"Mia!" Zoe hissed, big eyeing her elder by a few minutes sister.
"What? We're just getting it all out there, right? This will be a hell of a lot less tense if we are just up front about everything. Liv is an arms dealer who stole from Roderick to create the sweetest little criminal meet-cute ever."
"Yes, the mauling was so damn sweet, Mia," Roderick drawled, shaking his head.
"Oh, wah wah wah. You healed just fine," Mia shot back, rolling her eyes. "He always was a bit dramatic, you know."
"Dramatic?" Roderick asked, but was drowned out by Elisa.
"And a sore loser," she added.
"Hey..." Roderick started.
"I know, right?" Leala chimed in. "He once overturned the entire Monopoly board."
"Because I found out all of you were scheming to cheat behind my back!"
"Oh, and he has like some kind of moral objection to family movie night."
"You all talk through the entire fucking movie," Roderick objected, only to be slapped on the back of the head by his mother.
"Language," she hissed at him. "Liv, cariña, would you like to help me in the kitchen? I suspect a fight any moment now," she added as voiced started getting raised.
I followed her through the living room and into the kitchen, the whole space maybe only as big as my bathroom with sage green painted cabinets and cupboards, a simple tile countertop, and very new appliances.
How she managed to cook for her whole family in such a small space was beyond me.
But she did manage. Because there were platters scattered everywhere, some loaded down already, others empty, waiting to hold whatever was in the pots on the stove and cooking inside it.
"You'll get used to the noise," Grace promised as she pulled the lid off a pot, puffs of steam rising up. "This is the mother's version of a luxury facial," she told me as she poked something inside with the tip of a sharp knife.
"Having six kids must have been deafening at times."
"Oh, mija, you have no idea. I used to stay up late at night even after working a double shift just to enjoy the quiet when they slept. Do you have any siblings?"
"No," I told her, shaking my head, feeling a bit of envy for her large, crazy family whose voices were loud in the other room, five sisters ganging up on their only brother.
"Not a happy home?" she asked, not caring that she was pressing. And maybe that was another mom thing. I wouldn't really know personally.
"No. There wasn't any joy that I remember. My mother passed when I was six. After that, all that was left was my father and me. And he... he had a lot of rules. And a lot of punishments for breaking even the most minor of them."
"Men," she sighed, shaking her head. "The world needs more good ones, yes?"
"You gave the world a good one," I told her, meaning it. Camden aside, and maybe Vas, I had never met any men I would genuinely call good. Like through and through, not just on the surface, not just enough to trick you into trusting them only to use that trust against you at some later time. "It's almost a shame you didn't have more."
"Six. Six is a lot," she told me as she went into the fridge. "So you like my Roderick?"
"I do," I told her because it was the truth, because I had no intentions of playing down what was between us again. A little more time with him only proved what I had been suspecting all along. Something was between us, something big, different, maybe even a little scary, but only in the way that any big, important thing in your life had the potential to really hurt you - either intentionally or not. "He's one of the best men I've ever met," I added.
"He takes such good care of us. He won't hear me say that. He doesn't like the praise. But he does. Not just me, this house, these fancy appliances he got me for mother's day. But all his sisters as well. It doesn't matter what time of day it is, if there is some big party over at his clubhouse, if he just came back from, being on the road for a week, if any one of those girls needs anything, he is there for them. I think he thinks it is his place to be the father since, well, I assume you know that story."
"He told me," I agreed.
"He feels responsible for all of us. I think... I think it is why he has been such a..."
"Manwhore?" I supplied, shrugging it off, knowing his history, knowing it meant nothing, said nothing about his future.
"Yes. That. I think he likes his brotherhood because it is a break. He gets to just be a young man, carefree." She paused, shaking her head. "And maybe he likes a break from all the estrogen."