Bend (24 page)

We get out of the car, and at once I notice that the grass covering the expansive front yard smells freshly mown. Arching my back and raising my arms, I stretch my travel-worn muscles with a grunt.

Jay rounds the hood of the car, his eyes on me heavy-lidded and burning as they run over my body from head to toe. Heat flares in my core and flickers down between my legs, like embers that were all too easily fanned into flames.

Shit.
I’m horny. I want him, and I have no idea when or even if that need can be satisfied this weekend. It’ll be kind of hard to do, sleeping in separate rooms in a house filled with my family members.

He’d better stop staring at me like that, though, or the jig will be up. Everyone will take one look at his face, and there goes rule number one.

The front door to the house flies open, and a high-pitched little voice squeals, “Aunt Mia!”

“Freya!” I call back, throwing my arms wide as my oldest niece comes rushing toward me, her blonde ponytail bouncing behind her. She’s wearing strappy sandals and skinny jeans with a purple short-sleeved top, and my mind is blown at how grown-up she looks. She’s not quite six yet, but if I didn’t know better, I’d guess she was seven or eight.

Bending down, I scoop her up into my arms, letting out a grunt at the unexpected weight of all those small, gangly bones. I remember her being a newborn like it was yesterday, when lifting her was no more strenuous than picking up a watermelon or a gallon of milk.

“Oh, my gosh,” I puff out, groaning extra loudly for effect, “you’re getting too big to lift.”

Giggling, Freya leans back to look at my face, her smile showing rows of tiny, perfectly white teeth with the two front top ones missing. “Guess what?” she says with breathless excitement, widening her blue eyes almost comically at me. “When we go to the fair, I’m gonna be big enough for the big rides!”

“No way!” I exclaim.

Carrying her youngest on her hip, my sister is strolling toward us, and I throw her a grin before asking Freya, “Are you brave enough to go on the big rides?”

“Uh-huh!” the girl pronounces without hesitation, and then, with a look over my shoulder, she starts wriggling in my arms. “Uncle Jay!”

Uncle Jay?
I cringe as I let the squirming child back down on the ground. I don’t dare to even glance back while Freya hurries over to him.

“Hey,” I say to Paige, giving her a hug that she returns one-armed. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine. Second trimester is the easy part,” she reassures me, and I can’t tell otherwise, because Paige always looks good. With her denim capris and flowing white blouse, I can’t be sure if she’s showing yet. Her long and golden-blonde hair falls in perfect, soft waves around her shoulders, and her pale eyes are accentuated by subtle makeup that makes them seem larger and all the more striking within her narrow, delicate features.

Next to Paige, I’ll always be the perky and cute one standing beside her exquisite and elegant big sister. I’m okay with that now. Ten years ago? A little less so.

“Hi, Abigail,” I chirp at the girl in her arms, who’s wearing an adorable pink summer dress, her short and whitish-blonde hair framing her porcelain-doll cheeks. After one cagey look at me, my youngest niece buries her face against her mother’s neck.

“Abi, you remember your Aunt Mia, don’t you?” my sister murmurs to her daughter, reaching up to tuck hair behind the girl’s ear. “She came to your birthday party.”

I guess three months is an eternity for a three-year-old, because Abigail just tightens the grip of her chubby little arms around her mom’s neck.

“Her shyness has been getting worse lately,” Paige explains with a grimace.

“That’s okay,” I say loud enough for Abigail to know I’m talking to her. “I’m gonna be pretty sad if I don’t get a hug at some point this weekend, though.”

Still clinging to Paige, my youngest niece peeks at me, and I beam at her, trying my best to look friendly and goofy. She still just stares. Behind me Freya is chatting up a storm, and Jay’s much deeper voice only cuts in occasionally, when the talkative five-year-old allows it.

Over by the front door, I see two figures coming outside. Recognizing the dark-gray of my grandmother’s hair and the brown of my mom’s, I make my way over to them to say hello.

Smiling, I step into Grandma’s arms first, hugging her tentatively, because she’s a small woman and looks like she’s made of skin and brittle bones. But when she starts squeezing the air out of me, I tighten my hold, too. She smells like she always does, exactly like the grandma from my childhood—cinnamon incense with a hint of the floral scent of her medicated eczema lotion.

She leans back to look at me, stroking a hand along my cheek and saying, “Mia mine.”

“How are you?” I ask.

“Oh, I’m fine.” Grandma tilts her head to look behind me. “But we’ll talk more later. I need to say hi to that handsome young doctor of yours.”

I shake my head as she walks away. Maybe one of these days she’ll call him by his actual name.

I turn to my mom and enter into her embrace. “Hi, Mom,” I say, my voice muffled against her hair.

“How’s your hand?” Mom asks before she’s even let go of me.

“Fine. Much better.” I raise my hand up in front of her and wiggle my fingers to prove it.

Mom grabs it to take a closer look. “That’s a pretty big scar.”

“Yeah,” I say with an exaggerated sigh. “There goes my hand modeling career, I guess.”

My mom rolls her eyes, and her small-boned face, so much like Paige’s, tightens up with exasperation. “I was so worried about you that night.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”
Sorry my poor choices and clumsiness caused you stress. Sorry you never get to stop worrying about your kids.

After giving me a kiss on the cheek, she moves down the driveway to join the others and greet Jay. Then we all head inside, everyone talking at once, Freya loudly trying to cut into the grown-up conversation while keeping a vise-like grip on Jay’s hand. I throw him a smile that he answers with an inscrutable look.

We pass through the tall-ceilinged and peach-colored foyer, past the formal living room, where massive windows flood the cozy space and its classical furniture with sunlight, and on through the open archway into the airy and oversize kitchen, where cream cabinets and white-and-gray marble countertops lighten up the already bright room.

Mom doesn’t like darkness. Guess she gets enough of that in the courtroom.

“Where’s Dad and Cam?” I ask my mom over my shoulder, as she’s the only one who followed me—sounds like everyone else stayed in the living room.

“I sent your dad to the grocery store,” she answers as she walks over to the open dishwasher, which she was obviously in the middle of emptying when we showed up. “I didn’t really have time this week to go stock up on what we need with everyone being here.

“And Cam?” I repeat, crossing over to help her, plucking a pair of coffee mugs out of the dishwasher. My little brother lives on campus, and there’s no way my parents would let him get away with missing Grandma’s birthday—not that he’d want to. I think. It’s hard to know with Cam. Sometimes he’s the life of the party. Other times he’s an antisocial turd.

“Oh, he’s in the backyard, mowing the lawn.” Leaving the bottom rack for me, my mom abandons the dishwasher to grab a spray bottle from under the sink and fill it up with water.

“I thought you had landscapers who do that.”

“Yeah, but he got mouthy with your dad, so...” With a wave of her hand, my mom trails off.

I let out a half snort, half laugh. It’s so comforting how some things never change. As a kid, Cameron wouldn’t have spent nearly as much time doing chores if he didn’t take so much joy in riling Dad up. Of course, my brother is an adult now—depending on your definition of the word—and he could’ve just refused to mow the lawn. That he didn’t must mean he’s in a good mood today.

It’s pretty cool that everyone in my immediate family is here for the weekend, but we’ll definitely be missing my dad’s sister and her kids. My aunt Hannah is a big-shot marketing executive in New York City, and since the original plan was to not have much of a party, she booked tickets for the middle of next week so she could be here for Grandma’s actual birthday, which is on Thursday, and it was too late for her to rearrange her schedule. And my cousins are both in college on the East Coast and also couldn’t get away.

Mom starts spraying water on the various plants she has sitting on the counters and in the corners of her hardwood-floored kitchen, and I fish the basket out of the dishwasher, setting it down on the counter above the utensil drawers. From the living room come Jay’s and Paige’s and Grandma’s muffled voices along with Freya’s almost nonstop chattering.

I kind of feel like I’ve entered a parallel dimension. One where nothing has changed, because as far as my family knows, Jay and I are still just friends. And since that’s exactly what we’re pretending to be around them, it’s almost as if the past few weeks didn’t happen. Like it was all just a dream—a dream too strange and too good to be real.

Making enough noise to wake the dead, the girls and the other grown-ups join us in the kitchen. Paige is still carrying Abigail, and Freya is still tugging Jay around by the hand while he seems to be trying to have a conversation with my grandmother.

My heart does a little flip at the sight. He has a resigned but patient look on his face, and that’s exactly why Freya always attaches herself to him like a burr. Because he doesn’t mind.

“Uncle Jay!” she bursts out now, pulling him in the direction of the door that leads to the backyard. “Guess what! I’m building a fairy garden! Wanna come see?”

“Absolutely,” Jay says immediately.

“You don’t have to, Jay,” Paige cuts in, throwing an exasperated look at her older daughter.

“No, I think I do,” Jay replies with a small chuckle, and then he looks down at Freya while he says, “It sounds amazing. I can’t wait.”

Meeting his eyes across the kitchen, I give him a tiny smile. He returns it. That feels surreal, too. More like the old us, from before, when things were less complicated. Less tense. Less uncertain.

“Do you want to come, Abigail?” Jay asks the girl still clinging to her mom. His arm muscles flex as he resists Freya’s attempts to haul him toward the door. She clearly would prefer to have him all to herself. I know the feeling.

In Paige’s arms, Abi’s eyes go wide as she hesitates, her desire to join in warring with her apprehension. Everyone is quietly watching her, which probably doesn’t help, and I find myself silently cheering her on.
You can do it, Abigail. Go play.

“How about I come with you?” my grandma says, and immediately my littlest niece starts squirming until her mom lets her slide down to the floor. She reaches for her great-grandmother’s hand, and with a smile, I turn back to putting away the clean utensils.
Above the clinking of forks and knives, I hear the click of the patio door as the four of them go outside, the door shutting on Freya’s excited babbling.

“She calls everyone uncle and aunt,” Paige says, raising her voice above my clattering as she comes over and starts grabbing a handful of plates from the dishwasher. “I’m hoping it’s just a phase.”

“When Mia was a little younger than Freya, she went through a period of calling a lot of grown men ‘Daddy,’” my mom comments while picking dead leaves off one of her plants. “It lasted for months, because as soon as she noticed that it annoyed your dad, she did it even more often.”

I let out a choked laugh, my neck flaming, and Paige throws me a sideways glare as she stacks plates into the top cabinet.
Typical Mia,
her look says, and I stick my tongue out at her. My Goody Two-Shoes sister hasn’t intentionally irritated anyone in her life. Which is actually pretty irritating in itself.

The patio door opens again, and I grin as my brother steps inside—all strapping, athletic, six foot two inches of him. A black Giants cap with orange lettering covers his dirty-blond hair, and he’s wearing black sports shorts and a white tee that clings damply to his muscular torso.

“Did you finish?” Mom asks, glancing at him.

“Pretty much,” Cam says with a shrug, which could mean he mowed almost the entire lawn—or hardly any of it. “Had to come say hi to my favorite sister.”

“Hey!” protests Paige with mock indignation as he comes into the kitchen and swoops me up in a hug.

“Ugh,” I say while giving him a quick squeeze. “You’re all sweaty and gross.”

Pulling back before I can push him away, his mouth twists into a smirk. “It’s how the ladies prefer me.”

“Seriously?” I wrinkle my nose at him.

“Ew!” yelps Paige.

And Mom scolds, “Cameron!”

My brother throws up his arms in surrender. “Okay! Sorry! Sheesh.”

Grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl on the kitchen table, he plunks himself down in a chair, stretches out his long and tanned legs, and bites into the fruit with a loud crunch.

With a shake of my head, I put the utensil basket back in the dishwasher, and then I turn to my mom, who’s leaning against the counter and frowning down at her smartphone. “Do you need help with anything for the party, Mom?”