Gracie Abrams is eking out a solitary existence, fighting day-in, day-out against the drain of working customer service and nursing two newborn kittens in her off time. Out on her own ever since her sister moved in with her boyfriend, the burden of...
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While most people from Mayhop had flown away, my sister had waited until the airlines weren't restricting incoming flights before coming back.
"I spoke to you on the phone," I protested, trying to breathe through her curtain of hair. This girl, really. She acted like it was 95 degrees outside with her booty shorts and spaghetti strap tank. "You didn't have to come rushing here. How long have you been here? Where are the girls?"
"They just went back. Ev drove down to take them." Tenna made herself breathless from all the squeezing, panting like a dog, going, "Holy shit, Gracie. Holy shit!"
"He was fine with you bringing the girls to a warzone?"
I could feel the sheepishness in her silence with the way her back momentarily froze.
"Ten," I groaned, finally removing myself from her skinny arms. "Was he mad?"
"No," she grumbled, spinning around. If I ever thought her fairy-like bouncing would leave her under the strain of motherhood, I needn't have worried. She had a lot of energy in her. More to give, too, if only she could lend some out to her big sis. "He was on a date. I didn't know what was happening, and I couldn't wait any longer for him to get out of lalaland. But I did tell his mom, and she didn't even try to convince me to leave the girls." She smacked her chest proudly. "Don't you know what that means? Hm?" Her grin became sneaky, a Peter Pan smile that gave me hives. "She sees me as a real momma. Trusts me 100%."
"And you took that trust to fly your children to a warzone," I replied drily, but the smile ruined it. "Of course you're a real momma. You have two real babies."
"Alright, smartass." She shoved at my arm before linking it up with hers, pulling me into the living room, where my parents stood at awkward corners of the space.
I'd never seen them stand in either of those spots. Not Dad, with his hands stuffed casually into his pajama pants pockets, leaning against the banister behind his recliner. Take a seat, John, what are you doing?
Mom was even worse. She'd been awoken in the dark hours of night to her quarantined daughter and some random teenager standing on her stoop, and her first instinct had been to don a frilly apron she'd never worn in my entire life and begin mixing a batch of cookies. Which is also something she'd never done. We were a store-bought house. If anything, the friskiest we would get with baking were those refrigerated cookies that you had to pan and bake yourself.
But no. She was holding an honest-to-god mixing bowl, hovering near the bottom of the stairs like she wasn't sure she should invade the living room where Kirishima sat pin-straight on the couch.
Way to make a guy feel welcome.
"You're kidding, guys," I said, as Tenna groaned, "Mom, where did you find that thing? Frills are so not cool."
