LUCAS
Em’s family descended on the restaurant like a swarm of locusts. Incredibly noisy and obnoxious locusts.
Even though there were only eleven of them—thirteen, if you included me and a pretty chill toddler named Ivy Jean—the commotion coming from our table alone shot the volume up from classy-wine-bar to somewhere in the range of heavy-metal-concert.
It wasn’t just that Em’s family was loud, although that was definitely an issue. There was also a heightened awareness coming from the patrons around us. A shift in focus that occurred the moment we entered the restaurant, as everyone from the waitstaff to the customers did their best to pretend they hadn’t noticed Electric Earl had just strolled in. Some practically broke their necks trying to get a glimpse of him as they whispered and nudged and pointed him out.
For Earl’s part, he tried to play it cool, like he didn’t notice.
But I saw right through his charade. I got the sense he was more than aware of all the commotion his presence caused, and that it didn’t bother him in the least.
Once we were seated at our large table, I found myself envious of the robust McLean clan, and how easily, if not earsplittingly, they found their rhythm with one another.
No one waited for anyone else to finish talking. It was the exact opposite of the rare family dinners I’d had growing up. Those had been stoic affairs with only the occasional words exchanged, mostly when there was news to be announced, or someone needed the salt.
Instead, in Em’s family, there was no such thing as gaps in conversation or pleasantries or common courtesy. Everyone talked at once, seeming to carry his or her own discussions, talking right over the top of the other. If someone was telling a story, you told yours louder. They shoved the person next to them to emphasize their points. They laughed at their own jokes . . . and then they laughed harder at someone else’s.
Because that was the weird part. Somehow, they heard everything. They nodded when they were supposed to, and answered questions when it made sense. Even when it all just sounded like white noise to me.
It was like watching a well-orchestrated symphony. Or a comedy sketch, where everyone knew their part and responded on cue.
They understood one another that well.
Earl McLean presided over the table like the king I supposed he was.
Emerson nudged me to get my attention. “When I was little, I thought these guys were the worst,” she explained about her brothers. “They liked to make fun of me until I’d go a’cryin’ to Mama. But she’d only tell me to hush up and stop tattlin’.”
From Em’s other side, Drew patted his baby sis on the head. “Your tears sustained us.”
She glared in return. “Big words considerin’ y’all are a bunch of half-wits.” But her accusation only cracked him, and the rest of her brothers up.
It was hard to keep track of her brothers. Of all the boys, Seth was the oldest, followed by Drew, and then Tony, who was only twenty-six but already married. He and his wife, Maddie, were already expecting their second child. Brock was the baby of the bunch, younger than Emerson.
Emerson stood out for more than just being the only girl; she was also the only blonde. The boys, all four of them had the same jet-black hair their old man did.
“You think you had it bad?” Tony shouted above the ruckus. “One time these sons o’ bitches convinced me to climb inside a suitcase when we were playing hide-n-seek. Then they shoved it under a bed and left me there until Mama finally heard me screaming for help.”
Seth leaned back in his chair and grinned. “And you ain’t never gonna stop cry-babyin’ over it, are ya?”
Emerson’s mother sat at the opposite end of the table from her husband. The day Emerson had moved into the beach house next door, there’d been no mistaking that sexy-as-hell drawl of hers, even though she’d tried her best to cover it up. But that wasn’t the case with Georgia McLean—she sounded like she’d taken diction lessons from Scarlett O’Hara herself. She shared a meaningful look with me as she patted her youngest son’s hand and said, “Boys.” Like we were in on some secret, the two of us.
I got it. Really, I did. I’d had an older brother—one who’d gotten me into plenty of jams. Only we didn’t have the family to back us up.
And now I didn’t have the brother either.
I’d known what I was getting into coming here like this, but suddenly it was all too much. Being surrounding by Emerson’s brothers . . . her uninhibited and blunt family, only reminded me of what I’d lost.
“What about you, darlin’? You got siblings?” Em’s mom asked, her Emerson-like stare landing on me as she dabbed her bright-pink lips with her napkin. Her shiny blonde hair was where the similarities between the two seemed to end. As far as I could tell, Em was her father’s daughter—loud, competitive, and single-minded.
Emerson tried to intercept the question with a pointed: “Mama . . .”
But her mother balked. “What? I’m just curious about your young man’s family.”
“First off, he’s not my young man. And second, nosy, is more like. You don’t need to know about his family.”
In my house, this simple verbal hand slap by Emerson would have been enough to escalate a conversation into a full-scale battle. And that was the last thing I wanted, for Emerson or for her dad on his birthday weekend.
“It’s okay,” I told Georgia politely. “I had a brother. But he passed away earlier this year.”
The entire table—hell, who was I kidding, the entire restaurant—went silent.
This wasn’t what I’d wanted either, to make everything awkward as fuck.
Em’s brothers were the first to recover, rallying by tossing some of the standard phrases my way.
“Shit, man,” said Drew.
“Sorry,” added Tony.
Not to be left out, baby brother Brock threw in a quick, “That blows.”
Seth signaled for the waitress. “Can we get another round?” Apparently, he was the brother who thought all of life’s problems could be fixed with booze.
“I didn’t realize,” Georgia said.
“We all knew it was coming.” I could never quite say the other words, the ones my mother added next, the part about how it was probably a blessing, Adam’s suffering being over with. Because that part was bullshit. There was no blessing about it. “It wasn’t a surprise.” That much was true.
“He had cystic fibrosis.” Hearing Emerson say it for me, matter-of-factly and without adding any explanation or embellishments, loosened something inside me I hadn’t realized was knotted. Aster always had a way of saying it like she was trying to evoke sympathy . . . although for me or for her, I’d never been quite sure.
But not Em. Em just laid it out there. Acknowledged and accepted it without asking anyone for anything.
Her mom reached over and put her hand on top of mine. Her touch was warm. I guess that was what motherly felt like. It was nice.
Emerson found my other hand under the table. Her touch was nice too, but in a less-than-motherly way. “Lucas is putting together a gala, to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation,” she announced. “I’m on the committee.” Her fingers pinned my hand, palm up, against my thigh. She squeezed, and suddenly that’s all I could think about. The proximity of her hand to my junk. Not a good thing to be thinking about with her parents and her protective brothers sitting just inches away from me.
“Is that where y’all met?” Her mother asked in her heavy accent, as she watched me intently.
It took every ounce of willpower not to shift in my seat as Em’s fingers gripped again, this time edging just the slightest bit higher. Or maybe that was only my imagination. Maybe I only wanted them higher.
Regardless, I wouldn’t be getting up from the table anytime soon.
“No, ma’am. We’re neighbors, actually.” I was surprised this would be news to her. I figured Em had covered this with her family. “At least for the summer.” Emerson’s pinkie went rogue, skimming my inseam and I cleared my throat.
“Right, California. I keep forgetting about that,” Georgia McLean replied. Thankfully, she turned her attention to Emerson. “How much longer you plannin’ to stay there, anyhow?”
I couldn’t tell if the smile on Emerson’s lips was for her mother, or for what she was doing to me under the table. “Lauren and I signed our lease through the end of August. But the gala isn’t until Labor Day weekend,” she shot me a quick sideways glance. “The landlord said I could stay an extra week. That’s when I have to be back in Arizona anyway.”
“That’s comin’ up right quick,” her mother said, as if she had something more on her mind than just the logistics of Emerson’s housing situation. “Have you given any more thought to Bitsy’s offer? To do an internship at her agency?”
Emerson’s fingers went as still as a statue, and for the second time, an uncomfortable silence settled over the table.
But Electric Earl refused to let anything put a damper on his night, and he threw the spotlight back on me. “Well, I, for one, think it’s very admirable, young man. Giving back by throwing that big party o’ yours. You just let me know who to make the check out to. That’s what separates us from the animals, you know, our compassion for others.”
Em shot her dad a critical look. Two of her brothers made choking sounds, or maybe they were laughing, it was hard to tell.
“I thought it was our opposable thumbs set us apart,” Seth said, leaning back in his chair.
But Tony shook his head, still chuckling. “Nah, man. What about monkeys? They got thumbs.”
“It’s our ability to grieve.” This was from Drew, who despite having to take a sip of water to clear whatever had lodged in his throat, was making an attempt to sound totally credible.
“You’re both wrong. Elephants grieve,” Brock added, shooting down Drew’s perfectly sound theory. “That’s a fact. I saw it on Animal Planet.”
Looking unconvinced, Earl waved off the notion he might be wrong. “You kids. Always thinking you’re so smart.” Then he was grinning again, because I got the sense good ol’ Electric Earl was always grinning. Especially in public.
They went around and around like that, lobbing jokes and insults, each trying to one-up the others, until the waitress carried out Earl’s dessert, a mountain of an ice cream sundae topped with a sparkler as a candle. Then the entire restaurant broke out into a rendition of “Happy Birthday” to Electric Earl.