Exotic

III

Sydney

Mum knocked on the door and Christina answered. They go through the motions of small talk as we walk into the house. I take the chance to look around a little bit. Right after Christina told us to leave our shoes by the front door. My younger siblings, Abigail and Ollie bound through the house and see themselves straight out to the back yard.

There were lots of photos. I'm assuming they're all of Christina and Kate's kids. A lot of them is just the same five faces. Christina, a brown eyed and brown haired woman, a blue eyed brunette, a green eyed brunette and a woman with heterochromia. So I'm assuming that Christina has like, two or three kids. Small family like us. I take a look at all of their smiles. And they're all just adorable. It makes me smile.

"Ay, that's my lassie, Bennie." a thick Irish accent spoke from behind me. She pointed to the woman with heterochromia. I turned around and saw the blue eyes brunette, this is Kate.

"She's pretty." I smile to her.

"You're absolutely right." she grinned before she turned back to the photos on the wall, "That's Jordyn." she pointed to a brunette with brown eyes.

"Is she younger or older than Bennie?" I ask.

"Younger," she pointed to a blonde with blue eyes, "That's-"

"Christina, right?"

"No. That's Billie," she pointed to a photo of a blonde holding a baby, "That's Christina."

It is then that I question if I was seeing the same faces, or just identical people, "That's not you, then?" I point to a brunette with blue eyes, who looks exactly like Kate.

"No, that's Eliza. And that's her twin sister, Kathryn." she pointed to a green eyed brunette. I nod and she looks at me, "Perhaps I should get the photo album out. I don't think you understand how many children I have."

"Uh, okay."

She sat me down on the couch before she disappeared into a room down the hallway briefly. She came back out with a photo album in her clutch. She sat down next to me and I caught a waft of lavender.

"Right, here we are." she said with a smile. She opened the album and started to explain some of the photos, "That's Christina and I when we were six, we'd just met after I'd moved from Seattle. Then that's when we were nine, we had just started dating. When we were thirteen, Christina gave birth to our first daughters, Ruth and Arizona, or Zoey for short. They're twins. Don't ask why we were so young. It's not pretty.

"That's us when we got married. That's our honeymoon to Finland and the following year, we went to Bora Bora. And that, that is the first lassie I gave birth to. Bennie. We were twenty-four. I started giving birth from Bennie onwards. Then five years later, it was twins again, Billie and Danny. Five more years later, another set of twins, Jordyn and Jaydyn. Then four years later, triplets, Hayley, Raphael and Apollo. Then four more years later, my miracle babies, twins, Kathryn and Eliza."

"You sure have a lot of children." I tell her. But I can't seem to take my eyes off of the photos of all the siblings together. Christmases, holidays, birthdays. They're so wonderful.

"And I love them all. I'd have more of I could." she shrugged.

"Why can't you?"

"Well, I was in my early forties when I gave birth to Kath and Eli. And so my body was getting a bit too old to be having more children."

"I refuse to believe that you are more than forty years old." I state. This woman looked like she could be in college as a student.

"I'm fifty-eight on the twenty-eighth of this month." she smiled sadly.

"What?" I gasp.

"Shocking, right? I'm so old!"

"You look twenty-five!"

"Ah, thank you lassie. I still feel twenty-five, if I'm being honest with you."

"Wow. You're gorgeous."

"Thank you." she smiled.

"Bloody hell." I stare off into the distance, "So that means that Christina is in her late fifties too?"

"She's fifty-eight." Kate concluded.

"But you all look so young. Mum's only forty and she's already got greys."

"I heard that!" Mum warns.

"Mum! They're fifty-eight!" I exasperated. Mum and Christina were on the other side of the couch.

Mum looks helplessly between the two women, "What?"

"I know. We're so old." Christina cringes.

"Tell me your secrets." Mum whispered to Christina.

"Genetics." Christina whispered back.

"Wait, so you don't dye your hair or haven't had any surgeries?" Mum quizzed.

"Nope." Christina shook her head with a cheesy smile.

"That's impressive."

"I know."

Then we called the monsters in to wash their hands so we could have lunch. I forgot to have breakfast this morning so I was so hungry. Kate lead into the dining room where there were already all sorts of food on the table. Christina was just brining in the homemade sides and prawn toast, made from scratch. I saw her preparing it earlier.

My stomach made a noise and Ollie decided to be annoying, "Sydney! You're so fat! You're always hungry!"

"Ollie! That's not very nice." Mum scolded, "Say sorry to Sydney."

"Ugh, fine. Sorry, Sydney." he rolled his eyes.

"Sydney is really hungry because she doesn't like to eat breakfast before the gym and she didn't have time to eat anything and even if she did, it would have spoiled her lunch." Abigail said.

"Okay, moving on." Christina responded, "Help yourself to whatever you want and don't be shy with how much you want. We don't judge. If you're hungry, we have food, eat it." she gestured to all of the food.

---------------

On the walk back to our house, Mum was buzzing. Kate was able to get her in touch with one of her single friends and she's already arranged to go out with her. I'm happy for her, honestly. But she needs to stop asking about my love life. My non-existent one, at that.

"Come on! Put yourself out there. Find yourself a nice girl to love. I've done it, look!" and she'd point to her phone at her contact labelled, Dewey. I roll my eyes huff a little bit.

"Mum, we've not even been here for a week. How am I supposed to put myself out there if we're barely moved in?"

"Whatever, stroppy pants. Just do it eventually."

"Haha, Sydney is a stroppy pants!" Ollie sang. So I smacked the back of his head, "Hey!"

"You deserved that." Abigail nodded and then held my hand. She's always been so quick to defend me against Ollie's antics, it's cute.

When we get back to the house, my stomach drops when I realise that there's still a plethora of boxes to unpack.

Better get to it.