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I glanced back to find Judith and my father having a very quiet but intense argument. They never yelled at each other, but the energy and the body language was them fighting. They fought that way at home, too, so controlled. One of my earliest clear memories was of my mom and dad having a screaming fight. It had scared me, which was probably one of the reasons I’d remembered it. When I was a little older they’d explained that sometimes when you loved each other the passion had to come out. I hadn’t even understood the talk, but I’d liked that they tried to explain how they worked as a couple to me when I was so small. Dad with Mom had been like a completely different couple than Dad with Judith. It had taught me at a young age that the same person wasn’t the same in every marriage.
Nicky was standing a little away from either of my family groups. He was closer to a group of men that seemed to match what he was wearing, almost. Women will ask why you’re standing near them in a crowd, but men don’t care as much. My grandmother wouldn’t realize he was with me yet. He was giving me time before he got introduced to my grandmother, because she wouldn’t like the multiple relationships any better than she liked the rest of my life. Wait until she found out I was dating men and women.
“What are they fighting about?” I asked.
“Who knows? She just sent me over here so they could talk in private like I’m still not a grown-up.” Andria looked resentful under all the artful pink-toned makeup.
“We’re both over thirty,” I said.
“Don’t remind me,” she said.
I frowned. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant that we’re both adults and should be treated accordingly.”
“Mom still treats me like I’m twelve,” Andria said.
“I think I’m still about ten in her head,” Josh said.
“You don’t have to let her treat either of you like that, you know,” I said.
“Andria and Josh are good children who honor their mother and father,” Grandma said.
“Yeah, I’m the bad girl, the rebel. I remember, Grandma.”
“You were always a disobedient child,” she said, and the look out of those perfectly blue eyes made me fight not to shiver. She couldn’t hurt me. I was all grown up and bigger, stronger, faster than she was, logically. Logically all that was true, but childhood issues aren’t about logic, they’re about bogeymen and the monster under your bed or at your grandparents’ house.
“Yep, that’s me, the black sheep.”
“That is not a word, Anita. Reply with ‘yes,’ or don’t reply at all.”
“I’ll reply any damn way I please.”
Grandma looked scandalized; boy, she hadn’t heard or seen nothin’ yet. “A lady does not curse.”
“I was never a lady by your definition, just a virgin, and that’s so not the same thing.”
Andria gasped. Grandma said, “Anita!” like I’d shocked her.
“Mom and Dad are coming this way,” Josh said, and I didn’t know if he was trying to short-circuit the talk between me and Grandma Blake or giving us a heads-up like he thought I wouldn’t want the parents to hear what I’d said. Did he not remember that I didn’t care if they heard what I said? Then he walked toward them to meet them partway. Was he going to tattle on me, or did he just want out of the conversation?
Nicky moved toward us as the men he’d been standing near moved away. Grandma gave him a disapproving look, though I wasn’t sure why. He was usually in the background of the online pictures if he was included at all. We didn’t normally kiss in public, but then come to think of it we weren’t normally just the two of us in public.
“What do you want, young man?” she asked him as if he were trying to get her to put money in a dirty coffee cup, instead of just standing there.
“Grandma, this is Nicky.”
She looked back at me, frowning, then at him, then at me, frowning harder. “Nicky what? Has he no last name?”
I tried to hide the smile as I said, “Nicky Murdock.”
He offered her his hand, smiling and projecting that charm that he could turn on and off. You had to know what his real smile looked like to realize it was an act. It fooled most women, but not Grandma. She stared him up and down, not offering to shake hands. “If you are with my granddaughter, does that mean you are a supernatural citizen?”
His smile slipped closer to his real one, which was colder and far less pleasant. It left his one blue eye almost as cold as her own.
“Grandma, you can’t just ask people that,” Andria said.
“Why not?” she asked.
Nicky looked at me, and I shrugged.
