“’Sup, man,” my brother, Jonathan, said from close by.
Peeking over my shoulder, I found that Jojo had gotten up from the island and was towering over my mom at her side, hand already shaking Ivan’s.
“How’s it going,” Ivan replied. “Ivan.”
Like Jojo didn’t know who he was.
“Jonathan,” my brother said, sounding totally cool, and not at all like he’d talked about Ivan’s “skater butt” in the past. “This is my hubby, James,” he continued on, hooking his thumb behind him to point at the island. James waved.
“You’re my fourth favorite figure skater,” James said, shooting me a wink.
Fourth?
Even Jojo wondered the same thing. “Who’s one through three?”
“Jasmine.”
“Two and three?”
“Jasmine.”
My dead heart gave a little burn of emotion, and if I was the kind of person to blow someone a kiss, I would have done it to him. “I’d push you out of the way if you were about to get run over,” I told him and meant it.
He smiled and winked at me again. “I know you would, Jas.”
I smiled back at him before glancing at Ivan to see him watching me. I was about to ask him what the hell he was looking at but stopped when I remembered I had agreed to try and be friends with him. What the hell had I been thinking?
“Would you push me out of the way of a car?” Jojo asked.
“No. But I’d pick some pretty flowers for your funeral.”
He scowled and stuck his tongue out at me. I stuck mine out right back. His middle finger came up to his face and scratched at the tip of his nose. I brought mine up and rubbed it across my eyebrow.
“Jasmine, come on,” my mom moaned. “Not in front of guests.”
“But he—” I started to say, pointing at Jonathan before stopping myself and shaking my head.
My brother’s “hehe” was really low, but I still heard him.
“Dinner is almost ready. Are you going to shower, Jasmine?” my mom asked just as Tali approached Ivan and introduced herself. At least that’s what I assumed when she hugged him.
I was watching them as I nodded, “Uh-huh.”
Ivan gave my sister a smile I hadn’t seen before… and it made me feel weird. Tali was a younger version of my mom. Beautiful, slim, with that red hair, pale skin, and bone structure that no plastic surgeon in the world could replicate. I couldn’t think of a single time I had been out with her and hadn’t caught someone staring at her or hitting on her. She was so used to it she didn’t even notice it anymore. And I had stopped caring that she was so pretty a long, long time ago.
Some were just better looking than other ones. Maybe I wasn’t as pretty as my sister, but I could kick her ass, and that had always made me feel better. But Tali would be the one to help me bury a body… if I ever needed to.
“Go shower then,” my mom demanded. “I don’t want the lasagna to burn.”
I nodded and glanced at Ivan, who was still talking to my sister. “Ivan, I’ll show you where the bathroom—”
“Do you want to play this next round of Jenga?” Jonathan asked him while I was still talking.
I blinked.
In the span of that blink, Ivan replied, “Sure.”
What?
“Go shower, stinky, so we can eat,” Jojo kept going.
Ivan looked over and must have seen the “wtf?” on my face because that hint of his smirk-smile crept over his cotton candy pink mouth. “Yeah, stinky. Go shower,” he echoed like an ass.
“He hasn’t showered either,” I let them know.
“I don’t smell,” Ivan said.
“I don’t either.”
“That’s debatable,” Tali said on a cough.
I blinked and ignored her because I knew what was going to happen if I didn’t take control of the situation. “Ivan, you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. I’m sure you have better things to do. I can show you where the bathroom is.”
“I’d like to play Jenga,” was his reply.
What was I going to do? Tell him no? I was going to regret this. I really was.
“I’ll show you were the bathroom is,” Jojo offered.
Shit.
“Okay,” I mumbled before leaning into Ruby and whispering, “Please make sure nothing bad happens.” I heard her laugh and felt her nod. Touching her head again, I gave one last look around the kitchen to see Ivan taking a seat beside James.
Then I got the fuck out of there, brushing by Ben on the way up the stairs like my ass was on fire. I took the fastest shower of my life, imagining all the random awful shit they were probably telling Ivan about me. It would be exactly what I deserved. I got dressed, looking decent for one of the only nights out of the week I had the chance to. Saturday night dinners were my period to be lazy and eat what I wanted to eat.
After rubbing aloe vera lotion into my poor, tired feet, I went down the stairs, straining my ears to listen to what the hell they could be talking about in the kitchen. The problem was, for once, it seemed like they were all whispering or not talking, because I couldn’t hear anything clearly.
At least until I made it just to the doorway. Then I heard them all laughing very, very quietly.
“I don’t get it, why does that make everyone laugh?” I heard Aaron, Ruby’s husband, ask.
It was Jojo who answered. “Have you seen pictures of her before she hit puberty?”
That was all it took for me to know what they were talking about. Bunch of assholes. But I still didn’t move.
“No,” was the other man’s reply.
Someone snorted, and I knew it was Tali. “Jas hit puberty really late. What was she? Like sixteen?”
It had been sixteen, but I wasn’t about to confirm it.
But my mom didn’t think twice about it.
“Some kids carry around baby weight for a while, you know,” Tali kept going, still talking really quietly. “Jas just happened to carry it for sixteen years until puberty hit,” she snickered.
“No,” Aaron tried to deny, bless his heart.
“Yeah,” Tali confirmed. “She was a little chunky.”
Jojo snorted. “A little?”
“Aww, now y’all are just being mean,” Ruby threw in. “She was so cute.”
“She had such a big butt, she hated wearing leotards because they would always give her wedgies,” my mom decided to share. “The more we tried to tell her to wear looser fitting clothes, the more she would wear those damn leotards and unitards, even though she was uncomfortable.”
There was a snicker that I knew belonged to Ivan. “That sounds like her.”
“You have no idea. That girl has always made it a point to do the opposite of what people want from her. She does it on principle. She always has. The only time a ‘no’ has ever stopped her was when she watched that one movie… what was it called? The hockey one she was obsessed with….”
“The Mighty Ducks,” Ruby offered.
“The Mighty Ducks, right. She begged me to put her into hockey, but there weren’t any hockey lessons that allowed girls. I was in the middle of arguing with this one coach to let her try out when she got invited to a birthday party at the Galleria, and the only reason I convinced her to go was because I had told her a lot of hockey players do figure skating to build up their skills.”
“I didn’t know that,” James said.
“Oh God, she watched that movie a million times. I tried throwing the tape into the trash at least once a week, but Mom would always take it back out,” Tali groaned.
“Didn’t she see you do it once and you guys got into a fight over it?” Ruby asked.
That made me smile, because I could remember that day completely. We had gotten into a fight. I’d been ten. Tali had been eighteen, I think. Luckily for me, she was an extra small person, and it hadn’t been so hard to try to beat her up for trying to throw my movie away.
“Yeah. She punched me in the damn nose,” my sister replied.
My mom burst out laughing. “You bled so much.”
“How can you laugh at me being attacked?” Tali gasped, reminding me she was the second biggest drama queen in the family.
“Your ten-year-old sister punched you in the face. Do you know how hard it was for me to not laugh when it happened? You had it coming. I warned you, she had warned you, but you did it anyway,” Mom cackled, sounding like she was proud of me in a fucked-up way.