“Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey, loser!”
The words thumped through the haze of sleep mere seconds before the weight of a body slamming into hers jolted Fiona awake. She let out a horrendous scream as the person landed directly on top of her and yanked the comforter off her head. Her arms flailed helplessly as her hair clouded her vision.
“Oh, holy shit! You are not my brother.”
Fiona’s heart raced. Her eyes were sticky with sleep and blinded by hair, and all the oxygen in the room seemed to be evading her lungs. She quickly swiped her hair away and blinked up at the petite but curvy young woman straddling her and slowly calmed as she took in each feature: frizzy dark-orange hair, a toothy grin, one blue eye, and one green.
“Lizzie, what the hell are you doing?”
Fiona leaned up to see Michael standing in the open doorway of the bathroom, mouth covered in toothpaste foam and a towel wrapped around his waist. Clearly, he’d been up for a while.
“Uh, apparently making a complete jackass of myself,” Lizzie said with an awkward laugh. She looked down at Fiona, red-cheeked. “Sorry. I’m Lizzie.”
“Fiona.”
“Oh, Fiona! Hey, yeah, Michael’s talked about you before. Nice to finally meet you.”
Fiona pressed a hand to her heart and took a deep breath. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“Yeah, the bloodcurdling scream sort of gave that away.”
“Do you always introduce yourself by jumping on people?”
Lizzie smiled, her entire face crinkling. Freckles spotted her face like a game of connect-the-dots, and Fiona suddenly found herself thinking of connecting them, one by one, with the tip of her finger. She used the sleeve of her dark-green flannel shirt to swipe a bit of hair from her face. “Only the cute ones.”
A jolt sparked low in Fiona’s gut. She squirmed, surprised. They stared at one another for a long moment, unmoving, with Lizzie still straddling her and Fiona wondering where she should put her hands. She felt flushed and confused and entirely unwilling to contemplate the fact that the weight of Michael’s sister on top of her felt so much more pleasant than burdensome.
“Uh, Liz?” Michael said.
“Yeah?” Lizzie didn’t look at Michael. Her gaze was fixed on Fiona.
“You can get off my girlfriend now.”
Fiona blinked hard. Shit. For a moment, she’d forgotten she was there to be Michael’s Christmas girlfriend. Lizzie slid off her so quickly that she landed on her ass on the floor. She sprang up a second later, hair flying around her face and her thin sweater wrinkled up on one side.
“Girlfriend?” she said. “Huh. Wow.”
“Yeah.” Michael slung an arm around his sister. “Girlfriend.”
Lizzie patted his back and ducked when he tried to kiss her forehead with toothpaste-covered lips. He laughed and went back to the bathroom to spit.
“So, uh, how did you manage to convince someone to date you?” she called after him, her gaze returning to Fiona. “I mean, she’s a real girl, Mike, not the inflatable kind. I’m so proud.”
“Ha.” The porcelain and tile made his voice echo. “Very funny.”
“It definitely took some convincing,” Fiona said as she pulled the blanket up a bit higher to cover herself. It was silly since she was fully clothed, but she couldn’t help it. She felt uncomfortable and slightly aroused, which made zero sense. The lingering haze of sleep, paired with waking to a cute girl on top of her, had clearly caused her brain to short-circuit. Michael’s sister, she scolded herself. She’s Michael’s sister. The scolding didn’t stop her from tracing Lizzie’s curves with her eyes. She had her mother’s figure—full breasts, wide hips, and, like Fiona, barely passed the five-foot mark.
Lizzie’s boisterous laugh was surprising for her size. The sound of it sent the same jolt through Fiona as before. Oh no.
“See,” Lizzie said. “Even your girlfriend knows you’ve got no game.”
Michael reappeared in sweatpants and a T-shirt, mouth clean of foam. He grabbed his sister before she could jump away. “Is that right?” He managed to get her in a headlock and knuckled the top of her head until her coarse hair was a frazzled mess of tangles. “Two years you don’t see me, and this is the treatment I get?”
“Just telling it like it is, Big Brother,” she grunted from his armpit. She then managed to knee him in the back of the leg hard enough to break his balance. He stumbled, releasing her, and she smacked him on the back of the head before taking off out of the room. “I’m telling Mom!”
“Big baby!” Michael called after her, then turned toward Fiona. “Still wish you had siblings?”
The bathroom served as her safe haven for thirty minutes before Michael finally knocked on the door and said, “I hope you’re using the air freshener.”
“Gross. Shut up.”
“I’m just saying. I’ve known you for three years now, and I’ve never seen you take more than fifteen minutes to get ready.”
“I’m preparing for my soul to depart from my body.”
“I thought you said she was just my mom, not the Grim Reaper.”
“After meeting her and your sister, I’m rethinking my position.” Fiona stared at herself in the mirror, her freshly showered face and damp black hair gleaming back at her. The brown skin of her face was bare and shiny from a wash and a tad paler than usual. Sun had become a foreign thing to her, as she’d spent her summer bopping back and forth between the university library and the hospital. She hated the way makeup clogged up her pores, so it never bothered her not to wear it. Not until now. She hadn’t expected to feel nervous, yet she found herself hiding in Jack’s bathroom, overthinking her natural amount of cuteness and wondering if she should, in fact, be considerably cuter. She couldn’t stop smoothing her hands down her plain white sweater and black leggings. I am a bland breakfast date. What if they don’t like me?
“Let me in.”
She popped the latch, and Michael squeezed in behind her, wearing a red St. Louis Cardinals T-shirt and gray sweatpants. At the sight, Fiona instantly felt better. His nose wrinkled as he closed the door behind him. “You could have at least lit a match or something.” Fiona smacked his shoulder, eliciting a laugh. “Everybody likes you, Fi.”
“You have a point.”
“I always have a point.”
“And occasionally, it’s a good one.” She grabbed her brush from the sink and held it over her shoulder. “Braid my hair?”
“Fine. But you can’t tell anyone it was me.”
“I won’t.”
“Sit down.”
Fiona settled down on the closed toilet seat and turned her back to Michael. She propped her feet up on the side of the tub and slouched her shoulders. Instantly, she heard her mother’s voice in her head telling her to sit up straight or else she would end up a hunchback like her great-great grandmother who she’d never actually met. Fiona scoffed at the internal scolding and slouched even more. Behind her, Michael began to work the hairbrush through her hair, snagging a few times on tangles he then gently worked out.
“Mike?”
“Hm?”
Fiona closed her eyes at the bristles scratching across her scalp. It was soothing. “What kind of couple do you think we’d be if we actually were one?”
“That’s easy. We’d be the hermit couple.”
Fiona snorted. “The what couple?”
“You know.” He separated her hair with the brush and gathered up three thin sections to weave together. “We’d be the couple no one ever sees because all we do is sit at home together and watch our favorite shows and order takeout and fight over Mario Kart and whether Batman is really a superhero or not.”
“Not,” Fiona said at the same time Michael added, “Which he totally is.”
“You realize we’re never going to agree on this, right?”
“Definitely not.”
Fiona shifted on the toilet and sighed. “You really don’t think we’d be one of those fun couples everyone wants to hang out with?”
“Sit still.”
“Well, this toilet seat isn’t exactly comfortable, and you’re taking forever.”
“Do you want a good braid or a sloppy one?” Michael thumped the back of her ear. “It’s not my fault you’ve got a bony ass.”
“Just hurry up.”
“I’m going as fast as I can. And no, I don’t think we’d be one of those fun couples. Not to say we aren’t fun. We just never go anywhere.”
“We go places.”
“The grocery store, each other’s apartments, and the movie theater on seven-dollar Sunday don’t count, Fi.”
Fiona deflated. “I’ve become a fossil,” she said, “a sad, lesbian fossil whose longest relationship is with a ginger man, and I haven’t even finished graduate school yet.”
Michael secured her braid with a rubber band from the countertop and said, “People love fossils. There are whole museums dedicated to them.”
“You realize I haven’t had a girlfriend in more than two years, right?”
“You’ve been busy with school.”
“My vagina is a stone.”
Michael quietly began to hum a familiar tune. It took a moment for Fiona to recognize the well-known score of Chopin’s “Funeral March,” and as soon as she did, she whirled on the toilet seat and sucker-punched Michael in the gut. “Hate you.”
A grunt escaped as he clutched his stomach. He then wrapped an arm around her and grinned as he led her out of the bathroom, laughing. “Hate you, too, kid.”
The McElroys’ kitchen was the size of her whole apartment back in St. Louis, and once Fiona saw the entire family stuffed into the space, she understood why. Michael’s siblings crowded around the kitchen island while Rosie cooked breakfast. Together, they made the enormous space appear much smaller, more like a walk-in closet with a stove than an actual kitchen. The room smelled divine, like smoky, sizzling pork and fresh-baked bread. The sheer goodness of it was overwhelming, and Fiona’s mouth began to water. Her stomach rumbled. She imagined it had always been like this in their house—redheaded kids screeching and squealing and scrambling about while the divine scents of a Southern smorgasbord wafted around, room by room. She smiled as an image of a tiny Michael stuffing his face popped into her mind.
“Mike!”
The eldest sibling, Charlie, stood from his stool. He was tall and lean-muscled, though not as tall as Michael, and sported short hair that was mainly gray and a smile Fiona could only describe as contagious. The green John Deere T-shirt he wore was weathered and so faded that the large logo in its center had nearly disappeared.
“Hey, man, get in here.” He yanked Michael into a hug and clapped him on the back. “Good to see you.”
“Yeah, Mom told us all about your new girlfriend, Mikey.”
Another brother, whom Fiona assumed had to be Brian since Jack couldn’t be there, stayed seated. He was stockier than his brothers, shorter overall, and thicker around the middle and in the face. His buzz cut appeared in sharp contrast to the shaggy, short styles of the other two, and his face was further distinguished by a dense cluster of freckles just under his right eye. “We thought you might be too busy to come down to breakfast, if you know what I mean.”
Fiona snorted when Rosie smacked Brian on the back of the head with a dish towel. She wore the same forest-green robe she’d donned the night before. “Stop teasing your brother.”
“You’re right, Mom. I should respect my elders.”
“Watch it,” Michael said, then tugged Brian into a quick embrace. He kissed the top of Grace’s messy head where she sat beside her twin. Fiona could tell it was Grace by the small rose-gold hoop in her slightly upturned nose. She kept her hair short, a pixie cut that had yet to be tamed for the day, and wore a purple T-shirt with University of Washington printed across the front in gold lettering.
Grace patted the side of Michael’s face as he leaned over her. “Hey, Mike.” Her voice was low and sweet until he stole a sip of her mimosa. Her tone flattened as she waved toward a glass carafe full of spiked orange juice in front of her. “Oh, yes, please drink my drink instead of pouring your own. It’s not like there’s an entire pitcher on the counter or anything.”
It was only then that Fiona noticed what sat beside the carafe: a massive, almost perfectly round orange ball of fur occupied a good portion of the island countertop. Fiona frowned and stared, but no one else in the room seemed even the slightest bit bothered by its presence, so she did her best to ignore it. When Michael patted it, however, the giant ball suddenly unfurled itself to reveal a fat, angry-looking cat with a flat, punched-in face.
“Hey, big guy,” Michael said, but the cat didn’t seem interested in responding. He stretched out his front legs, tiny sharp nails popping out momentarily, then put his butt to Michael and jumped off. He hit the floor soundlessly and curled around Rosie’s leg as Michael scoffed. “Fine, then, Otis. Be like that. I didn’t want to pet you anyway.”
“Oh, he’s just sleepy,” Rosie said, adopting the most ridiculous baby voice Fiona had ever heard. She bent, lugged Otis up into her arms, and squashed his flat face against hers. “Isn’t that right, little Oti-pootykins? Yes, he’s just tired. Yes, he is.” She blew on his face, then kissed him, loudly. “You love your bubby, don’t you? Yes, you do. Yes. Yes, you love all your bubbies and sissies, don’t you?” Another loud, smacking kiss, then she sat him back on the floor and squirted a dollop of hand sanitizer into her palm from a pump bottle on the counter. “He’ll let you love on him later.”
“Yeah, right. He hates everyone but you and Grandma.” Michael took another sip of Grace’s mimosa, then set the glass back on the table. “Where’s Soph? And Lizzie?”
Charlie waved a hand to indicate the rest of the house. “Somewhere wrangling my children, most likely.”
“Because he can’t do it himself,” Brian said.
“Incoming!” The familiar voice drew Fiona’s attention toward the door a second before one tiny strawberry-blonde girl in pink leggings and a green sweater zipped by her. A second later, another, dressed in what appeared to be a cross between an elf costume and a pair of footy pajamas, barreled into Fiona’s legs. The little girl stumbled, teetered over, then got up and took off again as if nothing had happened at all. Lizzie was on the latter’s heels. Her hair flew out from her head as she gave chase, and her goofy smile made Fiona’s stomach stir.
“Sorry,” she said, nearly knocking into Fiona as well. She steadied herself by latching onto Fiona’s arm, and the two of them were suddenly sharing the same thin space again. They stared for one tense moment, then Lizzie dropped her hand and carried on after the girls, disappearing into another room.
“Girls, say hi to your Uncle Mike,” Charlie called after them, but they were already gone. He looked at Michael. “Sorry, man. They like Lizzie better than you.”
“So do I,” Brian teased, and Michael whacked them both on the backs of their heads.
A sudden presence behind Fiona startled her. She turned to find a woman with eyes the muted color of a cloudy sky and the same contagious smile as Charlie. She was taller than the other McElroy women, closer to her twin’s height, and her long, auburn hair was pulled back in a low bun. “You must be Fiona,” she said and held out a hand. Fiona shook it gently. “I’m—”
“Sophie.” Fiona hadn’t memorized their names and faces for nothing. “Yeah, I recognize you from Michael’s family picture.”
“Oh God. It wasn’t the one with the awful Christmas sweaters, was it?”
“Actually, it was exactly that one, yeah.”
Sophie groaned. “Well, plus side is you’ve now seen us at our fashion worst, so we can only improve from there, right?”
“Says the thirty-five-year-old woman wearing pajama pants covered in cartoon frogs,” Brian said.
Sophie looked down at her pants and shrugged. “If you can resist Maddi and Lily’s faces, then you tell them you don’t want to wear whatever cartoon-themed clothes they probably got you for Christmas this year.”
“Who says they got me anything cartoon-themed?”
“Have you met my kids?” Charlie downed the last of his mimosa and poured himself a bit more. “I mean, if you think cartoon frogs are bad, you’re in for a rude awakening.”
“Anyway.” Sophie rested a hand on Fiona’s arm. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Yeah, Fiona, it’s nice to meet—Oh, wait! I haven’t actually met you yet,” Brian said, then elbowed Michael in the ribs.
Michael bent over, clutching his side, and grimaced. “All right, all right.”
“You make it so easy, man.”
“Really, Michael,” Rosie said as she set a cover over a pan of sizzling bacon, “don’t just leave her standing in the doorway.” She smiled at Fiona over her shoulder. “Come on in, hon. No need to be shy.”
Fiona took a few steps into the room, and Michael awkwardly wound their hands together. “Uh, well, guys, this is Fiona Ng. Fiona, this is my family.”
“Who have no names, apparently,” Grace said with a kind smile.
“I know all your names, actually.”
“Yeah, she made me quiz her on the way here.”
Heat flooded Fiona’s face. “You weren’t supposed to tell them that part.”
Michael quickly called out the names of his siblings, and one by one, they waved, except for Jessie, who didn’t even bother looking up from her phone. She sat with her thick, curly orange hair crowding her face, her rail-thin body swallowed by a sweatshirt three sizes too big for her, and grunted in acknowledgment. Only when the others threw napkins at her did she put her phone down long enough to say, “Michael’s got a girlfriend. Cool. What do you want, a trophy?”
“And, of course, you’ve already met—”
The bang of body to table echoed through the room as Lizzie suddenly slid into the kitchen on her socked feet. “Son of a—”
“Lizzie,” Michael said.
Lizzie rubbed her side. “What about Lizzie?”
“I was just saying you and Fiona have already met.”
“Oh yeah.” Lizzie squeezed past Charlie to snatch a piece of bacon from a paper-towel-covered plate on the counter. She crunched it down quickly while dodging her mother’s swatting towel. “Sorry again about tackling you in bed this morning.”
Jessie’s eyebrows shot up over her phone. “Whoa.”
At the same time, Rosie exclaimed, “Elizabeth Dawn, you did what?!”
“Relax, people,” Lizzie said. “It’s not what it sounds like.”
“It’s actually exactly what it sounds like,” Fiona said, and Lizzie bit her lip to fight a smile. The sight made Fiona’s face hot again. She ignored the feeling and turned toward Michael, releasing his hand to lay hers, instead, on his upper arm. It wasn’t exactly intimate, but Fiona figured it looked endearing enough. “Apparently, Michael and I make similar-looking bed lumps.”
Rosie huffed out a laugh. “Elizabeth, I swear.” She thrust a basket of silverware toward her daughter. “Go set the table up.” A stack of empty plates went to Brian next. “Come on, now, all of you. Time to eat.”
“Where’s Dad?” Michael asked as he took a plate piled high with bulging, grease-speckled sausage links from his mother.
“Oh, he ran down the road to pick up Grandma, but you know it takes her a while to get up and out since her hip surgery.” Rosie handed the fried potatoes to Fiona and patted her shoulder. The act made Fiona smile. She hated all the awkward hovering that usually accompanied the experience of not knowing anyone. Thankfully, Michael’s family wasn’t the type to let anyone linger in that space for too long. They were the kind to pull you in and make you one of them. It felt almost familiar, as if Fiona had been a part of their family for years.
A heavy, handcrafted oak table occupied the center of the formal dining room and ran nearly its entire length to accommodate the McElroy clan. Seats were squashed together with barely enough room for elbows, and the chattering began before a single one was filled. Fiona followed Michael in with the last of the breakfast dishes and took the seat beside him. She was surprised when Lizzie plopped down next to her, close enough that their arms touched and Fiona could smell the lingering scent of conditioner in Lizzie’s hair. Apricots.
“Hey.” She snatched a yeast roll from a basket and took a huge bite, chewed once, then stored the bread in her cheek so that she looked like a redheaded chipmunk. “Mind if I sit here?”
Fiona shook her head. “It’s your house.”
“Correction.” She swallowed the bite of roll and choked. “Used to be my house.” The instant the words were out, she began to gag and cough.
“For God’s sake, Elizabeth!” Rosie reached over and whacked Lizzie’s back hard enough for the thud to echo around the dining room. “If you’d take the time to actually chew your food before swallowing it, you wouldn’t risk killing yourself every time we have a meal. Put your arms up.”
Lizzie threw her arms up over her head as Rosie whacked her on the back again. When the coughing fit passed, Lizzie took a drink of orange juice, then stuffed another massive bite of roll into her mouth. “Can’t help it, Mom,” she said around the bite, ducking under Rosie’s stern glare. “It’s too good, and I’m a starving artist, remember?”
“Your baby-fat cheeks say otherwise,” Brian teased.
Lizzie curled her top lip at him. “That’s the roll, jackass!”
“Language, please.”
“Yeah, yeah, Mom. He started it.”
“He’s mean as a striped-tail bug, I know, but there’s no help for it. He’s the Devil’s child, that one.”
Brian snorted and bit off the end of a fat sausage link. His fingers were already coated in grease. “Ah Mom, you’re going by The Devil now? It’s so formal.”
“She doesn’t claim you, Beelzebub.” Lizzie held her fingers up in a cross formation and hissed at him. “No one does.”
Fiona couldn’t hold her laugh in any longer. Her shoulders shook as she turned to Michael. “Is it always like this?”
“Unfailingly.”
“What did your mom say? Mean as a what kind of bug?”
“Oh, the rare striped-tail bug, hailing from the seventh circle of Hell. You haven’t heard of it?” He laughed. “The imaginary kind, Fi.” He then dropped a couple spoonfuls of scrambled eggs onto his plate. “You want eggs?”
“Of course she does, honey.” Rosie passed a heavy bowl of thick white gravy to Charlie. “She’s thin as a pole. We need to fatten you up a bit, Fiona. Little meat on your bones is good for you.”
“Oh, I’ve always been small,” Fiona said. “It kind of runs in my family.”
“Well, this one’s that way, too.” Rosie pointed her fork at Jessie. “Though for the life of me, I don’t know how. She’s eaten enough for four since she hit puberty. Her daddy’s downright convinced she’s got a hollow leg.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being thin, Mom,” Michael said.
“I know that, silly. I just think a woman ought to have a bit of cushion on her. Keeps her warm.”
“Just in case you’re planning on hibernating and living off your stored fat anytime soon,” Sophie said, causing an uproar of laughter around the table. “Right, Mom?”
“Oh hush, you,” Rosie said, though she wore a wide smile of her own. She waved a hand at Jessie impatiently. “Lizzie, hon, pass down that plate of potatoes, will you?”
“I will if you get my name, right,” Jessie said as she held the plate of fried potatoes hostage.
Rosie closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head. “Jessie. Good grief. You knew what I meant.”
“Sure, Dad.”
“Hush, you rotten egg.” Rosie picked up her napkin and swatted at her youngest. Jessie, however, was out of her reach, so she only managed to hit the table. “Hand me the damned plate already.”
“Language,” Lizzie chirped at her, only to receive an identical napkin swat a second later. This one successfully nailed its target.
Brian shoved a huge forkful of syrup-laden pancake into his mouth. “Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I fully plan on hibernating for at least an hour after this breakfast.”
“Guess that would explain the ten sausage links you’ve eaten in the time it’s taken the rest of us to pass the plates around,” Jessie said from Michael’s other side. She sipped orange juice through a bendy straw and casually clapped Grace’s hand in a quick high five.
Brian’s response was lost to Fiona as a nudging elbow distracted her. She turned toward an insistent Lizzie and found two interested eyes pinned on her, one blue and one green. “So,” Lizzie said, “how are you liking your first McElroy family meal?”
But Fiona had just taken her first bite of food, a mouthful of gravy-covered biscuits, and Lizzie’s words seemed like a distant memory as she closed her eyes and moaned. She opened them again when the entire room went quiet. The moment she did, however, every single person at the table burst into a fit of snickering.
“It’s the gravy,” Michael said. “Every time, without fail.”
“This is not gravy.” Fiona greedily licked her lips. “This is the nectar of the gods.”
Rosie beamed and nudged the gravy bowl, which had made its way around to her again, back toward Michael. “Give her some more, hon.”
“What’s in this?”
“Oh, little of this, little of that.” Rosie winked at her. “Recipe’s been in my family for generations.”
The warm press of a leg against hers distracted Fiona. She leaned back just enough to cast a subtle glance under the table. Lizzie’s leg rubbed slowly up and down against hers, though deliberately or by accident, she didn’t know. She looked up at Lizzie but was greeted with an eyeful of frizzy hair. Lizzie was leaning over the table, focused on Jessie, the two of them trading barbs about their musical tastes across the space Michael and Fiona both occupied. It was as if neither were there at all. No lusty glances sent Fiona’s way. No cute little lip-nibbling as if to say, “Oops. Is my leg brushing your leg? Gee, how awful.” There wasn’t a wink in sight. No way had it been intentional.
The voice in Fiona’s head scolded her. Of course it wasn’t intentional. That girl doesn’t want you, Fiona. This is an innocent family breakfast, to which you were kindly invited by the best friend you’re supposed to be helplessly in love with, remember?
“Get it together,” Fiona muttered under her breath.
“Hm? You say something, babe?”
Fiona tried not to frown as she turned toward Michael. Babe? Really? Once she saw his strained expression, however, her effort to keep from frowning became one to keep from laughing. “No, just, um, a song stuck in my head or whatever,” she said. “Can’t stop singing it. You know how it is. Right, babe?”
They stared one another down, barely suppressed laughter pulling at their lips. When Fiona snorted before she could stop herself, however, neither could restrain themselves any longer. They roared in each other’s faces, shoulders shaking and eyes clenched closed. Fiona tossed her head back. Her mouth hung open, but no sound escaped behind the tiny grunts of someone catching their breath every few seconds.
“Stop,” Michael said, between fits of his own. “Stop. You know I can’t handle the quiet laugh. Stop it.”
Fiona forced in a deep breath and blew it out slow. “Because your donkey laugh is so much better?”
“I can’t breathe,” he defended himself. “Stop it.”
“You telling me to stop makes it ten times harder to stop.” Fiona wheezed between the words. The laughter lost any semblance of purpose. They didn’t even know why they were laughing anymore, but they couldn’t make themselves quit. “Okay. Okay. Okay. We’re stopping now.”
She drew in a huge breath and held it. He did the same. “Don’t look at me,” she said, though she didn’t quite say it at all. It was more what she meant to say, because her lips were rolled under and pinched closed, so the best she could do was hum the words and hope he understood. Of course, they’d been in this predicament enough times that he did, and he quickly turned away.
Fiona clapped a hand over her mouth and closed her eyes. She counted to ten in her head, the last of the laughter’s tremors vibrating their way out of her shoulders. When she felt calm enough, she dropped her hand and let out her breath. She heard Michael do the same and glanced over. He was looking at her again, grinning.
“You’re so annoying,” she said, to which Michael winked and stabbed one of her gravy-laden biscuits with his knife. “Hey!” He popped half the thing into his mouth before she could stop him, the other half falling haphazardly onto his plate, and pumped his fist victoriously as he chewed it down.
It was only then that Fiona became aware of the complete absence of sound. Michael noticed, too, given the way his fast, messy chewing quickly ended in a painful gulp. They looked around the table at the now silent family, then at each other.
“Well, that was probably the most sickeningly cute thing I’ve ever seen you do, Mike,” Grace said.
Michael suddenly seemed rather captivated by the table’s wood grain. He pursed his lips and dragged his finger over one dark section. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, please.” Charlie scrunched his face up and let out an obnoxious laugh, hee-hawing like a donkey with every breath. Beside him, Sophie threw her head back, mouth open, and pretended to laugh. Her shoulders shook so intensely, she appeared to be seizing. They pushed at each other’s arms as they did so, and Charlie said, “Stop it. No, stop. I can’t handle your adorable silent laugh!”
“No, you stop.” Sophie pushed his shoulder. “You know I can’t withstand your donkey sounds. They’re too ridiculous and cute!”
“Stop.”
“No, you stop.”
“No, you st—”
“Okay!” Michael chucked a yeast roll across the table. It smacked into Charlie’s shoulder and nearly rolled to the floor, caught by Brian in the nick of time. “We get it. That was gross.”
Grace agreed with a nod. “Totally gross.”
“Gross,” Lizzie chimed and popped the last bit of a scrambled egg into her mouth.
“Grossest thing I’ve ever seen,” Brian said. “Right, Jess?”
“Huh?” Jessie’s head popped up from where she was subtly checking her phone under the table. “What? Oh, yeah, totally threw up in my mouth. Gag.”
The rapid thudding sound of Rosie’s fork knocking against the table drew everyone’s attention. “Oh hush, all of you,” she said. “Jessie Lynn, off your phone right now. Don’t make me tell you again. And the rest of you, stop teasing your brother and Fiona. They can’t help that they’re in love.”
“Whoa, Mom.” Michael shook his head, cheeks pinking up as fast as it took him to say the words. “Let’s not get crazy, okay? We’ve, uh, we’ve only been together a little while. Right, Fi?”
“Right. Yeah. Early stages, Mrs. McElroy. I mean, Rosie. But we’ll see where it goes.”
“Well, I just think you two are adorable together,” she said after a sip from her coffee mug. A smudge of peach-colored lipstick remained on the rim when she returned it to the table. “Tell us more. How’d you two meet? When did you get together?” She smiled at Michael. “I’ve been trying to convince this one to get himself a nice girlfriend for years now, and all the other kids have brought someone home to meet us at one point or another, though we like to pretend Jessie never did, given how all that mess turned out.”
“You said we’d never talk about it again, Mom,” Jessie snapped.
“I’m not talking about it.” Rosie sipped her coffee. “Then there’s Lizzie, of course. She’s never brought a boyfriend home, not even in high school, but then she’s always been a bit of a homebody. Always had her nose stuck in her books in school, though where all that ambition went after graduation, you’ve got me.”
“Gee, thanks, Mom.” Lizzie stuck her tongue out and made a sound similar to that of a goat. It didn’t make the slightest bit of sense to Fiona, but she laughed anyway.
Charlie propped his youngest, Madison, up on his knee and took a thick cloth napkin to her gravy-covered mouth. “So, what’s the story, Mike?” Madison squirmed under his cleaning hand, but he kept a firm grip on her. “Sit still, Maddi. It’ll be over faster if you just let me do it.”
“Uh, well, we met at school sophomore year, and I guess we just hit it off.”
“Ah, college hookups,” Lizzie said with a dreamy look in her eye.
“Excuse me, Miss?” Rosie leaned across the table to poke her daughter. “Do you have a beau you’ve been hiding from us, too?”
Lizzie perked up as if someone had just jabbed her in the back with a cattle prod. Her spine went rigid, and her eyes bugged like those of a deer caught in headlights. Fiona couldn’t tell if it was a look of fear, guilt, or something else. Maybe Lizzie just didn’t like talking about her private life and relationships. Or maybe she was hiding something. Either way, Fiona found herself leaning toward her, as if she could possibly miss a thing from less than two feet away. She was painfully curious and didn’t want to miss whatever was about to pop out of Lizzie’s mouth.
“Ew, Mom. Stop.” Jessie grimaced as she chewed the remainder of her biscuit, sounding as if the taste had suddenly gone bitter.
“What?”
“Don’t say ‘beau.’”
Lizzie’s frozen spine thawed, and she relaxed as the new topic took hold—quite clearly saved by her sister’s undying disapproval of, well, everything.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s gross and old-fashioned. You might as well call yourself dad’s ‘little lady’ or whatever.” Jessie vibrated with a full-body shudder. “I gave myself chills just saying that. Ew.”
“Anyway,” Michael said, “where was I before I was so rudely interrupted?”
“You and Fiona met in college.” Lizzie leaned back and stretched her arms up over her head. Her plate was scraped clean, the yolk-covered fork lying in its center like a bloody sword discarded on a battlefield. She’d faced a giant made of food and slayed it with fervor. “And she took pity on you because you’re a sad little ginger who’s been in college for, like, seventeen years now and still haven’t gotten a degree. Am I warm?”
Fiona snickered. “Eh, he’s not so little.”
“It’s true. He’s gargantuan.”
“Okay, first off,” Michael said, “I didn’t even start college until I was twenty-four, and then, you know, it takes time to figure out what you want to do. So, shut it. And second, I can’t help that I’m tall. Besides, you’re one to talk, Liz. You might only come up to my belly-button, but you’re plenty wide.”
“Damn right, I am,” Lizzie said, “and every last bit of me is perfection.”
“That’s right,” Rosie said with a chuckle. “All my girls are perfect just the way they are.” Brian cleared his throat pointedly, and Rosie gave him a look. “All my boys are, too, you ornery thing.” She turned her focus back to Fiona. “So, where did you and Michael meet exactly? Did you have a class together?”
Fiona wiped her mouth, having finished her last bite. She was so full, she was in physical pain, but she did her best not to show it. “Yeah. Yes, we had Calculus together, actually.” She glanced at Michael. Maybe they should have come up with some special sort of story to tell about an awkward meet-cute kicking off their soon-to-be epic love story. Then again, it wasn’t like the truth proved she wasn’t his girlfriend. Plenty of people met their significant others in college. Besides, Michael was smiling as if he didn’t mind, and it was too late to backtrack now anyway.
“Oh, are you a math major, too?”
“No, I’m actually working toward becoming a nurse practitioner. It’s just a long road, and I’ve had a few light semesters along the way. Michael and I actually bonded over the fact that we were the oldest people in that class. Everyone else was, like, nineteen.”
“Well,” Rosie said, “I always say it doesn’t matter when you start, just that you do.”
“What if I start drinking?” Brian asked.
Beside him, Grace snorted. “A little late for what-ifs on that front, little brother. Didn’t you start when we were, what, sixteen?”
“Stop calling me ‘little brother.’ You’re literally three minutes older than me.”
“And every second of those three minutes counts.”
“It’ll count when you die three minutes before me, too.”
“Yeah, three minutes of having Heaven all to myself before my ignorant twin brother arrives.”
“Statistically speaking,” Fiona said and pointed at Brian, “you’re more likely to die first.”
Brian balked. “What statistics? That say what? Girl twins live longer than guy ones?”
“That women live longer than men. So, yes, I guess that would probably apply to twins as well.”
“How much longer?”
“Around three years on average, I think.”
“Listen, Mike,” Brian said, “your girlfriend, here, is really bringing me down with her so-called ‘statistics.’”
“She’s a medical student, idiot.”
“So?”
“So, I’m guessing she’s studied a lot more statistics than you with your general-studies major that you never actually completed since you dropped out.”
“Hey! General studies means I studied a lot of things, in general, and I had to drop out to take over the stores with Charlie.”
“Honestly, it doesn’t matter who’s studied what statistics,” Fiona said. “You can verify what I said yourself. Google is your friend.”
Brian narrowed his eyes at her, then pulled his phone from his pocket. “Mom, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to break the no-phones rule for a second.”
“No, you don’t. Put that away.”
“Mom, it’s a matter of life or death, literally.”
“Well, you’re not going to die right now, son,” Rosie said. “You can look up your expected lifespan after breakfast.”
“It’s already after breakfast.” He stuffed one last huge piece of biscuit in his mouth and held up his hands. His voice muffled around the bite. “I’m done. See?”
“Uh-huh. Swallow first.”
As if on command, Brian immediately swallowed down his mouthful of biscuit. He winced as if it hurt, then choked. His eyes watered as he dissolved into a fit of coughing, as the rest of the table laughed and Rosie rolled her eyes.
“Grace, clap him on the back,” she said, just as Charlie Sr. shuffled into the dining room from the kitchen. The tip of his nose beamed as red as Rudolph’s, beat from the cold. A few strands of his gray hair were specked with fresh snow that hadn’t yet melted. He frowned at Brian.
“What’d I miss?”
“Oh, nothing much,” Rosie said. “Brian’s concerned about dying.”
“Huh,” he said, then shrugged. “Well, does seem like he’s well on his way, don’t it?” He kissed the top of Rosie’s head and took a biscuit off her plate. “Arms in the air, son.” He tore a bite off the biscuit and chewed it with his mouth open. “Pass me some of that gravy, will you, hon?”