TWELVE
Ozzie
When I come back downstairsfrom putting Mila’s bags in the room Mom had set up for her, I find my “fiancée” in the kitchen looking like a deer in headlights.
Beau is already peppering her with questions.
“What’s your GPA? Ozzie cannot handle dating someone with a higher GPA than him, so please tell me it’s higher. You will make my day,” Beau is asking, cackling.
“Hey, that’s extremely personal and rude,” Beau’s wife Betsy says, taking a sip of her beer. She turns to Mila, “Don’t even listen to him. Half the stuff he says is not true, and the other half is a joke. Right, honey?”
She turns to wink at Beau, who’s now spotted me lurking in the doorway. “Well, look who decided to join us! You know, Ozzie, you shouldn’t feed the first girl you bring home to the wolves like this.”
My sister Sawyer runs up and throws her arms around me; she hugs me like Mom. “Baby brother!” She also pinches my cheek, like Mom.
Melinda, Tabitha, my sisters-in-law Betsy and Cynthia, Tabitha’s wife Eden, and Sawyer’s husband Jake stare at Mila with wide eyes full of curiosity and mischief.
Sawyer whispers in my ear, “I love her! Good job.”
“I wouldn’t say you guys are wolves,” Mila says to Beau. “There’s a lot of you, but maybe more like a house full of puppies.”
This gets a chuckle from the group, and I exhale.
I don’t think twice about going to Mila, sidling up next to her and slinging my arm around her waist. “Well, that’s apropos since I did follow Mila around campus like a lost puppy, and that’s how I won her over.” Softly, I press my lips against Mila’s cheekbone. When I pull away, her face is aflame, and she’s shooting daggers with her eyes.
“Ozzie, don’t embarrass her,” Tabitha teases, wrestling her ringlets into a top knot.
“She’s not embarrassed; she’s thirsty from the drive,” corrects Eden, standing at the fridge. “Mila, what do you want to drink? We have beer, wine, hard seltzer….”
Mila clears her throat. “Just water, thanks. I’m only 19.”
This, we did not talk about.
I knew she was in her second year of college, but we hadn’t even sat down to share details that we might need to know about each other.
Everyone goes quiet, while the ticking of the grandfather clock in the other room suddenly becomes the loudest noise in the house.
Mom breezes in and pours herself a drink from the margarita pitcher. “Everyone close your mouths; you’ll catch flies.”
“Nineteen,” Bryan snorts. “Mila, blink once if you’re okay and twice if you’re here against your will.”
Mila’s body stiffens at the kidnapping joke, and Mom simply huffs. “You kids do know that your father and I ran away and got married at 17 and 18,” she says.
A further uncomfortable silence blankets the room. Mila looks up at me with pleading eyes. “Maybe this was a bad idea,” she murmurs when the other siblings move on to another subject.
Maybe I went too far with this fake engagement. All I wanted was a buffer, someone to make all the teasing and the questions stop. Something to make me feel like I did something.
I glare at Beau because he’s the one who told me the questions would cease if I brought a date home. “It seems the questions are never-ending now,” I say to him.
“What questions?” Sawyer asks, her innocent, hazel eyes looking back at us as she fills a glass with water for Mila from the dispenser in the refrigerator door.
Betsy saves the day by plonking down a massive tray of appetizers she’s removed from the oven.
Beau picks up a mozzarella stick and immediately burns his mouth on it, provoking much-needed comic relief.
Everyone relaxes after that. Tabitha asks Mila what her major is, where she’s from, who are her parents, what they do for a living, and what her career goals are.
Mila answers as if she’s practiced it already a thousand times. And yes, I suppose she has already been living a double life, so fooling my family for a weekend is nothing.