Page 5 of Nightclub Surprise
We walked into the kitchen and were met by the rest of her brood of children. “Mom, I don’t like spaghetti the way you cook it,” her oldest, Jeanna,griped.
“Then cook it yourself, Jeanna. Damn!” Leila bitched as she slammed a monster-sized package of pasta on the granitecountertop.
“Hi,” I called out to get my sister to look atme.
Her eyes ran over the kids who filled the kitchen before landing on me. “Hey, you.” She looked at her oldest daughter as she went to the wine chiller, grabbing a bottle and two glasses. “You’re on dinner tonight, my darlingdaughter.”
“I’ll help,” the youngest of the bunch, ten-year-old Jacob, shouted as he raised his hand as if he was inschool.
“Great,” came Jeanna’s sarcasticreply.
Leila walked past me, jerking her head as a gesture for me to follow her. “Come on, littlebrother.”
Leaving the noisy kitchen, I followed my sister to the patio out back. She popped the cork on the bottle and filled her glass to the very top before only filling minehalfway.
“Feeling stingy, sis?” I asked as I took a seat on the other side of the small table that sat between two chairs. My sister purposely put only two chairs and the little table on this particular patio to discourage the children from bothering her outthere.
“No, you’re driving so you only get half a glass.” She sat down with a long sigh then took a dainty sip of her wine. “Oh, this is delicious.” A hearty gulp followed and then she sat back and looked relaxed. “So, what’sup?”
“You remember the Matthews from next door back home, right?” I asked then took a drink of the wine, finding it a bit on the bitter side. It seemed my sister could find any winedelicious.
“Sure, there were the parents and that one kid. A girl. Um, Tawny.” Another long drink took her to half a glass already. “What aboutthem?”
“Well, I saw Tawny today when I went to the Science Center to pick up Gino.” I stopped as I contemplated Leila’s role in my chance meeting with the young lady I’d thought of often since our one night together. “Thanks for asking me to go pick him up, by the way. If I hadn’t been there at that exact time, I’d never have seen her. And man, did I enjoy seeingher.”
“She’s too young for you, Romeo,” Leila informed me with a snippy attitude. Always the older, wisersister.
“No, she wasn’t.” The wine, although bitter, called to me and I took anothersip.
Nope, stillbitter.
Leila’s dark brows raised. “Wasn’t? Don’t you mean to say,isn’t?”
“She wasn’t, and she isn’t now either,” I clarified. “You see, the night before I left for boot camp there was a full moon. I went outside to look at it when I couldn’t sleep, and there I found Tawny. One thing led to another, and bada-bing bada-boom, I ended up having sex with her and ridding her of her peskyvirginity.”
The wine glass nearly fell out of her hand. But my sister wasn’t one to commit party fouls and quickly regained her grip on it before so much as a drop could spill out of the deeply welled glass. “No! She was just a kid,August!”
“No, she was eighteen, and I was only twenty-one,” I correctedher.
“The day you left for boot camp you were twenty-one, but three days after that you turned twenty-two. You’re almost four full years older than that girl. August, you should be ashamed of yourself.” She stopped long enough to take a drink before going on, “And the fact that you took this girl’s virginity then left her is…well, it’s a shitty-ass thing to do is what thatis.”
“Yeah, I know.” I looked up at the sky at the low-hanging sun—evening was setting in. “She’s got a son. He’s in first grade. How old is a kid when they’re in that grade,Leila?”
“Six,” she said without missing a beat. She had so many kids she didn’t even have to stop to think aboutthat.
“Six?” I asked, as I thought about the kid’s age. “Are you sure they’re not, like, four or something? The boy was pretty small. I thought he had to be aboutfour.”
“Kids are little, August. But if he’s in first grade, then he’s six or seven.” She drained her glass then promptly refilledit.
If the kid was six, and Tawny and I had been together approximately seven years ago, then could he be…? “It was seven years ago that she and I were together. Do you think he could bemine?”
“I dunno.” Leila looked at the red wine as she swirled it in her glass. She had a special affection for the fermented grape. “Does he look likeyou?”
“He’s got brown hair and hazel eyes.” I pushed my hand through my own brown locks as I thought about the little boy. “And he’s adorable, just like me.” I grinned ather.
Her brows raised. “Wow. You didn’t just ask Tawny if he’syours?”
Was she crazy? “Hell no! That would’ve been rude. And the boy was standing right there most of thetime.”
