Two Punks In Love

A Del Marco Dinner

Author's Note: The song I wrote in this chapter sounds something like Marry Me by Train...

Kat  Present  Day(Six Month Before Prologue)

Dating a del Marco comes with a ton of perks, but the family dinners aren't one of them.

Four times a year, Matt del Marco insists that all his children sit at his table in his Bel-Air mansion together for dinner. Everyone approaches these dinners in a general state of dread, because something spectacularly crazy usually happens, but no one dares miss them, for the same reason.

The very first del Marco family dinner I was invited to didn't even happen because Rowan del Marco, aged seventeen, had trotted her emo-ass off to get married in Vegas—an act of rebellion fueled by Trace's shocking and recent inclusion in the family.

The last del Marco family dinner we attended, Row's twin sister Bridget arrived at the table with a shaved head and announced that she was leaving the next day for female monastic community in Nepal because she was done with the distractions of a physical existence. While I guzzled an entire bottle of wine and tried not to sob over Bridget's gone head of once gorgeous, sable hair, her father demanded to know exactly why she wanted to abandon her career as a classical violinist to become a Buddhist nun.

She told him it was all his fault—he had become such an overbearing father figure to her sometimes-boyfriend that said boyfriend won't sleep with her until they are 'honorably committed.' Yet he's terrified of settling down and fulfilling his aristocratic family's obligations, so he's always doing stupid stuff to self-sabotage them. Bridge said her between her idiot boyfriend, her ridiculous father, and Dev's equally demanding dad, she's left in the lurch of constant virginal sexual frustration and honestly feels like she's losing her damn mind.

Bridge's speech was cut short, because Matt choked on a pot-sticker and Riley, Row's husband and Soundcrush's manager, had to administer the Heimlich maneuver.

In between the first and last family dinners, Matt has thrown a drunk Trace into the pool, Trace has thrown a drunk Street into the pool, Street has thrown a drunk Riley into the pool, and Row has pushed a sober but angry Matt into the pool. One time eleven year old Lane announced he got to second base with his babysitter and Marianne almost called the police on the poor woman before Lane confessed he was lying. Another time eight year old Alley announced she wanted to be emancipated because she was vegan and felt emotionally traumatized by her leather wearing rock star clan. When her dad told her to get over it, she calmly announced that she had buried all his leather jackets in the back yard, giving them the peace they deserved. Unlike Lane, she wasn't joking.

So, yeah. The dinners are always interesting, but the food gets cold while the drama boils. And nobody likes cold food.

Trace and I are still lying in bed at three in the afternoon with the shades drawn, trying to summon the energy to rise and ready for the dinner party. Trace is a rockstar and I'm a pseudo-celebrity in my own right, mostly due to his fame and my work as MdM Philanthropies, but we don't typically sleep in half the day and then make lazy love all afternoon. We're jet lagged, because we've only been home to LA for less than twenty four hours. We've spent the last eight months on a world tour. The personal, romantic kind. Not the rock band kind.

It was the most incredible eight months of my life.We went east to west—Hawaii, Bali, Australia, and a stint in New Zealand visiting Trace's sister Row on the set of her TV show, Girl Band. Then onto Thailand, Beijing, Abu Dhabi, Moscow, Prague, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, Amsterdam, the UK, Paris and the South of France, Barcelonoa, Morocco, Egypt. We broke up the destinations with several two week stints in Costa Rica, visiting my sister Ashlynn and her husband Leed. They've been there for months with their new baby Lyra, adopting two more kids from the orphanage that they fund through MdM Philanthropies. After our last visit with them we spent an entire month in Italy, visiting Trace's brother Street, who is permanently based there now. He flew home with us yesterday for the dreaded family dinner.