Page 12 of All Superheroes Need PR
I can’t help but grin. Elena’s sincerity makes me feel so seen ... and exposed. I want to retreat, but I don’t at the same time. And then my dad comes over and gives me a squeeze on the shoulder, and when my dad swats Luca on the arm, he reluctantly leans across the arm of his seat and one-arm hugs me, and then my other brothers reach across the table, except for Charles, who continues glaring.
“None of that explains the wine.”
Vinny and my dad both groan. Elena’s jaw drops in shock. “Have a heart, Charlito.”
“No me llames Charlito.” He points at her and then at me. “And you still owe us an explanation for why you got drunk enough to let a fucking assholecarry you home.” He punctuates each word by reaching into his wallet and pulling out three five-dollar bills.
“You only owe two,” my dad, William, says.
Charles grunts. “Bank one for later. I’m gonna need it.”
“He wasn’t ...” I swallow hard, meeting Charlie’s gaze tentatively. Charlie returns my hesitancy with a glare that’s unflinching.
He has dark eyes and a dark complexion the exact same shade as my dad’s with only slightly looser curls. Elena always jokes that God played a cruel trick on her, making her carry a baby that turned out to be the spitting image of his father and without a shred of her. She also jokes that he must have heard her complaints because her next three sons all took after her with lighter brown skin, darker hair, and wavesinstead of outright curls. Luca looks the most like both of them with skin somewhere in between and dark, glossy curls.
I ... don’t look like any of them. Of course, that’s only if you look closely, which most people don’t. Most people see my brown skin, my mass of loose, puffy curls, and the same brown eyes we all share—except for David, whose eyes came out hazel—and just assume I’m Elena and William’s. Nobody ever corrects them.
But if you look for just a second longer, you’ll notice my skin isn’t the same shade of brown. It’s milkier, less golden caramel. I wash out in the winter and look like a ghoul in all our Christmas photos compared to the rest of my family, who all remain a vibrant, rich brown three sixty-five.
My hair is finer—not thin, to be sure, but I don’t have the thick strands Elena’s genes gave the boys. My hair is a lighter brown than any of theirs, mousy and kind of boring, if you ask me, which is why I keep it layered and colored so that it’s highlighted all the way through. It hangs around my shoulders, long and insanely poofy unless I twist it or put in a roller set before bed, which I rarely do. I kind of like the poof. Like disappearing into a big shrub, it helps me hide a little better. Well, Iusuallylike the poof. But right now, I can see the way it sticks straight out of the side of my head in my peripheries, whacking my family members in the face every time they dare come too close to love on me.
“Wasn’t what?” Vinny prompts, seeming to have softened toward me again. He’s drumming fingers on the back of his phone.
“He wasn’t ... an asshole to you guys, was he?”
My brothers all scoff. My dad grumbles something as he bites into his eggs. Waffles have been served and so has bacon—some of which has even made it onto my plate. I greedily abandon my tamale derivative and devour the fat and bread, that good southern cooking churning in my stomach, probably twice as likely to make me purge as the tamale.
“He was an asshole,” my dad finally grunts loudly enough to be understood.
I blink, shocked to hear my dad curse. “What?”
“You heard me,” he grunts.
“También debes cinco dólares,” Elena huffs.
“What did he do?” I speak on top of her, surprise morphing into nervousness as I wait.
“First off,” Luca butts in, speaking louder than my other brothers, though all of them try to speak first. “He landed in our driveway like he owned the goddamn place ...”
“My driveway—” Dad interjects.
“Ahem?” Elena coughs theatrically into her fist.
My dad sinks into his seat a little bit. “Our driveway.”
She gives him an even more pointed look.
“Elena’s driveway.”
I smile. My brothers all smirk.
“Point is, he landed in the driveway, walked right up to the door—didn’t even knock—and the assholemeltedthe doorknob.”
“He melted it?”
Luca nods, but it’s Vinny who says, “I was still up—jet-lagged from Greece—watching TV on the couch in the living room when the door opened and a stranger fucking walked in carrying my baby sister’s body like a corpse.”
Vinny frowns, and I understand now why he’s more reluctant than the others to offer sympathy. That vision must have been ... not so nice. If it had been him, I can’t imagine how I’d have felt. He exhales deeply and cards his fingers back through his long hair, pulling out the hair tie and letting his man bun fall loose over the shaved sides of his head. He might be the only guy in the universe that can pull off the look, in my opinion, though when Elena first saw it, she about had a heart attack.
