"Wait a minute." Pete protested in a slow drawl. Eyes narrow as he looked around the kitchen. "I'm in a room full of
women, not a male in sight, and I STILL can't hit on anyone! What kind of cruel twist of fate is this?"
"Ignore him." Sara waved a hand as she walked over to the table to set down the dishes they'd brought in. "He's just
switched majors again."
"Drama!" Pete declared. "Or for those less educated - Slackerville in darkened theaters!"
"The guys are in the garage pretending to look for something." Jo said with a laugh. "So, drama, huh? Plan to get a
job? I know a great club that's hiring drag queens...."
Sara laughed. "I'd pay to see that. Dumbass would probably look better in a dress than me though."
"That isn't hard." Pete said as he looked through the fridge and found a beer. "So we're welcome? I know from the
sounds of Beth yapping wasn't quite sure."
Jo looked interested but Andi just grinned and waved a hand.
"Of course. Beth can still come if she'd wants to. This is just my house now too and I have different rules about family
gatherings. And the first one is - play nice." She instructed. Touching the tip of Pete's nose and giving a wink.
"Otherwise I'm quite a good aim with the water hose."
"Promises, promises." Amy laughed.
"So when I get a house I get to make up rules for it too?" Pete asked, eyes lighting. "All right! All cute girls HAVE to be
in bikinis!"
"I'll alert the drag queen bar." Sara snorted.
Hector had seen his sister and brother arrive, since he was in the garage. "We'll let Pete soak up the female attention
a bit." Hector said.
"Wouldn't want to make him feel like a kid, after all." Tommy agreed. "Overwhelmed by the testosterone just pouring
off us."
Pete looked at Andi. "Huh, so I should call her and tell her to come on over?" He joked and got nudged by Sara.
"Don't you dare, or I'll make you ride home with her."
Andi met Pete's eyes and hers were serious and unwavering.
"If she promises to play nice, yes. You can. The only people not welcome here are the ones Hector doesn't want
present." She didn't say his dad and step-mother because frankly that was no one's business in the room unless
Hector wanted it to be. But Pete and Sara would know who she was talking about. She'd played nice and by the other
sisters' rules. Now she was done. If they wanted, they were welcome to come. But it was on her terms now.
No more abuse.
"Now." She starting handing out plates and dishes full of the first course of appetizers and chips. "Go see if you can
dig your brother out of the garage before every male headed this way automatically rotates toward the garage before
they hit the front door."
"Oh, good luck with that one." Jo chuckled. But my, was she getting a whole earful of interesting hints and tidbits.
What she wouldn't have done to be a fly on the wall! Hector was her friend. And she thought it was about time things
got shaken up a bit in that weird family dynamic the Garretts seemed to have going on. She snuck a quick glance but
Andi's long fingers were still bare. No ring yet. Damn it! She wanted to hear what he managed as a proposal!
"We move them from the garage to the back yard, they're just going to find a football to throw around and amuse
themselves anyway." Amy commented.
"Most likely." Sara said laughing as she got the door open to go into the backyard, where the guys, surprisingly, were.
Setting up the small tables they had found. "Holy shit." She said.
"What? Thought we'd get lost?' Hector asked with a chuckle as Tommy took the burgers away from Sara to throw
them on the grill.
"Mm." Andi tipped her head to kiss Hector on the way past with two plates balanced in her hands. "We thought the car
had seduced you."
"More fun to be seduced IN a car than by one." Pete commented, walking over to bump his shoulder against his
brother's. "Heya, Tommy!"
"I agree!" Sara stated, just to laugh at both her brothers’ facial reactions.
"What're those?" Tommy asked suspiciously and Amy smiled at him.
"Boca Burgers!" She offered. "They're meatless!"
"Ah, hell, no, woman." He growled, shifting his bulk defensively between the 'burgers' and the grill. "Don't you even
think about putting those next to my burgers. They'll get insulted at the way the class in this joint has dropped."
"Tommy..." She protested.
"Hey, hey, y'all!" It was Jerry striding in from the house, wife and three kids in various stages of mess milling around
him. "Brought my whole passel! You better have a LOT of food. Bert's just graduated to 'real' food." May, his wife,
grinned wide, baby balanced on her hip.
"I brought rice krispie treats but they look kind of shabby sitting on the kitchen table next to your treats, Jolanda.
Think we'll waste them on the kids."
"Hey Jerry!" Hector said as May pushed the latest baby into his arms so she could round up the rest of them. "Do I
have enough food? Did you forget who you are talking to? Between me and Tommy, we got the place covered."
"Simple is fine." Jo said to May, taking the rice krispie treats and stealing one on her way to putting them down.
"Nothing like a good sugar rush to beat all."
"Hector, and the kids, on sugar. nice." Jerry said.
Andi had met most of Hector's male friends. After all, despite appearance to the contrary there were rare times they
actually let each other out of their sight. And the guys had come over several times to lounge around in the garage
and play with the car. The various wives, girlfriends, etc. she hadn't met as much but if Hector's friends thought they
were worth attaching that was more than good enough to get them in the door.
"Closed down the shop early. Was gonna leave Jim in charge but the kid had a date tonight." Jerry chuckled, waving
to Jolanda with his usual crack of "Hey, Jo, whadda know?" He resumed his story as if it had never been interrupted. "I
figure, shy as that boy is, that's a grand occasion." He chuckled. "So what the hell, right?"
Andi left as he started offering advice to Tommy about how to cook a burger right, walking back into the kitchen.
Someone had brought an ice chest full of ice and she started moving drinks from the ice box to the chest so they
could be carried outside. Saved wear and tear on the back door if nothing else. May came in to help and gave her a
quiet smile.
"I'll help." She volunteered since all the children were busy attaching themselves to various other adults at the
moment.
"Thanks." Andi answered. May grinned.
"It's no problem. I felt guilty anyway. I saw hand prints on the wall near the door and thought it was my kids before I
realized they were too high."
Andi jerked and her head swung around toward the front door and then she looked back at May, ear tips still red but
laughing.
"Who told you?"
May smiled.
"Amy. Why? Were there hand prints on the wall?"
"You closed a gas station?" Tommy said, laughing. "Damn. I knew I rated high in the stratosphere of things, but wow.
Not that high! Now, please, leave the burgers to the master here. Go fix salad or something."
"Uh huh. Your fire isn't hot enough. We're going to be here all night." Chris said, coming up to the grill and turning the
gas up.
"Shit!" Tommy said, trying to save the burgers. "Well, good thing we've got extra. So Jim's got a date, huh? It’s not
from Baton Rouge's red light district, is it?"
"And you last went there....when?" Hector asked. "Just to make sure the poor kid isn't getting any left overs."
Jolanda wandered back to where May and Andi were, more than happy to let the menfolk play with fire. If worse came
to worse, there were plenty of salads to go around. "Oh no. Not our Hector. He wouldn't make hand prints. He's such
an innocent little guy."
May cracked up. "Remember, I went to the same high school as y'all. Innocent and little. Hector. Doesn't compute."
She said and looked at Andi. "Not that he was a whoremonger or some sort of bully. He was just...Hector. You now he
was always thinking of something not as innocent as he would like you to think just by how innocent his face was."
Andi laughed, eyes lighting.
"He does too. It's those impossible eyes of his." There wasn't a doubt from her tone of voice how she felt about his
dark eyes. "And that sounds like the beginning of some wonderful stories about him too. Please?"
May laughed.
"Oh Lord, where to even start? How about that time the high school football field got repainted?"
"Ummmmm. I'm telling." Wally had let himself in the front door and was smiling. Eyes almost disappearing into the
wrinkles in his round cheeks. His wife Catherine, elegant as a cat, walked in next to him, looking distinctly like she
belonged on a New England yacht while Wally looked like even dressing him in the suit he wore to work wasn't
enough to dress him up. To the casual observer it looked as if you couldn't have found two less likely people to lump
together for almost ten years of marriage. Until Catherine bent down and affectionately loosened her husband's
rumpled tie and gave his cheek a peck.
"Stop harassing the girls, darling." She chided with a smile. "Or rather, stop interrupting interesting stories some of us
might not have heard."
Wally seemed to grow several inches taller under her touch.
"I'm still going to tell." He grinned and then wandered outside. Andi laughed and finished loading the ice chest.
"So." She prompted. "Football field?"
"Hey Hector! The girls are corrupting your girlfriend!" Wally informed him as he popped open a drink and walked over
to stand the same safe distance from the grill that anyone else sane was.
Sara was sitting on a sturdy coffee table, listening to the stories. Being the youngest, she knew Hector pretty much
only as Adult Hector. The responsible, steady one. And having gone to a different high school, she even missed out
on stories from teachers or urban legends.
"Football field?" She encouraged them.
May laughed. "Our high school had this big time rivalry with the high school a few towns over. Normal high school
stuff."
"And it doesn't relate to the story at all." Jo said. "She's telling it wrong."
May rolled her eyes. "Then you go ahead." She said with an exasperated sigh.
"Fine." Jo said with a grin. "They always repaint the football field after homecoming. Because no matter who wins, the
field gets absolutely trashed. They still repaint it after homecoming actually. So Tommy, Wally and Hector were on the
football team that year. Believe it or not, Wally was quite the kicker. Tommy and Hector, well, they're big and most of
the time if they don't want to move, they won't."
"And that was the extent of their illustrious football career." May added with a wink.
"Anyway, so they're getting on task to repaint it, when Hector, after the win and the 'stars' of the game were strutting
around like macho peacocks or something, spikes the paint. I still don't know how he managed to do that, all those
gallons of paint, without anyone seeing it. So the thing was they were going to paint the names of the big time players
on the 50 yard line, you know, so we could all pay our due respect and worship." Jo continued with a roll of her eyes.
"Don't know why she's rolling her eyes. She was a cheerleader. It was her job to worship them." May added.
"And that's why to this day I'm a lesbian." Jo cracked. "Anyway, they're doing under the lights at night, so you can't
really tell the color. They thought it was white. They finish. Hector, we think. He hasn't admitted it, ever, sneaks in
after everyone leaves and paints flowers and little tiny red hearts around the names of the high school gods. Which
were written in bright, girly, pink."
"Like we said, he's never admitted it. But we know." May said.
"Couldn't have anything to do with the paint stained shirt he wore for a pick up game later that week, could it?" Jo
added. "So the next day we had a rally to announce homecoming queen, etc. All that bullshit stuff. And there are
these macho football players with their names in girly pink with flowers. For everyone to see."
Hector gave Wally the baby he had when he came over. "Yeah, I'll get her back. Just wait." Hector said. "If nothing
else, just say the word 'stairwell' around her a couple of times today."
"Don't listen to him." Tommy commented. "He's just bragging."
"Really?" Suddenly Pete, who had been content to ignore the burgers and leave them to their fate, was interested.
"Why is 'stairwell' our key word for the day, bro?"
"Oos a good baba?" Wally was gone. "Osa good diddle girw?" While Wally and Catherine had no children of their own
and looked quite content to remain that way, Wally made it a point to almost religiously remember the birthdays of all
of his friends children. With gifts who's point seemed to be, in descending order: noisy, annoying, repetitive, and the
more batteries of obscure nature they required the better. He swore up and down it was entirely unintentional but
each year he somehow managed to top the level of parental horror from the year before. One year he had even
resorted to air horns for the older children when the toy industry had failed him.
"Hey." Michael, just off work was still shrugging out of his maroon blazer as he came out of the kitchen. "Why is
Jolanda leading a ring of girls in the snickering, snorting type of conversation that means trouble for most men?"
"Because she's evil." Rachel answered with an affectionate smile, just - barely - beating everyone else to the punch
line. She had her legs propped up and was relaxed in a chair next to Amy as they discussed the pros and cons of
different diets and food programs.
"Little hearts and flowers?" Andi was laughing too hard to articulate much else and Sara looked torn between being
shocked and laughing her head off.
"That sounds like something Pete would do!" She protested and Jo laughed.
"Well, they are brothers." She teased.
Catherine shook her head and fished a diet soda out of the recently filled cooler, somehow popping it open without
damaging her perfect french manicure.
"He always has had a wicked sense of humor." She grinned. "Wally's such a junk hound. Hector sent him an authentic
'mosquito trap' one Christmas. Complete with certificate of authenticity and everything from wherever he was that
year." She chuckled. "It was the tiniest little bear trap I've ever seen. Wally keeps it in his office at home. So the next
year Wally sent him a tiny little plaque with a brass inscription and everything and claims he had the first mosquito he
ever caught with the trap stuffed and mounted on it."
"The man may hate to shop but he stumbles across the best things sometimes." Jo stated proudly.
"Stumbled across Andi." Amy quipped with a grin. "Out in the middle of a desert if I heard the rumor right. Did I?" She
turned her attention on Andi.
"Yeah!" Sara chimed in. "We haven't heard that story either!"
"Shouldn't we be bringing the drinks outside?" Andi asked with a glance at the door.
"Hey, my house, my grill. I can brag." Hector said with a cocky grin. "How's it going, Chris?"
"Eh, market's a little soft, but I'm doing all right." Chris said. "I could get a mint for this place though."
"Yeah, yeah, get your commission somewhere else." Hector said.
"So come on." Sara urged. "I mean, we heard the whole troop movement and everything. And I got details on the first
few kisses, but the actual heart stopping wow moment. That's what I want."
"Just one?" Andi chuckled. Than she sat down on the kitchen table, resting her feet in one of the chairs. "Right then."
She gave it some thought. "Well, the second kiss was one of them." When she'd decided she was going to stay. In a
way, decided she was going to stay for good even if she hadn't realized how long 'for good' was going to last her. "Or
the night before his troop left and I didn't think I'd see him again." She blew out a breath. Because you didn't forget
something that felt that hollowing. Possibly ever. "Or his first letter. I was in the med tent so I didn't have to go through
another day of watching other people get mail. Some of my girl friends practically tackled me and dragged me down."
She'd been - so close to tears. They'd never know. She nodded. "After that then. Hector was away on a mission. And
they can't write when they're off like that. So it had been two weeks since I'd heard from him. And I was so worried for
him. And I didn't even know exactly how much I trusted what was happening between us. No idea when he'd be able to
write again. And I went to bed that night so tired. Just - tired of all the things you put yourself through emotionally,
yeah? And he woke me up." The glow flushed softly under her pale skin. "He'd gotten leave for a week. And spent
that whole week finding his way back to me. He could have gone anywhere, could have spent that week somewhere
air conditioned with running water and a nice bed. But he came back to the Red Cross camp instead. Because he'd
wanted to see me." Her smile was soft and bright and intimate and a bit girlish. That someone had thought her worth
that amount of effort. "We sat outside in each other's arms and watched the stars fade and the sun come up over the
plains. When we weren't distracted with each other." She laughed quietly. "And then he snuck back out of the camp
and went back to work." She looked at the women near her. "All that, just for a single sunrise with me. And I knew
what I wanted." She looked at Sara. "It was a quiet 'wow' moment. But it was definitely one of them. My heart didn't
quite go back to what it had been after that."
Sara waved her hand against her face like a fan. "I think I'm going to cry." She said. She'd never thought her brother
quite capable of all that. Oh, he always did the small things that no one noticed, but that was straight up romantic.
"Hush." Catherine said. "Well, good for you two." She said. "It's about time that boy started settling down." 'Boy' when
they were about the same age.
"Oh!" Pete had intended to come into the kitchen for another beer. And because he was always vaguely suspicious
when women went silent too long. But he carefully backed out of the door now, hands raised.
"Hector!" He called over his shoulder once the door had shut, not to the point he was willing to turn his back on 'it' yet.
"I think scary things are going on in your kitchen. All the girls are hunched up around the table and looking - weird."
"Crap." Jerry drawled. "And they've got most of the food held hostage in there too."
Pete's entrance and exit had pretty much been ignored as Andi laughed softly.
"Well, I'm glad he waited as long as he did to 'settle down'." Though to her, those weren't the words she would have
used. It implied things were calming down and it seemed the rather opposite to her. "I wasn't in his life before this and
I would hate to have needed to take him away from some poor woman." Though, frankly, with her lifestyle, it wouldn't
even have occurred to her. And she would have missed - everything.
"Always wondered what he was waiting for." May commented, sitting in a chair at the table. "Wasn't like he couldn't
have had almost any girl he wanted. He just - never wanted 'em."
"He is very polite." Catherine commented. Like any good, nosy friend she'd tried to set him up a few times before
giving up. "I've never seen disinterest so politely shown."
Hector chuckled. "Watch the grill." He said to Chris as Tommy made an obscene gesture for insulting his grill
capabilities. Hector headed back in side. "It's all lies." Hector said. No idea what they were talking about, but it
sounded good.