Eventually Yours

✽ 74

~Brie

My entire morning was filled with running errands for my mother, babysitting Aubree to make sure she wasn't left alone with Riccardo, and worrying about Aiden.

“Everything's going to be just fine.”

There was a tone in his voice I couldn't quite depict and it left a half relieved-half unsettling feeling in me.

What could he mean by that?

I planned to call him after I finished running the errands but it ate into my afternoon and by the time I got to sit and catch my breath, it was almost evening.

I sat in the parlor which gave enough view to see into the dining room my mother was fussing about to prepare for the Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow night. Aubree sat glued beside me, closer than my own shadow.

The fact that we hadn't bickered once in days made our mother happy. But everyone else just gave us oddly unusual looks... like it wasn't okay to not bicker.

Aubree yawned. It didn't take long for me to yawn too. Leslie who was perched on a rocking chair nearby tried to stifle his yawn but failed miserably and succumbed to it.

“Bruce? Swap the dining room table with the larger table!” my mother called from somewhere in the house.

My Dad stopped laughing at something Nia was telling him.

“Zach? Emmett? Help me get the table. You too Doctor Álvarez. Get up Leslie” he called to the boys.

“What, I don't get to be called Doctor?” Leslie pouted.

“Get your ass here, dude” Emmett chuckled.

“Oh, Nia? Becca wants me to get the big pans out but I'm not tall enough so if you could give me a hand” Dove called out.

Nia glanced at Aubree and I.

“Yeah okay.”

Aubree groaned and shook her head.

“How many people are even coming to this dinner that Mom's working everybody so hard?” she asked.

“Beats me” I muttered.

The boys successfully replaced the normal dining table with the grand one just as my mother walked in with Nia and Dove trailing after her.

“I just got off the phone with my sisters and they'll all be coming over for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow night.”

Of course, she invited the whole family.

“I invited Beck's family too” she continued, glancing at Aubree.

My sister rolled her eyes.

“They're family too... despite everything.”

Aubree sighed. My mother turned to Riccardo who was putting his shirt back on.

“What about you Rick? You're coming right? And you're bringing Trisha, yes?”

Aubree didn't as much as blink.

“Err well, I'll be coming... just not with Trisha.”

His voice was low.

Oh?

“She's gone back to LA. We broke up.”

Oh.

Aubree did more than blink. She tensed and then flinched. Then she sat up and frowned.