I raise my eyebrows and look down at Vi, who crosses her arms and stares at her mom.
“What?” Then the recognition registers on her face. “Damn it. Gah!” She slaps me on the shoulder. “This is your fault! You make me go all frustrated mom on you, and I lose any ability to censor myself. Violet, please tell him I don’t talk like this at home.”
Violet grabs the flute back from her mother and then turns to me. “Fine. She’s better at home. But let’s get one thing straight.” She eyes us both. “I’m the favorite.”
With that the little brat exits, and Nat and I both lose it.
“What’d we miss?” Megan and Jen brush past Violet as she exits, Jen holding her flute out for a refill and Megan nearly plowing into me with her eyes trained on her e-reader rather than where she’s walking.
“Eyes on the road there, Rory Gilmore.” She bumps into me anyway.
“Huh?”
“Haha!” Jen laughs. “I doubt you’d ever catch Rory reading that!”
“Huh?” Megan asks again.
“I don’t even think she knows we call her that,” Jen adds.
“We’ve been calling her that since the episode where Rory was reading Ulysses the same time she was.” Natalie turns to Megan. “Not quite Ulysses today? Tell your baby brother what you’re reading.”
Megan’s eyes narrow. “Tell Mom and Dad who your sperm donor is.”
“Oooh, I like where this is going.” Jen hops up on the counter next to the pitcher. “Are we ever going to find out?”
With her successful deflection, Megan’s head falls back to her book, and she sidesteps the counter for the kitchen table and sits down. I follow her without notice and start reading over her shoulder.
“Careful, Megan. Or Griff’s gonna read your porn.” I guess Jen lost interest in Nat’s baby daddy.
Megan’s head shoots up, and my eyes go wide.
“Porn? Rory reads porn now?” I ask.
“It’s not porn,” Megan says, an eerie calm taking over her voice before her lips turn up in a wicked grin. “It’s male-male shifter porn, and it’s freaking fantastic.”
I look at Jen, her shoulders shaking with laughter. My eyes switch to Megan who does the same. “Male-male? Girls like that?”
Megan’s eyebrows shoot up. “Uh, yeah? Romance is romance, Griff. And shifter romance? Hot.”
“Shifter?” I ask, trying to piece it all together.
Nat finally joins in with a sigh. “They’re werewolves.”
“With weredicks!” Jen shouts before all three of them burst into laughter.
Stunned for the moment, I check both entrances to the kitchen to make sure Vi’s not hiding out, listening in for more evidence that her mom is, in fact, a potty mouth. Instead I find my mother lingering in the space between the kitchen and great room.
“Hey, Mom.”
Her smile is inviting as I approach and kiss her on the cheek. Like I predicted, she doesn’t care that I’m late.
“Come out to the porch with me,” she says, leading me to the heated three-season room that separates the kitchen from the backyard.
I glance over her shoulder and see my father playing chess with Violet, not sure what surprises me more—an eight-year-old who can kick my father’s ass in chess or the warm, easy smile on his face whenever he’s in Vi’s presence. I was too young to remember if he was ever like this with my sisters.
Mom rocks on the bench glider, patting the space beside her for me to sit. She looks cozy in her leggings and over-sized sweater, her sandy hair streaked with the finest bits of silver that she ties back into a messy bun. But her smile fades before I even sit.
“Sweetheart, you could at least pretend you’re not laughing in his face, make a show of it for a bit?”
My feet planted firmly on the ground, I rock us back and forth but look straight ahead instead of at her.
“You think I’m laughing?”
She’s tried to hint before she thinks it’s all an act, each thing I do to tarnish my image in my father’s eyes. How do I explain going to Europe to find myself only to come back the same as when I left—lost? I want to be the guy I was when I wasn’t here. But that guy can’t exist in real life. In my life.
“If not laughing, then what, Griffin? What are you doing to yourself?” She sets a ballet flat-covered foot on the ground, slowing the motion of the glider as she looks at me while I still stare straight ahead. “You have everything a guy your age could want, plus a secure future. So what is it with the drinking, the fights?”
I stand and cross the small enclosed space, doing what I do best—creating distance.