
Jon spent every damn day of his childhood running from his parents’ fists, and Iz spent her days being shoved under Jon’s arm so he could protect her.
“A date sounds nice,” Mom smiles and picks up her glass of wine. “I hope she has a nice evening. She deserves it.”
Jon simply grunts, as does every other man at the table.
With a knowing smirk, Mom sits her wine down and wipes the fancy fabric napkin across her mouth. She doesn’t get these napkins out for us on regular nights. Come to think of it, the shiny knives and forks aren’t for everyday use, either. “Kit, honey, would you mind helping me with dessert?”
Kit’s formerly relaxed body tenses and her eyes grow wide like a skittish animal. I frantically try to think of a way to get her out of it, but she shakily stands before I can come up with anything. “Sure, Nelly. I’d be happy to help.”
I try to catch her gaze, I try to apologize with my eyes, but she smiles at me in the fakest and shakiest grin I’ve ever seen in my life. She drops a kiss on the top of my head and follows my mom to the kitchen like a man walking the green mile.
She’ll be okay. She has to be okay. My mom would never say anything to hurt her, and Kit could handle anything that was thrown at her, anyway. It’ll be fine.
Jesus Christ, my mom has my whole future in her kitchen right now.
It takes them more than five minutes before they come back. The minutes drag for me, but no one else seems to notice. Jack’s having a great time listening to Jimmy’s fight stories, Jon’s busy talking quietly to Tink, and Aiden pulled out his phone to text. Or more likely, to play snake because he’s so old fashioned, he’s still stuck in the era of Nokia’s that have batteries that last a week.
While I sit and wait, unsurprisingly, my thoughts are focused solely on Kit. I recall her breakdown after that fucking asshole Chris confronted her. It’s the first time since I’ve known her that she’s let down her walls so completely and taken a moment for her own grief.
