The boy, probably nine-ish, sneered at me as he started to back up. “Mind your own business,” he said before running off.
I gasped even as my nephew said, “Mom!”
Staring after the little jerk, I could only shake my head. “I’m gonna fight a child today. I can feel it.”
Something warm landed on the back of my neck, and I knew without looking it was Zac’s hand. “You’re about the same size as one, so go for it.”
I looked up at him with a straight face. “You know what, Zac?”
Those blue eyes were locked on mine as he drawled, seriously, way too seriously for the sparkle in his eye, “Tell me, darlin’.”
“You’re a pain in the ass.”
His laugh filled my ears as he squeezed the back of my neck again. “Want me to pay your niece to trip him?”
I thought about it for a second before nodding. “If not, maybe my nephew can kick him in the face again.”
An amused eyebrow went up. “Do I wanna know how that happened?”
Connie chimed in as she spooned food onto Luisa’s plate, using her fingers as quotation marks. “Breakdancing.”
“Mom! It was breakdancing! I swear!” my nephew insisted.
Connie winked at him. “You keep telling yourself that. I’m not even a little mad at you.”
“But you were mad at me for the hole in the wall.”
“That was different.”
“Whose kid is that?” Zac asked.
“Do you remember Chuy?”
He made a thoughtful face and then shook his head.
I rolled a shoulder back. “Eh. It’s his kid.”
“Squinty eyes? Fat head? Little body?” Connie offered before screwing up her face. “Never mind, that’s like half our cousins.”
“What is?” a familiar voice asked from out of nowhere.
It was Boogie. I turned around to find him coming in from the living room, holding a stack of empty, used plates.
“Squinty eyes, fat heads, and little bodies,” my sister replied.
He groaned as he came forward, dropping the plates into a big, black trash bag first before making his way over. He hugged me, then Zac, and finally headed for the kids.
Luisa was in the middle of giving him a hug when she said, “Uncle Boogie, I called you a punk-a word, but I love you, and Tía Bianca paid me five dollars to say it.”
My cousin blinked, and I caught an edge of his smile before he held out his hand. “Give me half.”
“No!”
“Give me a kiss then?”
She sighed but slapped her little hands on his shoulders and pecked him on the cheek. But I didn’t miss how Boogie snuck another hug in. He was going to be such a good dad, I could feel it.
And that reminded me that I needed to start trying to be nicer to his future wife the next time I saw her, which was fortunately not going to be today because she was working in New York or something.
We made our way outside, and I had barely gotten through the sliding glass door that Boogie had shoved open for us when I heard, “Ah, shit! Las güeras are here!”
Connie and I looked at each other.
“Zac? Is that you?” the same person called out. I was pretty sure it was my cousin with the neck tattoo. No matter how many times Boogie told him to stop calling us las güeras, the white girls, because we were half, he still did it. Fucker.
And in true Boogie fashion, he muttered, “Shut the hell up, Rico.”
I loved him.
But I still called out, “Don’t be jelly my Spanish is better than yours, Rico.” You’d figure after this long he’d stop pointing out our dad was Irish, but nope. He still said something about it every time we saw him.
He didn’t say anything in return.
“Bianca!” one of my little cousins shouted from out of nowhere, and I barely had time to set my plate of cake and tamales down before a small body banged into the back of my legs. “Will you come jump on the trampoline with me?”
Glancing down, I found my six-year-old cousin with her arms wrapped around me, blinking up at me with deep brown eyes. She had pigtails, one was higher than the other, and she was missing two front teeth. She was fucking adorable, and I had no idea how she was related to the cake-eating demon inside.
“Please?” she begged.
Well, shit. I looked down at her and knew there was only one answer. “Yeah. Give me one second, okay?”
She nodded, and I looked up to find Zac watching me, a little smile on his face.
“I’ll protect your food, don’t you worry.”
I was pretty sure I heard Connie snicker under her breath as she went around me.
I told everyone hi really quick—even annoying Rico—as my cousin tugged me toward the trampoline, and once I was done, I chased her to it, thanking God I’d worn tennis shoes. There were two other cousins already on it, sweaty and laughing. But the six-year-old, who I’d played with on it the last time we’d come to my aunt’s house, kept on pulling at my jeans, saying, “Do it again! Do it again!”
It.
The backflip.
“I don’t know…,” I told her as I jumped a little. “Can’t we just jump?”
“No! Please!” she begged.
I had literally done gymnastics for like three months twenty years ago.
“Please,” she begged some more.
I knew I was going to regret it, I really did. “Okay, let me try,” I told her, already hating myself but not sure how I could get away with it when she was shrieking.
So I did, with a seven-year-old, a six-year-old, and a five-year-old cheering me on.
Well, I tried to do a backflip.
And my back said nope.
I landed it.
But nope.
“Oh my God,” I whispered to myself as I rolled to lay flat on my back, gasping for air because somehow tweaking my lower back had me unable to fucking breathe.
“Are you okay?” my little cousin whispered as she stood over me.
“Are you dead?” the older cousin asked.
“I want to be,” I told them with a groan.
“Want me to get Connie?” my same older cousin asked.
Oh hell no. She was the last person I wanted to come see this and laugh at me for trying to do a backflip I had no business or enough experience to do. “I’m fine, just give me a second,” I grunted, still lying there, flat on my fucking back.
“Peewee?” a familiar voice came out of nowhere. “You okay?”
Well, Zac was marginally better than Connie. I moved my head to the side to see him standing on the opposite end of the trampoline from where we’d entered. He didn’t have a worried expression on his face, but it was something.
“Yeah, you know, just threw my back out a little, I think.”
I could tell the corners of his mouth went up. “Just a little?”
“Yeah, just a little.”
His lips were still trembling from trying not to smile or laugh as he asked, “Need some help?”
“That would be nice.”
Then he grinned, and before he told me what he was doing, his hands went for my ankles and he was dragging me across the trampoline toward the edge. I sat up as much as I could once my butt hit the metal edge, but his arms slid under the backs of my knees and shoulders, and he hoisted me up into his arms, smiling the whole time.