by Nia Arthurs
“See,” He revealed the napkin when he was done. Potato pieces and salad dressing stained the white of the cloth.
Alexis Grace Braden.
“Haha,” I chuckled awkwardly, “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“Hey, I found them!” A voice broke the strange moment. “They’re in the kitchen making eyes at each other!”
The voice was Susan’s.
Making eyes… what?
“Hey!” I protested.
Melody joined her at the opening connecting the living room to the kitchen and snapped a picture of us with her phone.
“You’re so cute.”
“Melody!” I yelled.
“Babe, stop embarrassing your sister.” Spencer’s face popped up behind Melody’s. The front of his white shirt was now a strange pinkish-red.
“Thank you, Spencer.” I sighed.
At least someone was using his head here.
“They’re not cute… they’re adorable.”
I growled. Melody had rubbed off on him in all the wrong ways.
“Do you think they’ll wait two years to get married like us or wait three like Susan and Archie?” Mia asked her best friend as she too joined the craziness.
I groaned.
“We’re right here!” I yelled, throwing my arms forward, encompassing me and the man they were scaring the heck out of.
Drew seemed distinctly uncomfortable. And why not? The prospect of joining this family in holy matrimony would make anyone itchy.
“You guys are so immature.” I threw my salad-swiped napkin at them. It fluttered harmlessly to the ground. I searched frantically for another weapon and my eyes alighted on the brownies and ice cream. I shoved the cold tub at Drew and moved to stand next to him, holding the desserts hostage.
Drew caught on to my idea without any explanations and stood beside me as I rounded the counter and faced my pack of crazy relatives and friends.
“If you guys don’t lay off I am going to lick each and every one of these brownies and Drew will hide the ice cream until it melts into nothingness.”
Melody barreled her way to the front as if to wrest the brownies from me and I stuck the pan near my face. She froze and held the others back with her short arms.
“You wouldn’t dare.” She addressed me.
“Try me.”
“Drew?” Susan questioned a note of panic in her voice.
“I’d listen to the lady,” His slow even tone brooked no argument, “She’s pretty annoyed at you all right now.”
“I am!” I shouted for emphasis.
“Okay,” Melody surrendered on behalf of everyone else. “We’ll lay off the teasing. Now put the brownies and ice cream down.”
I brought it closer to my face instead and Melody whimpered. Feeling sorry for my sister, I set the brownies on the counter.
“That’s right.” Mia stepped forward and coached me like I was a rabid dog. “Slowly… slowly. That’s a good girl. Step away from the brownies and put your hands in the air.”
Drew burst into laughter at her tone and I socked him in the side.
Stupid Drew.
Melody feistily sashayed toward the snickering man and yanked the ice cream from his grip. She scoffed, shook her head, muttered ‘traitor’ beneath her breath, and then lovingly spoke to the tub as she returned it to the freezer.
“You guys are animals!” Susan accused us with a pointed finger.
I stuck my tongue out at her and turned around. “Hey, Mia. Is your husband okay?”
I twisted my head and spotted the talented fashion designer stuffing her face with brownies.
“Who now?” She managed through a mouthful of goodies.
“Your husband.” I said slowly, “Is he going to live?”
“Oh yeah,” Mia swallowed and waved her hand dismissively, “He’ll be fine.”
“Mia, save some for the rest of us.” Melody scolded her best friend. Mia shamefully put the brownies away and the two began to set out dessert plates for everyone.
After the crazy events of a few minutes ago, the gang was content to sit in relative calm and savor the ice cream topped brownies. This time, Drew let me sit in the sofa and he sat on the floor. Dad sat across from him, giving him the stink eye every time they caught each other’s gaze.
I wished Dad would back off. He’d treated both Spencer and Peyton to that kind of tough love. I wasn’t interested in Drew in that way and the reminder that the two boys that he’d tried to scare out of marrying his daughters, ended up tying the knot freaked me out.
“Hey,” Archie recalled in the still sound of forks scraping against glass and lips smacking against lips. “What was the news that you wanted to tell us?”
“Oh,” I shoved a lock of hair behind my ear. It felt weird sharing my excitement about this job in front of Drew. “Uh, well yesterday I got a call from the creative director of Channel Six News.” I shrugged, “She asked me to co-produce a cartoon program for their station.”
Melody’s eyes bugged. “Lexi, that’s great!”
“I’m actually co-producing with Drew.” I admitted.
“Cool!” Susan lifted her fork and saluted me. I grinned.
“Thanks guys.” I accepted their congratulations for the both of us.
“You know what would be cool?” Peyton spoke, “A cartoon about a spaceship that has feelings.”
“What?” Mia sputtered. “Babe, really?”
“It’s a good idea.” Peyton defended.
“Yes it is, honey.” Mia caressed his cheek but shook her head ‘no’ emphatically.
“How about a show about music.” Daddy said, losing his ‘evil’ stare for the first time since the earlier fiasco. “A group of kids can go back in history and rediscover the great reggae and soca artists.”
“Um…” I tried to turn that idea down gently.
“Oh my gosh!” Melody gasped, effectively cutting off any discouraging comments toward my father’s lame idea. “You should do a Belizean Veggietales. Call it…Fruitytales! I can see it now.” She gazed into the horizon, “Molly the Mango, Fredrick the Coconut-”
“Fredrick the Coconut?” Spencer interrupted his wife, “Mel, it should be Coco the Coconut.”
“No, that’s too obvious.” Melody insisted. “You want the names to be cool. Plus the kids these days have a whole new definition of the word ‘cocoa’.”
“So what?” Mia chimed in, “Kids will always find a way to make completely mundane things into sex jokes.”
The gang began to debate the merits and disadvantages of sexual innuendos and I could only stare in horror.
Drew nudged my foot and whispered, “How did the conversation take this kind of turn.”
I shrugged.
With this crew, I’d learned to just sit back and enjoy the crazy, wild ride.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Drew did come over the next morning. I had completely forgotten that he was supposed to pick me up to go… somewhere. I hadn’t asked and he hadn’t cleared that misunderstanding up. So when a knock sounded at the door, I padded to the living room with my hair wrapped in a turban, my body enclosed in a stinky old grey T-shirt and my sweatpants with a hole in the back exposing my left cheek.
Now that was comfort clothes.
I checked the peephole and froze when I saw Andrew’s head, bulbous and out of shape thanks to the refraction of light through the glass. That was the moment I recalled I was supposed to be ready for something.
He knocked again and I winced.
“Uh, I’ll be right there.”
I raced through the short hall to the bedroom at the back and quickly pulled the grey T-shirt over my head and replaced it with a light pink blouse and calf-length cutoff shorts that had been recently washed. I sped through the living room, picking up random articles of clothing and shoved my slippers underneath the sofa.
Finally, I opened the door.
“Good morning.” I folded my arms across my chest and swatt
ed at a fringe thread falling from the turban on my head.
Oh crapsticks.
The turban!
I yanked it off and yelped as long, curly strands got painfully removed from their homes and tossed into the foster air system.
I scratched at my head and frowned.
“Um… good morning.” Drew rumbled. “Are you okay?”
Through watery eyes, I surveyed his expression. He still seemed shell-shocked, probably from the chaos that he’d been a part of yesterday. Today, he wore a black T-shirt with a Superman logo on the front along with jeans and his ever-present Vans. A black laptop case was slung on his right shoulder.
For a brief moment, I wondered how successful he was as a video game producer.
Meh.
I didn’t really care.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Come on in.”
I led him to the living room that had not been changed since the last tenant seven years ago. Mia was a fashion genius. Why would I mess up a good thing with new furniture and decorations?
“Nice place.” He nodded surveying my apartment with its cheerful red sofas and tastefully painted walls.
“Thanks.” I nodded as if I had anything to do with its beautiful state.
“So,” He slapped his palms against his thighs, “per our agreement to be professional-” I grinned and rolled my eyes as he continued, “I was hoping we could go over some questions for the kids today.”
“What kids?”
He surveyed me strangely.
“Like I mentioned yesterday, I thought we could survey our target audience. See what kind of cartoons they liked and what stories would interest them.”
“Oh.” I said, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening to you yesterday.”
“Mm-hm.” He tugged his laptop case from around his chest, unzipped the compartment and pulled out a fancy laptop.
I decided to use my laptop too and so I did, bringing the less fancy model to the living room and plopping myself on the couch. While our laptops booted, I opened the apartment windows to allow the sun to stream through the small space. This was the first time I’d ever had a guy over… apart from the local telephone company men who fixed my internet speed.
I pushed the reminder that this apartment was “Cupid’s Place” out of my mind.
I definitely didn’t need that kind of mentality right now.
“What questions have you come up with so far?” I asked my partner, fully switched to business mode. We bantered through a list of topics and settled on five that any child from the age of five to ten would be able to answer. During lunch, we visited the nearby schools asking principals if we could drop a survey to their classes during the lunch break. A few gave us permission and we left a horde of surveys at six primary schools, promising to return in two hours to pick them back up.
“Wanna stop for lunch?” Drew asked.
I shrugged. “Sure.” Like all the Reyes women, I always had space for good food.
“Where do you suggest?” Drew inquired.
I gave him directions to my favorite food lady and he pointed the fancy car down the lane. All around us, people drove their vehicles, their bicycles or their motorcycles to their favorite food destinations. Some walked on foot, carrying bags heaving with ox-tail and white rice and stew beans or cow foot soup. Nearly every few feet a food vendor parked her cart or her tent or her hut and sold to the passersby.
Drew parked in front of a stationary hut painted white and green. The specials for the day were written in pink and yellow chalk on a dark green chalkboard fastened to the side of the building.
“You need me to come out?” He asked.
I tilted my head. “Yeah.” I said obviously.
He sighed and hopped out of the car. I stepped up to the growing crowd of hungry Belizeans converging on Ms. Allysa’s food hut and placed a hand to my growling stomach. I’d missed breakfast this morning. My belly was calling for sustenance.
Drew stood uncomfortably next to me. He was the tallest man in the crowd. But that wasn’t the only disparity between him and the other starving customers. He was also the whitest man there. In Belize, our cultural heritage has been touched by a myriad of ethnicities. A dark skinned man in a Traffic uniform, stood beside a Mestizo lady with both Spanish and Mayan features in a pink dress and black flats. A small Indian child with fair skin and straight black hair bounced up and down beside a brown skinned friend whose hair was fixed into dreadlocks.
We were all used to different skin tones and colors and ethnicities.
It didn’t mean that people didn’t stare at Drew.
Because they did at first.
Belizeans were used to the sunburned faces of white people wearing khakis and sandals, carrying huge backpacks, and cruising down the roads near the Tourist Village. It was uncommon, however, for white people to be in this corner of the city purchasing food from this particular vendor. Ms. Allysa’s oxtail was one of Belize’s best kept secrets and the secret was reserved for Belizeans only.
After a while, however, people focused on getting their food and returning to work and Drew faded into the background as much as a tall, handsome, white guy in Belize could.
“Good afternoon,” I greeted Ms. Allysa when it was our turn to order food.
“Afternoon, Lexi!” She smiled at me.
Ms. Allysa understood my obsession with her cooking and never failed to indulge me when I came to her shop.
“Ooh,” She turned to Drew and stuck her face closer to the cut-out of the screen mesh, “You dating a white man?”
I shook my head, “Nope. This is Drew. He’s my partner.”
Before Ms. Allysa could say anything inappropriate, I barreled on. “He needs to taste your ox-tail, Ms. Allysa.”
“With stew beans?” She asked.
“Yup.” I nodded and tilted my head to ask Drew, “You want onions?”
“Huh?”
“Pepper sauce.” I clarified.
“Huh?” He questioned again.
Were all Americans this clueless?
I ordered the pepper sauce for him.
In less than five minutes, Ms. Allysa had boxed up the food and deposited it into my hands. Drew dug into his pocket for money.
“I got it.” I held out my hand.
“Nope.” He insisted and shoved a fifty at Ms. Allysa.
I smothered his fist with my own as if we were playing rock-paper-scissors and he had played rock while I’d played paper.
“I said I’ve got it.”
He gave the fifty dollar US bill to Ms. Allysa anyway, told her to keep it and then walked down off the plank board to the car.
I huffed, debating throwing the plates of food at his head. Thankfully, I restrained my rage. Food had done nothing to me.
Nothing.
I climbed into his car and slammed the door. As soon as Drew merged into traffic, I let him have it.
“What is your problem? Are you that egotistical that you can’t accept a woman paying for your meal?”
He glanced at me with an agitated expression and I narrowed my eyes at him.
Speaking calmly and slowly, he replied.
“I don’t see why it’s a big deal. You suggested a place to purchase food, I paid for it.”
“It’s a big deal because I offered to pay for it.” I insisted, his calm, steady tone anchoring me a little, “Do you think I’m incapable of paying for my own meal?”
He scoffed and my temper flared a little more, “Did I say that? By doing the gentlemanly thing, did I somehow insult you? I think you’re the one with the ego!”
If I could have shoved him out of the car at that moment, I would. No one had ever spoken back to me like that; not that I gave many guys the chance to talk to me in the first place.
“You are so annoying.” I huffed and folded my arms in the front seat.
“Yeah, you’re not as sweet as I thought you’d be either.”
How would I survive five weeks with this guy? How?
The cafeteria was quiet when I entered as the school bell had already rung for the children to return to their classes for the afternoon session. I purchased the juice with my own money and stomped back to the car. The walk had done me good and I could face Drew without wanting to tear his head off and without uncapping the plastic bottle and spitting in his drink.
Returning to the car, I handed him his juice and he accepted it. Seething, I paused before digging into the ox-tail. As the first bite of flavor hit my tongue, all ill-feelings fled my body like an emotional purge. How could despair live where delight existed? Even Drew was licking his fingers and scooping spoonful after spoonful into his mouth. Fifteen minutes later, only bones remained in our plates.
Drew leaned his chair back and I burst into laughter.
“That. Was. Freaking. Awesome.” He confessed, his face a picture of satisfaction.
I barked out another laugh.
I’ve never been high by any other substance than God and good food. Why did I need anything else?
“You are not wrong, Darcy.” I hiccupped.
He turned to me and pursed his lips. “What were we fighting about again?”
I tapped my bottom lip and inhaled. “I have no idea.”
We lingered in the hazy after-effects of a hefty meal and then I checked my watch and sobered.
“Drew, we told the principal we were coming back before 1:30.”
“What time is it now?”
“Two-fifteen.”
“Ugh,” he groaned, “I don’t think I can move.”
“Come on.” I quickly climbed out of the vehicle with Drew lagging behind me. We crossed the sandy yard to the administration building at the back of the school and climbed the stairs slowly as our food settled in our stomachs with every step. Drew seemed to be regaining his usual energy while I battled an intense sleepiness. Hopefully, the effects wore off soon. I would hate to fall flat on my face during this survey pickup.
We knocked on the door to the principal’s office.