One glance toward the door had me finding my big sister hauling ass through the sliding glass doors in what had to be five-inch heels like she was trying to win a gold medal. Connie could run faster in heels than flat-footed, that was a fact. An impressive one too. At least I thought so.
As soon as she was close enough, I told her, “Not in public, Con. Word for word, that’s what I thought we agreed. No calling me Little B in—”
“No one’s listening!” the four-foot-eleven body claimed a second before she threw herself at me, arms around my shoulders, legs circling my thighs. “I’ve missed you.”
I grunted. “Oh my God, get off.”
She didn’t.
She just squeezed me tighter, and I felt myself start to lean back with her weight. “Zac, please help me,” I gasped, past the point of trying to get her off because I knew she wouldn’t.
There was a laugh behind me before two hands slipped beneath my armpits. Then something that had to be his chest came up right behind me too. “I got you,” he said above my head, actually supporting me. The warmth of his body pierced through my shirt.
“I miss you too, you heifer. Can you get off now though?” I groaned, hugging her back just as tightly and feeling my back protesting her weight. She was a small person, but my God she was heavy.
Well, that and the most weight I lifted was a cast iron Dutch oven.
“Hi, Aunt Bianca,” a familiar voice said from somewhere behind my sister.
I instantly pushed her away and turned toward my nephew, pulling him in close as he hugged me back. He’d grown a couple inches since the last time we’d seen each other.
“Hi, Tía B,” another voice said.
I hugged my niece too, oohing and aahing over how cute her clothes were and hugged them both all over again. Connie had hugged Zac while I’d greeted my niece and nephew, and I found them watching us. They were both smiling.
While Zac hadn’t been as close to Connie even though they were only five years apart in age, she had still been around long enough, rolling her eyes and talking shit to him and Boogie in the periphery. Basically, he’d witnessed or overheard all kinds of stuff. And I knew he’d seen her at least a couple times over the years.
“Are you getting hungry? Want to drop off our stuff and then go to Tía Meche’s for food since it’s the least they can do for being rude?”
“Did they buy food, or did someone make it?” I asked, wanting to make sure I wasn’t going to put myself into a situation that going to a restaurant would save me from. I loved this side of my family, but sometimes they brought up stuff that I really didn’t want to hear. It was why I had warned Zac that I would more than likely not stay at the party for longer than a couple of hours.
“Everybody was bringing something,” Connie explained. “Except us.”
It took me a moment to process what she was hinting at. “No,” I gasped when I did.
My sister nodded. “She’s bringing tres leches.”
Well, shit. That settled it. I could listen to anything for a little while if it meant tres leches cake. “Okay, let’s do it.”
“Who made tres leches?” even Zac asked suspiciously, hung up on it.
I’d forgotten he loved it as much as I did, or at least he used to. “Rico’s wife.”
“Rico with the neck tat?”
The neck tat that was a set of lips that made me laugh every time I saw them? “Yup.”
He blinked. “Let’s go.”
We piled into his BMW… after I ran for the front seat before Connie tried to steal it. Since she didn’t know what he even drove in the first place, it wasn’t a competition.
“Fucking cheater,” she gasped for breath as she slid into the back seat.
“I wondered if you two were the same… and it’s nice to see y’all haven’t changed a bit,” Zac said in a cheery voice as he turned on the car at the same time the kids slammed the doors shut.
I peeked at my sister in the back seat, and we both shrugged.
We hadn’t changed much. Her husband, Richard, had sighed over us nonstop during the time I’d lived with them. Connie might be hitting forty, and I might be close to thirty, but when we were together, it was like we made up for the fact we hadn’t been little kids together so we were going to do it from here on out.
“Uncle Boogie says they’re stuck at twelve,” my nephew piped in. “Then Mom says he’s eleven, and he laughs.”
“What have I told you about Uncle Boogie?” Connie asked.
“I’m not saying it!” Guillermo claimed.
I turned to Zac and could see him staring ahead, pressing his lips together.
“Tell me,” I whispered to my nephew, who shook his head. “Will you tell Zac?”
He shook his head again. “It has a bad word,” he tried to explain.
“Please. Tell me. I won’t tell Boogie you said it.”
The ten-year-old seemed to think about it.
“I’ll give you five dollars.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my eight-year-old niece shift forward and blurt out, “Mom says Uncle Boogie is a punk-ass. Can I have the five dollars?”
Zac choked, I started cracking up, and Connie laughed even after she said, “That’s the only time you can say that word, Luisa.” Then she glanced at me and said, “Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Yeah, you can have the five. You are wrong,” I laughed. “And he’s only a little bit of a punk. Not a total one.”
Zac snickered as he drove, and we listened to Guillermo and Luisa bicker the entire ride over to our aunt’s house. Of course, there were about a hundred cars parked on the street. He found a spot a few houses down. We piled out, and I spotted Boogie’s car as we headed over to the two-story house I’d been to about a hundred times over my life. The same one I had lived in while I’d finished high school and decided what I was going to do afterward.
At the front door, Connie rang the doorbell once and then threw the door open, not bothering to wait.
“I want to get food first and then go tell everyone hi,” I said over my shoulder. “Want to come with or are you going to look for Boogie?”
“Food,” Zac answered immediately, making me smile.
Except for a couple of kids hogging the living room who waved at us instead of actually getting up to give us a hug, there was hardly anyone in the house. Score for us. From the sounds of it, everyone was outside. My aunt and uncle had set up a trampoline in the back… even though they didn’t have a grandkid yet. In the kitchen, I grabbed a stack of paper plates and passed them around.
Connie followed after her kids, watching what they picked at and adding more to their plates. Zac followed behind me getting food. Just as I went to put a slice of cake on a small paper plate, a blur of a dark head came out of nowhere. A boy I recognized as Tony ran up to the tres leches and stuck his hand into the pan, scooping out a big mound of it and shoving it straight into his mouth.
“Eww, Tony, don’t use your hand. I’ll help you if you want some. Put it on a plate,” I griped, figuring I could cut the part out where his dirty little fingers had been. Seriously, they were dirty. Last time I’d seen him, months ago, he’d been digging boogers out of his nose and eating them.