by Laura Briggs
“Not that reliable types aren’t great,” Natalie amended. “Take my mom. Ma, she lives to bake and fill a house with people. Nothing makes her happier than doing stuff that makes somebody else happy. And my friend Tessa is one of those total control freaks who micromanages her life and people’s happiness on calendars and sticky notes. I think she would rescue a wedding from a burning building if she had to,” she joked.
“She kind of reminds me of a friend of mine. Same way—only about portrait photography,” said Chad, laughing.
“They’re the kind of people who are always there though,” said Natalie. “The people you fall back on, because they know the answers. They know the safe spaces you need that make you feel better.”
She took a sip from her glass, suddenly feeling the humor sucked out of her. She had an urge for her mother’s Italian Christmas bread, which was always baked especially for Natalie at the holidays, its scent filling her nose. Comforting things were missing from her life these days more than she realized, maybe. Having someone around to whom the little things mattered most.
“It’s such a waste,” said Chad. “Their lives are so wasted. I don’t know how many times I’ve told family or friends who just live every day in their tiny world that they need to expand. Bungee jump—travel to South America—do something new with your life, because it’s totally devoid of meaning when you’re trapped in the same old role in society. Why waste all your time and energy on other people, and what they need or think, when you don’t have to?”
“And where would the rest of us be if everybody was like that?” Natalie asked with a smirk. “I’ll bet you asked your mom to check your apartment and your studio while you were in South America. That dependable person you knew would be there.”
“True,” admitted Chad, saluting her with his glass. “Here’s to the dependable people, then.”
“Dependable people,” echoed Natalie.
He was fun, charming, and easy on the eye, even if he was overconfident in his opinions on life at times—but Natalie could deal with a little shortage of modesty without too much hardship on her part, she decided. He even seemed interested in her life as a designer, and listened to her stories about it… and not in the polite way that a lot of Natalie’s family made themselves request an overview, but in the way Natalie wanted, with an exchange of actual details like the style of dress she designed for an event, or the name of the horrible fashion line she first sewed for Kandace.
They talked for nearly a half hour after they were finished eating, and the waiter had taken away the handmade clay serving bowls, which was when Natalie suggested they have dessert at the bakery.
“You should try my mom’s chocolate éclairs,” she said, as she searched for Icing Italia’s key on her ring. “I know we’re not French, but she’s really talented with pastry. She used to make these cool banana ones, but we kind of discontinued them after the blueberry ones became so popular.”
“I can’t wait to taste them,” said Chad. “Good thing I gave up being macrobiotic last year.”
“You were macrobiotic?”
“It was my doctor’s suggestion. I had a major skin reaction to something in Ecuador. Probably just some plant growing near my apartment.”
Natalie slipped the key into the lock and pushed open the door to the bakery’s front room, where the lights were dimmed, and the display cases—which usually held spiced and flavored beignets and crullers, fritters and sticky buns, alongside Italian cookies, sweet breads, and the occasional filled bear claws and Danishes that Natalie loved—were mostly empty. The only things not removed were two Italian cream cakes waiting for pickup in the morning, and this week’s window display dedicated to the traditional Christmas breads baked in their buttered paper sacks and studded generously with dried fruit.
“The leftover pastries are in the back,” Natalie was saying, “where we keep the day-old stuff, since my uncle uses the kitchen for the family…” She trailed off, because she heard voices now, and saw a light in the next room.
“Looks like somebody else is here,” said Chad, pushing open the kitchen door. Light flooded from the room, where the scrubby old kitchen table was occupied by what seemed like Natalie’s entire family, although it was really just her uncle, two aunts, her mother, her brother, his girlfriend Kimmie, and, of all people, Brayden. In the middle of the table was a big plate of half-finished spaghetti, and a tray of day-old bread drizzled with olive oil and rosemary. Her uncle was filling his glass from a bottle of red wine.
“Natalie! We didn’t expect to see you,” said her mother, who was busy cutting a lemon cream cake into slices on the counter by the stove.
“Ma? What’s everybody doing here?” Natalie said. She wanted to back out with haste, maybe make an excuse about looking for one of her econ textbooks, but it was too late—Chad was right behind her, obviously her date for the evening since he was holding two paper sacks from the restaurant.
“Who’s your friend?” This from Rob, who grinned widely. He knew full well that Natalie generally avoided introducing her dates to anybody. ‘Getting their hopes up,’ as she referred to it whenever one of her latest amores crossed paths with relatives, stirring up more wishful thinking about Natalie settling down.
“Natalie’s latest young man, right?” Uncle Guido poured two more glasses of wine for his fellow diners. “Lucky him. He gets to meet everybody at once.”
“Chad, this is my family,” said Natalie, with evident reluctance for claiming them. “Everybody, this is Chad. We were having dinner together tonight.”
She was trying to avoid Brayden’s gaze as she made this introduction. Why was he eating dinner with her family? Didn’t his mother have a nice casserole waiting for him when he finished work?
“Chad the rock climber, right?” said Rob. “We spoke on the phone before.”
“Come in, have some dessert,” said her aunt Louisa, who was passing out plates. “There’s plenty of room, Natalie. There’s an open chair by Brayden—”
“I’m good with standing, thanks,” said Natalie.
“I’m Natalie’s mother, Maria. That’s my sister Lou, my brother-in-law Guido… that’s Natalie’s brother Rob… this is a friend of the family, Brayden…”
“Hi,” said Brayden. He waved at Chad, then accepted a slice of cake from Natalie’s mom.”
“Chad and I really have to be going,” said Natalie. “I just stopped to show him the place.”
“Then show him it,” said Guido. “Have some cake. My wife made it. She may not be much to look at, but she’s a princess in the kitchen.” His wife Dolores smacked him on the arm for this remark.
“You know, we never get a chance to meet Natalie’s boyfriends,” said Louisa to Chad. “You’re the first who’s been here in a while.”
“Except for that guy Brock,” said Rob. “The big one with all the muscles.”
“Did I meet him?” Maria’s brow furrowed.
“I didn’t like him,” muttered Brayden. “He was a real jerk.” He cut into his cake with a tiny bit more force than was necessary.
Brock was a real jerk—he broke up with her after one of her worst fashion shows ever with Kandace, and a part of Natalie still recalled it with pain, but it wasn’t something she wanted discussed here and now. Not as Chad awkwardly shifted the restaurant’s take-home bags from one hand to the next, and Brayden kept stealing little glances at her and her date, as if trying to evaluate their level of seriousness. As was everybody else in this room, she suspected.
“Well, we say no other boyfriend. Brayden’s here,” said Rob, whose grin broadened, as if he were reading her mind. Brayden’s face flushed fire red in response, almost as quickly as Natalie’s own. Natalie wanted to kill her brother.
“Your ex?” said Chad—with evident surprise as he asked.
“There used to be an old joke in the family, saying they were destined to be together,” said Rob, more wickedly than before.
“No. No, no,” said Natalie ha
stily to Chad. “Rob is kidding. It’s all a joke. Brayden is a friend, just a friend from a long time ago when I was a kid.”
“Go on. He’s practically family,” said Maria, in her loving-scolding tone as she squeezed Brayden’s shoulders. “His mom was my best friend when we moved to this neighborhood,” she explained to Chad. “He and Natalie and Robbie grew up together, played every day on the sidewalk outside our house.”
“Like family. Exactly,” said Natalie, as if this erased any possible misconceptions about her and Brayden having any potential romantic involvement. “We have a habit of adopting a lot of people into our fold. You’ve been warned, so maybe it’s time for us to grab some day-old doughnuts and say goodnight.”
“Stay,” urged Maria. “We treat people like family. Chad, have some cake. Dolores’s recipe is the best, and I say that as a jealous baker.” There was a chorus of ‘oohs’ at this sisterly challenge from the rest of the dinner guests.
“Chad could be the big brother you never had, Nat,” suggested Rob. He had only survived thus far in life because mental telepathy possessed no truly murderous powers, Natalie had determined.
“And on that note, I think we should definitely go,” said Natalie.
“Of course, when I say Brayden’s like family, I don’t mean I raised him,” continued Maria, who was serving Chad cake whether he wanted it or not. “He had a perfectly good mother who did a fantastic job with her son. Do you have a big family, Chad?”
“Not really,” he answered.
“Brayden was a better brother to you than I was,” contributed Rob, sliding his arm comfortably around the back of his girlfriend Kimmie’s chair. Could he not let this subject go? “Remember the incident with Bilbo?”
“A forest stump would have been a better brother to me,” muttered Natalie.
“Bilbo?” Chad repeated with a half smile.
“He was a dog,” said Brayden, who was actually blushing again. “It’s nothing. An old story.”
“The biggest, meanest dog on our block,” said Rob. “His fence was posted for no trespassing, attack dog, and so on. No kids were allowed to go near him, ’cause he was a little vicious on his own turf. But he was always stealing stuff from the neighborhood yards and outside the apartments whenever his owner would take him for a walk. The guy never returned any of it, of course.”
“Too bad,” said Chad sympathetically. Natalie, who knew where this story was going, was really wishing they had stayed an hour at the restaurant and tried the Ecuadorian lime ice listed among tonight’s specials.
“One time, the dog stole Natalie’s favorite doll, which she had left on the steps, this old one of Mom’s that she dressed up in a sparkly dress. Natalie called it her princess doll. So she’s crying and crying and begging somebody to get it back, which nobody will, because Dad’s working all day at the bakery and Mom’s got a thing with my grandparents across town, and I’m not going in there. So Brayden here—”
“I don’t think Nat wants to hear this story again,” said Brayden, who was blushing down to his neck now, even his ears beet red with embarrassment. For her sake, Natalie thought, because she was squirming like a trapped animal as Chad tested a bite of her aunt’s cake and listened to Robbie’s narrative about her childhood. This situation was one of Natalie’s all-time worst nightmares regarding dates meeting her family.
“—goes over the fence, and he’s this scrawny kid who can barely climb on a garbage can without getting a nosebleed. But over he goes, tearing his t-shirt at the same time, and starts looking for the doll among Bilbo’s treasure piles. So the dog comes out of its house about that time, and from two doors down we hear Natalie screaming, saying there’s blood everywhere.”
“There wasn’t,” said Brayden, shaking his head. “It was just a little nip on the arm. Nothing serious.”
“You still have a scar, right?” laughed Rob. “Man, did Bilbo’s owners and our folks chew you out for that dumb stunt. That’s why I didn’t volunteer to go over and get it, because I knew anybody caught doing it would be dead meat afterwards.”
“You never volunteered to defend me from anything that I can recall,” said Natalie.
“Do you still have the scar, Brayden?” said Rob.
“It’s just a little one,” he said.
“Let’s see it,” ordered Guido with a laugh, as the rest of the family echoed his demand. With a sheepish and reluctant grin, Brayden pushed up the sleeve of his shirt, revealing a little raised line on his bicep, the souvenir of Bilbo’s legendary bite.
Twelve stitches. And it hadn’t been that much blood, really. Although between the dirt and the blood, Natalie had been so sure that Brayden was half dead when Bilbo’s owner hauled him over the fence again that she had almost forgotten about the doll.
“Did you get the doll back?” Chad asked her.
“Of course,” said Rob, who volunteered to answer instead. “He didn’t drop it until he was safe on the other side of the fence again. Of course, the princess needed a trip to the laundry, with all the blood and dirt.”
“Wow. Can’t say I would have done that. Dogs terrified me when I was a kid,” said Chad. He left his half-finished cake on the nearby counter.
“But it was—” began Rob.
“—Natalie’s favorite doll in the whole world,” chimed in two or three more relatives who were part of this story, notably Maria and Louisa. Even Kimmie joined in on this one. Natalie wanted to sink into a big crack in the earth, but there was no possibility that an earthquake was going to rescue her.
“Why did they name the dog Bilbo?” asked Kimmie. “I thought dogs were named things like ‘Rex’ or ‘Fido.’”
“I called my dog ‘Raisins,’” said Rob. “What was the name of your dog when you were a kid?” Rob said to Brayden. “Was it Eddie?”
“Eddie was my dog,” said Guido. “The big yellow-brown one that watched the back door at night. Brayden’s was the one his mom gave him for his birthday one year—shaggy, only had half a tail.”
“Samson,” said Brayden, who was accidentally flicking crumbs onto the tablecloth from his cake. “He was mine. When I was twelve. I used to let him sleep on my bed, and sneak him your mom’s cookies. I got in trouble for crumbs in the sheets.” He brushed his mess into one hand, trying to clean it up.
“Not that much trouble. You were always a good boy—unlike my son,” said Maria to Brayden, with a pointed look at Rob at these last words. “You used to fix Natalie’s roller skates for her and take her down to that park where all the kids skated,” she reminded Brayden. “She was an itty-bitty thing back then and fell over just about every time she stood up on those things,” Maria confided to Chad now.
“Ma!” said Natalie in protest.
“Even I wouldn’t take her down there,” said Rob. “She was a mess on skates, and always cried when she fell down.”
“Thanks,” said Natalie dryly. “I appreciate you passing along that perspective.”
“What? Everyone knows you cried all the time when you were a girl,” said Louisa, as she passed Guido a dessert plate.
“Not Natalie. She was tough most of the time,” said Brayden assertively. And admiringly. It was mean to feel exasperated by that, Natalie knew, although she wished he wouldn’t be so… so comfortable with her family, at least not in front of Chad.
She wished her whole family seemed less comfortable, less involved, and less eager to talk about her in front of a guy she had only met twice, too. Chad looked as if he was feeling a little out of place as they stood here. Out of the loop, she thought, since he was the only one who hadn’t heard these stories a million times.
“This one was a sucker,” said Rob, putting Brayden in an affectionate half-hug—or headlock—as he rose to put his plate by the sink. “Always letting her tag along to make the rest of us miserable.”
“Cut it out. You’re just making stuff up now,” said Brayden, whose ears were still way too red. “Rob’s a good guy, don’t let him fool you,” Bra
yden continued. “Even Nat would say the same.”
“Nat?” echoed Chad. “Is that what everybody calls you?”
“I prefer Natalie. Really, I do,” she reassured him.
“I remember the time Brayden rescued those kittens from the drain pipe,” began Maria, as she cut Brayden a second slice of cake.
“Another slice of cake, Ma?” said Rob incredulously. “You didn’t cut me a second one. I’m your flesh and blood, too.”
“Like you need it,” snorted Kimmie. “You need to give up desserts if you want to pass your next physical,” she pointed out.
“Me? I am a lean, mean specimen of physical prowess at the fire department,” he answered, stealing a broken corner of cake from the plate, and popping it in his mouth. “Give me some more cake, Ma.”
“And that old homeless cat that got hit by a car,” continued Maria, who was ignoring Rob. “There was another time that Natalie was crying so hard—”
“Time to go,” said Natalie. “Great seeing you all. Chad and I have plans for tonight, so we’re going to split.”
“Bye, Chad!” This was the chorus from half Natalie’s family, the other half still coaxing them to stay. Natalie retreated after snagging a bag of day-old crullers from the sideboard, catching one last glimpse of Brayden’s homely and wistful farewell smile before her brother turned and stuck his tongue out at her, and the kitchen door swung closed.
“Your family. Wow,” said Chad. “I have to admit, I wasn’t prepared to meet them in one big group.” He shifted the restaurant sacks to the opposite hand, leaving his left one free, his fingers brushing against Natalie’s.
“I know. I’m sorry,” she said. “Honestly, they almost never eat at the bakery kitchen. I don’t know if Uncle Guido just got carried away after making his spaghetti today or what… but I definitely would have suggested gelatos at the ice cream parlor down the street.”
“I figured,” laughed Chad. “Don’t worry. I won’t ask you to meet my mom on our next date.”