Wait for It

“I don’t think you bought enough beer,” my dad commented in Spanish.

I shot him a look over my shoulder as I poured another two bags of ice over the bottles. “Pa, it’s Josh’s birthday. Nobody needs to be getting drunk. Come on. I bought like half the sodas, waters, and juice boxes that the grocery store carried. Everyone can get Capri Sun wasted if they want.”

He shot me back an expression that I had no doubt resembled mine all too well. “Uy. You could have bought some more, or told me and I would have.”

Only in my family did adults come to a children’s party expecting beer.

My dad had already paid for all the meat being grilled. He should have known better than to say something like that. Plus, I’d spent a horrifying chunk of my checking account balance on everything else for the party, and that was considering I’d gotten a discount from a client who owned party rental stuff for the moonwalk, tables and chairs. Luckily, I’d already owned the Slip-N-Slide.

I kept telling myself the only person whose happiness mattered today was Josh’s. And Louie’s. Everyone else could go eat a big pile of monkey shit if there wasn’t enough beer to drink, damn it. What did they think I was made of? Money?

Dear God, I was turning into my mom.

“It’ll be fine,” I mumbled to him, slapping him on the back as I headed back into the house to grab the midnight blue tablecloth I’d been reusing for the boys’ birthdays the last couple of years. Inside, my mom was hustling around the kitchen, preparing trays of vegetables and other easy finger foods I’d picked up the night before. She shot me that tight, distressed smile she always had on her face when people were going to come over.

When Drigo and I were kids and the holidays would come around, we’d hide. My mom, who was normally a very clean, very meticulous and tough-loving human being with a pretty good temper—as long as you didn’t say something she didn’t like or do something that embarrassed her—turned into a walking human nightmare. Not being around when she needed help wasn’t very nice, but the crap that came out of her mouth when she was trying to be perfect was a lot more “not nice.” A few times, Rodrigo had texted me RUN if he’d gotten wrangled into one of her moods.

And in this case, even though this was my house and it was only a bunch of kids, family members, and the nearest neighbors coming… I wasn’t expecting any differently. She’d complained about my lack of baseboard cleaning as soon as she had shown up, and then proceeded to walk around the house with a wet towel cleaning them, before going in my bathroom and the one the boys shared and making sure they didn’t have pee and poo stains all over the walls or something.

So I wasn’t ashamed of saying I had smiled at her and got the hell out of the house and her way as quickly as I could, busying myself with other things outside.

The box of decorations was right where I’d left it earlier in the living room, and I could hear the boys fighting from Josh’s room, more than likely playing video games until everyone showed up.

“Guys, will you help me decorate as soon as you get a break, please?” I called out to them, pausing in the living room with my hands holding the box to listen to their response of “Five minutes!”

I knew better. “Five minutes” was open to interpretation.

“I’m serious! Right when you’re done! The faster you help me, the faster you can get back to playing.”

They might have groaned, but they might have not. I wasn’t positive. All I heard was “Okay!” yelled back distractedly.

A girl could dream.

My mom’s back was to me in the kitchen, and I speed walked as fast as possible through it and back out the door so she wouldn’t catch me. She didn’t. Thankfully.

Surprisingly, only a few minutes later, the boys came outside. Louie immediately asked with a frown, “What’s wrong with Abuelita?”

To which I responded, “She’s a little cuckoo during parties, Goo.” The expression he shot over his shoulder as he glared at the door that led inside the kitchen made me crack up. He looked deceived and surprised. The kid had no idea my mom was crazy beneath the surface.

Between the three of us, we set up the rest of the decorations, the moonwalk looming over the yard, calling all three of our names, but somehow we focused and finished organizing everything about fifteen minutes before the time on the invitations stated the party was set to start.

“Diana, did you invite your neighbors?” my dad asked from his spot at the grill.

“Yes,” I confirmed with him for the second time. My thinking was, if I invited them, they hopefully wouldn’t complain when my visitors parked in front of their houses. Just two days ago, Louie and Josh had walked around, leaving invitations on doorsteps as I waited on the deck with Mac. I’d made them address the envelopes and almost died when I saw how Louie had spelled Dallas’s name.

“Hello!” a female voice shouted from over the other side of the fence.

All of us—my dad, Josh, Louie, and me—all turned to look in the direction we’d heard the speaker.

And sure enough, four different people peeked over the chest-high fence. Three of them were smiling; the fourth one not so much, but they were all well-known and loved faces. At the front, the taller of the two women in the group, was the face I’d just seen on television a month or two ago. Pretty, a hair older than me, and at one point, someone I resented a lot because she was so awesome and magnificent, and I was… not.

But that had only been when we’d been little kids. My cousin was nothing short of amazing, especially because she didn’t think or act like she was too cool for school. Nobody likes a stuck-up, snobby bitch, and she was nowhere even close to that. I was probably more of a stuck-up, snobby bitch than she was.

“Sal!” I yelled, waving. “Come in!”

She beamed at me, swinging her arm over the top of the fence to undo the latch and push the door open. She filed in first, followed by her mom who was my aunt, and her dad who was my dad’s brother, and all the way at the end was her husband. I didn’t think I would ever get used to calling that man her husband. Out of the handful of times I’d met the retired soccer player, I’d probably only been able to look him in the eye twice.

Sal smiled as she walked over, her arms extended forward like she hadn’t seen me in years. Which was true, it had been almost two years since I’d last seen her in person. Living in Europe most of the year didn’t leave her with a whole bunch of time to come back home. “I’m sorry for crashing the party without RSVPing—”

“Shut up,” I mumbled, taking her in a hug. “I didn’t even know you were in town.”

“We flew in yesterday. I wanted to surprise my parents,” she explained, squeezing me. Pulling back, she grinned and I grinned back at her. Despite being two inches taller than me, we’d each inherited our dads’ eyes and leaner frames. Where hers was a work of lean, muscular art, mine was more a masterpiece of Pop-Tarts and good genes. Average: the story of my life. Slightly lighter skinned, which she got from her mom, and way more freckle-faced, the family resemblance was still there between my cousin and I. Our parents used to say that, when we were really young, we would tell everyone we were sisters. “Rey!” she called out over her shoulder.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my uncle and aunt talking to my dad, giving him hugs, and Reiner—I had a hard time not calling him by the name half the world knew him by—standing off to the side by them. At the call of his name, he said something to my dad and came over to us, all long and lean and too good-looking.

By some miracle, I managed to keep my face even. He was my favorite cousin’s promised one after all. The love of her life, for real. I wouldn’t hold it past her to cut someone if they put the moves on him. She might be well-off now, but she hadn’t always been. You could take the girl out of the hood, but you could never take the hood out of the girl.

“Rey, you remember my cousin Diana,” she stated rather than said.

“Hi,” I kind of giggled for a second before catching myself and extending my hand out toward him. I couldn’t be too greedy and ask for a hug; the only person I’d ever seen him hug other than Sal had been her immediate family and my mom. She’d talked about that hug for three months afterward.

“Hello,” he stated evenly, shaking my hand firmly.

Switching my gaze back to my cousin so I wouldn’t get caught ogling the hottest forty-two-year-old in the world too long, I grinned back at her as if a man worth over three hundred million dollars hadn’t just been touching me. “Are you hungry? We have water.”

“I’ll take some water and some food,” Sal said as Reiner reached up to place a hand on her shoulder. “Di, where’s your mom? I need to tell her hi before—”

“Salomé! Mija!” my mom cried out from the back door at the top step.

Mija. Her daughter. God help me.

I just barely held back an eye roll. She didn’t even call me that. Since Sal had gotten married, everyone in the family acted like she was a celebrity instead of the kid who had fallen out of the tree and broken her arm at our house in El Paso. My mom was probably the worst about it; it really got on my nerves. And maybe just maybe made me a tiny bit jealous that she was more affectionate and proud of my cousin than me.

It wasn’t Sal’s fault.

“Brace yourself,” I whispered to her.

She elbowed me with a snort.

The next two hours went by in the blink of an eye as a few friends of Josh’s from school and their parents showed up, mixed in with the family we had in San Antonio, and the young couple from next door and their kid. There must have been at least fifty people in the backyard and the birthday party was still going in full swing. We still hadn’t cut cake, socked the shit out of a piñata, or opened presents.

“You need help with anything?” my cousin asked, coming up behind me with two used royal blue party plates in her hands.

I was squatting by one of the coolers, trying to rearrange more drinks inside. “That’s okay. I’m done.”

She watched me as I stood up, her pretty face beaming. “There’re so many people here.”

“I know. I’m pretty sure I don’t know ten of them,” I huffed, zoning in on the group of adults I really was pretty positive that I’d never met in my life. “Anybody bothering you guys?”

“No.” She shook her head. “When he has his hat on, no one pays attention.”

That was the thing with Sal: she didn’t say no one knows who I am. She didn’t care. My mom had shown me pictures that Sal’s dad had posted online of her face on a billboard in Germany, for God’s sake.

“Good, because if they are, tell them to fuck off, or tell me and I’ll tell them to fuck off.”

Sal laughed and tapped her elbow against mine a little too hard, but I kept my wince to myself. “The boys look great.”

For probably the third time in the last couple of hours, that all too familiar knot formed in my throat. The first time had been when I’d overheard Louie in the moonwalk shouting, “This is the best party ever!” The second time had been when one of Josh’s friend’s moms came into the backyard and referred to me as his mom. Neither one of us had objected to the title, but I’d felt every inch of it. How could I not? I shouldn’t be the one throwing the party. It should have been Rodrigo.

“Josh has grown a foot since I last saw him,” she commented, her gaze on the moonwalk like she could see him through the net walls. “And Louie’s still the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I know. He really is, and he’s the sweetest kid in the world.”

“Josh isn’t?”

I kind of gave her a side look. “When he wants to be, but he’s just like Rodrigo, a smart-ass.”

Her chuckle had me glancing at her, frowning.

“What?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know you’re the smart-ass in the family.”

“I am not,” I scoffed.

“Sure you’re not,” she laughed.

“Diana?” a male voice asked from behind, pausing our conversation.

I was too distracted to piece together why the rough, male voice sounded so familiar, but I was about to turn my head over my shoulder when it clicked. He’d come.

“Hey,” I said to the voice I recognized as Dallas’s from the rough texture it had, fully turning around to find him a few feet away with Miss Pearl on his arm. Well. I had no idea they even knew each other, but that was pretty damn cute he’d brought her. “Miss Pearl, I’m so happy you’re here.”

The older woman smiled. “Thank you for inviting me, last minute and all, Miss Cruz.”

And she went there. Okay. I barely held back a laugh at her brutal honesty. “Diana, please. You’re welcome. Come on in and let’s get you a seat and something to eat and drink,” I said, walking around to take her other hand. “I’ll find you later,” I said to my cousin who simply nodded, head bobbing a hello at the two newcomers. Miss Pearl seemed to eye her for a second too long but followed after me.

I made eye contact with two of my other cousins who happened to be sitting at the table closest to us and mouthed, “Move it” while cocking my head to the side. Luckily, they were polite enough to move, taking their trash with them.

“You didn’t tell me with enough time about the party,” Miss Pearl started. There we went again. “I couldn’t buy your boy a present,” she apologized as we settled her into a chair at an empty table.

“Don’t worry. He has so many presents already. What can I get you both to drink?”

She requested a Diet Coke and Dallas a beer after I told him what we had.

I was surprised he was here. With a beer and a red cup filled with soda in hand, I made my way back to the table, dodging a horde of kids walking through the yard with their cell phones in hand, not paying attention to where they were going.

“Here you go,” I said to both, passing Dallas his can, skipping his gaze in the process, and handing Miss Pearl her cup of diet. “Are you hungry?” I asked her. “We have fajitas, chicken, Mexican rice, beans, nachos…”

“I can’t handle spicy. It messes with my digestion. Is any of that fine?”

“Yes, ma’am. None of it is spicy.”

“I’ll take some chicken and Mexican rice, whatever that is.”

My lips quirked. “Okay. I’ll bring you back a plate. Dallas? Anything?” I made myself ask before my mom caught me not asking and demanded to know where the hell my manners had gone.

But my neighbor turned toward the older woman instead of responding to me. “I’m gonna grab my own plate. You’ll be fine, Nana?”

Wait a second, wait a second.

Nana?

She lifted those thin, gnarled fingers as I stood there and tried figuring out what the hell was going on. Nana? “Boy, I was born fine,” the woman answered, oblivious to the questions bouncing around in my head.

Dallas raised his eyebrows but grinned that grin I’d only seen him give Louie. “If you say so.”

“I say so,” she confirmed, raising her entire hand to wave him off. “Go.”

Fucking Nana? Dallas was related to Miss Pearl? Since when?

“I can get whatever you want,” I started to say before he stood up, my gaze bouncing back and forth between the man and woman who lived across the street from me.

“I know you can, but I got two hands. I can help.”

Nana? Focus, Diana, focus. I gestured toward the grill where one of my uncles was currently manning it, but really, I glanced at Miss Pearl one more time. I didn’t see the relation. I really didn’t.

We made it three feet away from the table when he asked, “Why don’t you tell her your last name isn’t Cruz?”

I eyed him as I snickered. “I don’t know. I’ve told her my last name before, but she keeps calling me Miss Cruz or Miss Lopez. I just let her run with it.”

He sighed and shook his head, sliding those hazel eyes toward the table. “She doesn’t forget anything. Don’t let her fool you. I’ll talk to her about it.”

Was it my imagination or were things already less awkward and more comfortable between us? I didn’t think I was imagining it. Then again, nothing could bring people together quite like seeing a person bawling their eyes out and sharing stories about people who had been loved and lost.

He’d already more than proved to me multiple times he was a good man. A really good man.

“It’s not a big deal. It’s fine. I know what my last name is.” I glanced at him just as we stopped in front of the grill. “I’m glad you came. Louie will be happy to see you.”

Freshly showered and wearing clothing that wasn’t wrinkled or stained for once, it brightened up everything about him. He shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, and I could see the hint of a smile on his pale pink mouth. Dallas squinted a little as he asked, “Did he write my name on the invitation?”

I couldn’t hold it. I burst out laughing. “Yes.”

I could see the corners of his mouth twitch up a little more. “It said Dal-ass on it. That’s how he wrote it. D-a-l-a-s-s. Dalass.”

Just thinking about Louie’s bad handwriting spelling out his name again made my eyes tear up. I’d let myself lose it once he and Josh had made it across the street. He wasn’t picking up on the spelling thing very well, but he was trying. Who was I to knock down his best effort? Especially when it amused me to no end. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was wrong.” I gasped. “So wrong.”

“Sure,” he said, his mouth quirking up that much more until it was 75 percent of a grin. “It made me laugh. Don’t worry about it.”

I grinned at him and gestured toward the food. “You okay with Mexican food?”

“I don’t know anyone who isn’t okay with Mexican food.”

That distracted me. I raised both my eyebrows at him, impressed. “Tío. ¿Me das una pierna de pollo, porfa?” I asked my uncle who had taken over the grill, before turning back to the biggest man at the party standing right next to me. “What do you want to eat?”

“Fajitas,” he said in his unforgiving, inflexible English that I barely managed not to smile at.

“Y un pedazo grande de fajita, por favor,” I translated, even though my uncle spoke and understood English pretty well. He wasn’t much of a talker and handed over one plate after another with the meat I’d requested.

“You all right?” Dallas asked as I led him over to the table with the sides.

“Yeah.” I glanced at the hand he had loose at his side. “I never asked, how’s your boo-boo?”

I’d swear on my life he laughed a little, even flexing his hand, too. “Fine. No gangrene, no nothing.”

That made me snort and look up at his face. His facial hair had grown in again lately, and I couldn’t say it didn’t look nice. “You’re welcome.”

Dallas’s smile was this grudging thing that only made mine grow. The more he fought being friendly with me, the more aggressive it made me. The more I wanted it. I’d never been good with people telling me I couldn’t have something.

“I invited Trip, but he said he already had plans, so you’re on your own today.” I’d also invited Ginny, but besides her having to work, I noticed that she and Dallas weren’t close for whatever reason. He probably wouldn’t care that his older cousin wasn’t going to show up, why bother mentioning it?

Trip’s name had barely come out of my mouth when the expression on his face fell just a little, just a little, but he nodded. “He left for Houston.”

He’d explained that to me. I gestured to the trays of food set up on the table. “Grab whatever you want from here. Like I told Miss Pearl, none of it’s spicy, except the salsa and hot sauce over there on the end.”

Dallas’s eyes lingered on me for a moment before he reached over to scoop rice, beans, and even the small bowl of squash my mom had insisted on putting out, onto his plate. Coming up next to him, I did the same for Miss Pearl’s plate, unsure of what she’d want. His elbow brushed mine as he said, “I got Josh a gift card.”

Peeking at him quickly, I lowered my gaze back at the food below me. “Thanks. You didn’t have to, but I know he’ll love it. He thinks he’s getting too old for toys.” I passed him over a wad of napkins, his light-colored eyes meeting mine dead on. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you, too. Not just Lou.”

“Sure. I don’t have anything to do till later. I’ll give Josh his thing when I see him,” he said, continuing on as I led him back to the table where we’d left Miss Pearl, only to find my mom and Sal sitting alongside her.

“Diana, you never told me who your cousin was.” Miss Pearl gaped as I set the plate in front of her.

“Sal?” I asked, taking the seat on the other side of my mom and leaning forward to be able to hear the woman. I’d spoken to Miss Pearl a handful of times, if that, since I had moved in, so I wasn’t surprised there was something she didn’t know about me.

“Yes.” The old woman had those milky blue eyes on said cousin. “She just won the Altus Cup,” she practically whispered. “Dallas, she won the Altus Cup. Can you believe that?”

I learned something right then: I still stereotyped other people even though I knew better, because the last person I would have expected to know anything about soccer would have been Miss Pearl. And to keep digging the dagger of shame in, the older woman kept going.

“She scored five goals!” she said to no one in particular.

I didn’t even remember she’d scored that many goals in the tournament.

My cousin, who was sitting next to Miss Pearl, caught my gaze and grinned, obviously as surprised as I was by her unexpected fan. Here I’d been trying to save her from the people around our age and the one person who knew who she was was somewhere in the ninety range.

“Sal is the star in the family.” I shouldn’t have been surprised those words came out of my mom’s mouth as she sat up a little straighter in her chair, reaching out to touch Miss Pearl’s forearm. “We’re all so proud of her.”

I winked at my cousin, letting my mom’s words go in one ear and out the other. “Yeah, Sal, we all yell for you every time we watch a game.”

“Diana never liked playing sports. She didn’t like getting dirty, but Salomé always knew she wanted to play. Didn’t you, mija?”

“Diana plays outside with the boys all the time. She doesn’t mind getting dirty.”

I stopped breathing for a moment and stared at the man who had just spoken up. Dallas was standing behind his grandmother, looking as calm as ever with his arms crossed over his chest.

If Sal shot me a look, I wasn’t sure because I was too busy staring at my neighbor, but she quickly answered, “I did, Tia Rosario.” Before my mom could make another barb, she leaned toward the older woman, catching her eye. “Thank you for watching. We need more fans.”

“Oh, I love soccer. Especially women’s soccer. The men? They’re good for nothing. Now the foreign players…”

I swallowed and let my mom’s words run down my back. I wasn’t going to let her bother me. But somehow Dallas happened to meet my eyes and we both just stared at each other. I smiled at him tightly, and I was surprised to see him smile back just as tightly.

* * *

I wanted to cry.

Looking out on the mess in the lawn, I felt a sob that consisted mostly of me being extra tired, fighting its way up through my insides. Somehow, someway, I managed to keep it down.

The backyard was a fucking mess. God help me. But I wasn’t going to cry over it, no matter how badly I might want to, and that was really, really badly.

The party had moved into the house when the mosquitoes had come out hours ago, and I hadn’t bothered turning on the outside lights after the moonwalk had been picked up. I hadn’t wanted to see the damage and not be able to do anything about it, and I was suddenly regretting sending everyone home without forcing them to stay and help clean.

Now seeing it… it honestly looked like Woodstock after everyone had trashed the place. The yard had shit all over it, one of the trash bags had been torn open by possibly Mac, the grass was trampled… even the tree… there was something hanging from it, and I had a feeling it wasn’t a streamer.

It was awful.

“Diana?” Dallas’s dark head of hair was sticking out of the back door of the kitchen.

It startled me, and I forced a tense smile on my face that was 95 percent fake. “Hey. I thought you left.” Hours ago, I remembered seeing him take off with Miss Pearl and holding up a hand when he caught me looking from across the yard where I’d been busy talking to the neighbors next door.

“I did,” he confirmed, closing the door behind him as he paused on the stoop and swept his gaze over the yard. His eyes went wide and his “Oh shit” seemed to come straight out of my own mouth.

“Uh-huh” was all I could answer without bursting into tears.

It was a mess.

It was a fucking mess.

I thought I might have choked a little as I took it in one more time.

“You okay?” he asked.

I couldn’t even look at him. The yard had me in a trance. “Sure.”

“You’re not okay,” was the statement that came out of his mouth, dry and serious and so, so, so true.

I opened my mouth and swallowed the thick saliva that pooled in my throat. “It’s terrible.” I gasped. “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

He started to shake his head before stopping the motion and nodding instead. “Yeah.”

Well, at least he wasn’t bullshitting me.

I wouldn’t cry over grass. I wouldn’t. I just couldn’t. At least not in front of anyone.

A hand briefly touched my shoulder, nearly enough to get me to turn away from the aftermath of a nuclear bomb my beloved backyard had turned into. “Hey. It’ll still be there tomorrow. Don’t worry about it tonight.”

The little bit of neat freak in me sobbed that I couldn’t leave it until the next day. I didn’t want to wake up knowing what lay outside the door. But as I stared at it, I was fully aware that it would take hours to clean up. Hours and hours and a few more hours. All the swallowing in the world didn’t do enough to help my suddenly swollen throat get any smaller.

“Diana?” Dallas kind of laughed. “Are you about to cry?”

“No.” I didn’t even believe myself.

Obviously, he didn’t either because one of those rare, belly laughs of his escaped him. “I don’t have anything to do tomorrow. You, me, and the boys can knock it out.”

I couldn’t look away from the destruction, no matter how hard I tried. “It’s okay,” I mumbled, swallowing an imaginary golf ball again. “I got it.”

There was a pause. A sigh. “I know you got it, but I’ll help.” There was another pause. “I’m offering.”

He’d used that soft, smooth tone that seemed so… inappropriate on his raspy voice, and it made me glance at him, sniffling. Since when had I become this person who was the annoying kind of stubborn and didn’t accept help? I hated people like that. “I wouldn’t want to take advantage of you,” I admitted.

It was too dark to tell whether he was staring me down or not. “You’re not taking advantage. I’m offering. I’ve been up since five, and I’m about to keel over. All I’m asking is that you don’t make me stay up all night and half tomorrow morning cleaning up. We’ll do it first thing.”

I must have taken too long to answer because he crossed his arms over his chest and tipped his chin down. I didn’t look at his big biceps. “I won’t bail,” he seemed to promise, making me move my gaze away.

A small, tiny part of me didn’t want to take his promise seriously.

That must have been apparent because Dallas kept going. “You look exhausted too, and Louie is already passed out on the couch. If he hears you doing stuff out here, he’ll eventually wake up and wanna come help.” I think he might have coughed. “I know you’re not planning on molesting me, okay?”

I was so upset I couldn’t even laugh. But in that moment, the exhaustion overwhelmed my inner OCD, and I nodded.

“You need help with anything else that isn’t….” He lifted a hand and vaguely pointed to the disaster zone I suddenly didn’t want to look at any longer.

“No. Not really. I have some food to put up, but that’s about it. Thanks.” Closing both eyes, I reached up to pinch the tip of my nose and thought for a second, opening one eyelid in his direction. “Did you forget something?”

Tipping his head toward the door, he answered, “No. I just got home from meeting up with some old friends in town and was in my garage about to go inside when I saw everybody had left. I wanted to check and make sure you were all good. Josh let me in.” He slid his gaze toward the yard again and winced.

For the sake of my mental health, I told myself I’d imagined it.

I also made sure not to make a big deal about him wanting to come over and make sure I was good. Nope. I wasn’t going to think about that for one single second more. How many times had he told me he owed me by that point?

“You have a shit ton of dirty dishes. You scrub and I’ll rinse,” he offered unexpectedly.

What the hell was happening? Had he backed into my car, felt guilty, and was now trying to make it up to me? “You don’t have to do that—”

“I haven’t eaten food that good in a long time, and I have two days’ worth of dinner in the fridge your mom made me take home. I can rinse some dishes, and if you got any beer left, I’ll take one afterward. Deal?”

Maybe he had hit my car. Or broken something. I didn’t get why he was being so nice. Two days of food didn’t seem like enough of a reason to go out of his way, especially when just about everyone had taken off with leftovers. But…

I sighed and made sure to meet his eyes. “You really don’t have to be this nice to us.”

Dallas’s head tilted to the side just a little, and I could tell he let out his own breath in what might have been resignation. “I know it’s tough being a single parent, Diana. I don’t mind helping,” he said. He shrugged those broad, muscular shoulders. “You three remind me of my family when I was a kid,” he explained, smiling almost sadly. “It’s no huge burden helping you out and getting fed at the same time.”

It was the single parent thing I had working for me. All right. I’d be an idiot not to take the help he was so willing to offer.

“Deal,” he said. The one word should have sounded like a question, but it didn’t. Not really. It was more like he was telling me we had a deal.

Which we did. “Deal. But knowing my family, chances are, there’s only a couple of beers left, but they’re all yours. I won’t drink them when I have the boys.”

Dallas nodded and followed me inside, locking the door behind us. I started organizing the dishes as he asked, “Mind if I get one from the fridge?”

“Nope, make yourself at home,” I called out over my shoulder, still arguing with myself about having him help me or not.

Soon enough, I had the plates and glasses organized on the side of the sink and partly inside of it, and Dallas came to take the spot right beside me. Like he’d suggested, I scrubbed and handed them over, letting him rinse and set them in the drying rack. Maybe in a few months, I could invest in a dishwasher, I thought. But all it took was a look at the floors to know that was a dumb dream. I would rather get new flooring put in than get a washer. I was just tired.

“Most of the people here today were your family?” he asked after a few minutes of silence.

“Yeah. Almost all of the adults. Half the kids are related to us somehow and the other half were friends of Josh’s from his new school and his last.”

“He looked like he had a good time,” he noted, probably remembering the image of Josh doing the Slip-N-Slide over and over again.

“He better have. I almost had to beg him to have a party to begin with. I hope Louie’s okay with us going to Chuck E. Cheese’s for his because I’d rather not ever do this again.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. You know, it was our first birthday here at this house….” I trailed off and shrugged as I handed him a plate. “The last two years we lived in an apartment and couldn’t do much there. We had to celebrate at my mom and dad’s house. When I was a kid, my parents always threw me a birthday party at home. I felt like I owed him since we have our own place now that isn’t tiny.”

The deep grumble in his chest said he understood.

“Next time, I’ll just save up more money to hire a cleaning crew afterward, or make my family stay and clean before I let them leave. I’ll keep their keys hostage or something. Even my mom and dad bailed.”

He laughed, and the sound seemed to travel right along the sensitive skin at my neck. It had a beautiful, deep ring to it. When he finally spoke again, it was to say the last four words I would have expected. “I liked your parents. I could tell your mom didn’t like my tattoos much, but she was still nice.”

“My mom, yeah, she is really nice.” And because I couldn’t help myself, thinking about the incident at the table with Sal, I muttered, “As long as you aren’t me.”

There was a brief moment of awkward silence, and I thought I had gone too far talking about my mom, but then Dallas said, “I kinda noticed she gives you a hard time.”

I hummed. “Thanks for defending me, by the way.” Did I sound as bitter as I felt? “What she doesn’t remember or tell everyone is how when I was younger, she would get mad when I’d go outside and get dirty. She’d say that’s what boys did, but girls weren’t supposed to do that kind of stuff. There was a brief phase when she didn’t let me wear pants, if you can believe that, but it didn’t last long.” Just thinking about that made a nerve somewhere on my face throb.

I sighed. “She just… thinks I do everything wrong. She always has, and for a long time, I did do a bunch of stupid stuff. I’m not my cousin or my brother, and I never will be. I think it’s her weird way of pushing me, but sometimes all she does is make me feel like I can’t do anything right and I never will.” I coughed, embarrassed I’d even said that out loud. “That was deeper than I wanted it to go. Sorry. It’s fine. We’ve always had a weird relationship. We still love each other.” When we didn’t want to kill one another.

God. Had I really told him all that? Why?

“You think she likes your cousin and your brother more?”

I scoffed. “I know she does. My brother was awesome. She always said he was her treasure. Her miracle. It’s fine. I was the accident baby that almost killed her.” Now that I thought about it, maybe she did have a good reason for me not being her favorite. Huh.

“But your cousin? The one that was here today? You think she likes her more?”

“Yes.” Of course she did.

“Why?”

Why? Was he serious? Had he been zoned out the entire time we sat at the table with Miss Pearl talking about Sal’s achievements? “Do you know who she is?”

“Your cousin.”

“No, ding-dong—”

The laugh that cut out of him was loud and abrupt, and it made me laugh. Standing there so close together, his body heat against the side of mine, for some reason, only made me laugh more.

“I’m sorry. I spend way too much time with the boys. No. I mean, yes, she’s my cousin. But she’s like the best female soccer player in the world, and I’m not just saying that because she’s family. They have huge posters of her plastered all over Germany. When you watch anything with women’s soccer, they’re going to have her on there in some way. She’s the kind of person, when you have a daughter, you tell her be like Sal. Shit, I tell Josh all the time to be like her. She’s one of the best people I’ve ever met. I get why my mom loves her. It makes sense.”

His elbowed bumped my upper arm by accident. “She’s married to that famous soccer guy, isn’t she?”

“Yes.” I shot him a look. “He was here almost all day with her.”

He stopped what he was doing and turned that big upper body to face me. I wasn’t going to admire how impressive it was. Nope. “You’re fucking with me,” he scoffed.

“No. Did you see the guy with the hat sitting with her parents and some of my family? The tall one? The only other white—Caucasian—man that wasn’t chasing after little kids?”

He nodded.

“That was him.”

“What’s his name again?” he asked.

Blasphemy. I wasn’t even a big soccer fan but still. “I’m going to tell you the same thing I tell Josh: when you ask a really stupid question, you’re not getting an answer.”

That had my neighbor bursting out with another laugh that made me think I didn’t know him at all. Not even a little bit. God, he really did have a great laugh.

For a married man.

A married man, I repeated to myself.

The look he gave me over his shoulder as he handed me a plate, still chuckling, made my stomach warm. “You shouldn’t sell yourself short. There’re some people who you’ll never make happy no matter what you do,” he said to me so evenly, I glanced up at him. It sounded like he’d learned that from experience.

“Buttercup, I’m hungry,” came Louie’s sleepy voice from somewhere close behind us.

He was standing right where the vinyl flooring of the kitchen met the carpeted flooring of the living room. “Give me a second to finish these dishes, but what do you want? Cereal or leftovers?”

“Chicken nuggets.”

I crossed my eyes and faced forward again. “Cereal or leftovers, Goo. We don’t have chicken nuggets.”

“Okay. Cereal.” Silence. Then he added, “Please.”

“Give me a few minutes, all right?”

Louie agreed and disappeared.

Dallas’s elbow hit me again as he rinsed off the second to last dish. “Why does he call you Buttercup?”

I laughed, remembering exactly why. “My brother used to call me that, but when Louie was still really little, my best friend used to babysit the boys, and they’d watch cartoons together. There’s this one we used to watch when we were probably thirteen called The Powerpuff Girls, and she’d take those DVDs over for them to watch. It’s these three little girls with superpowers, right? One of them is named Blossom, she was the nice, levelheaded one, and he said that was my best friend, Vanessa. And there’s another one named Buttercup. She has dark hair, and she’s the most aggressive of the bunch. She’s the loudmouth, tough one, and for some reason or another, Louie just insisted that was me. He’s been calling me Buttercup ever since.”

“But why did your brother call you that?”

I shot him a look out of the corner of my eye. “I used to watch The Princess Bride all the time and used to say I was going to marry someone just like Westley someday.”

He made a choking sound.

“Shut up,” I muttered before I could help myself.

Dallas made another sound that was something between a cough and a laugh. “How old were you?”

“How old was I what?”

“When you watched it all the time?”

I smiled at the dishes. “Twenty-nine?”

He laughed as he set the last plate on the drying rack at his side, his body turning in my direction as he raised his eyebrows, giving me this little smirk. “You remind me more of Princess Peach.”

I looked down at my shorts and tank top, and caught the ends of my multicolored brown hair courtesy of careful instruction to Ginny. “Because of my beautiful pink gown and blonde hair?”

Dallas’s mouth went flat. “She’s surrounded by men, but she’s still herself, and she’s got her shit together on Mario Kart.”

I couldn’t help but smile, taking in the sloping bone structure of his face and the way his mouth was shaped at a slant and said, “I always did think I should have been born a princess, Mr. Clean.”

The choke that came out of him made me laugh.

“Mr. Clean?” he eventually got out, all choppy and broken.

Peeking at him, I shrugged and tipped my chin toward his head.

“I have hair.”

I squinted at him and hummed, trying so hard not to laugh. “Uh-huh.”

“I shave it every two weeks,” he tried explaining.

“Okay,” I coughed out, my cheeks hurting from the effort not to laugh at how bent out of shape he was getting.

“It all grows in evenly—are you laughing at me?”