“Come meet Maddie, ya big oaf,” my ma says to him. “Aw, my boy doesn’t need to call his ma. I’m sure he knew how busy I was gettin’ the house ready for guests and cleanin’ up after your mother in the kitchen and gettin’ ready for all the everything…” Ma comes over to pinch my cheek—really hard. “I mean, what’s he gonna do—stop by to see us for half an hour when he’s ten whole minutes away? Nahhh.”
“Actually—it wasn’t his fault, Mr. and Mrs. Cannavale,” Maddie offers. “I wasn’t feeling well when we got in yesterday. I really hate flying. So I was resting, and he didn’t want to leave me alone.”
Fuck me, I want to put a little Christmas bun in that oven right now.
“Awww. That sounds like Mr. Bigshot, all right. Doesn’t want to leave the hotel his sick girlfriend is in, but he’ll go down to the bar to get drunk and sing to a bunch of strangers.”
“Hey—I wasn’t that drunk. I’m sorry, Ma. The truth is I just wanted one night alone at a hotel with my girlfriend. If that’s so terrible, well then, I’m a terrible man.” I go over to rub Maddie’s back, and by uttering two sentences, I’m the favorite guy of all four females in this room, at least for the moment.
And then my dad hustles off to the kitchen because Nonna is yelling for him, Casey’s husband calls out for her and Penelope to come watch his favorite scene in Christmas with the Kranks, and my ma hollers, “Eddie. Eddie! Edward Sullivan Cannavale! Declan’s here with his girlfriend! Get out here, come on!” She shakes her head at us. “That boy’s been in the guest room the whole time since he got here except when we’re eatin’.”
I shake my head, rolling my eyes, grateful that my little brother is being a slightly bigger disappointment than I am once again.
My ma disappears to get the platter just as my little brother emerges from the hallway, sliding his phone into the front pocket of his sweatpants. He’s so fucking handsome I want to punch him in the face, but I also want to pick him up and cradle him in my arms because he’s my baby brother.
“Eddie. You little shit. This is my girlfriend, Maddie.”
His face lights up. “Oh, hey. How you doin’?” my brother says, grinning and doing a Joey from Friends imitation because he’s a sweet, dumbass flirt. He takes Maddie’s hand to shake it and doesn’t let go.
“Well hello there. Wow. Declan wasn’t kidding when he said you were ugly,” she deadpans.
“Poor guy. I hear he was the best-looking in the family until I was born.”
She narrows her eyes at him, and I want to throw a blanket over his head already. “I think I’ve seen you on my niece’s wall…”
Shit. She recognizes him.
He smirks. “Tell your niece I said ‘hey.’”
“She’s thirteen,” I tell him as I pull his hand from hers. “Idiot.”
“Tell her I say ‘hey’ in five years,” he clarifies. My twenty-six-year-old brother has been playing a high school student in various pieces of crap for the past eight years, but he’s currently the star of a very popular show, and I’m really proud of him, even though he’s totally wasting his life in Los Angeles like an idiot. Or in Vancouver, Canada, really, because that’s where all of those shows are shot.
Maddie asks me to take a picture of them—to send to her niece—and I do it because I’m an awesome fake boyfriend who isn’t at all jealous of the fact that she hasn’t asked for a picture of me to send to Piper. Then, when I hand her phone back to her, she holds it out to Eddie and asks him to take a picture of us so she can send it to Piper. She wraps her arms around my waist, and I put mine around her shoulders, and I don’t ever want to let go.
My ma comes out of the kitchen with two cans of Guinness for me and Eddie. “Drink fast, and don’t let your nonna see you with this.”
I raise my Guinness to Eddie and try my brogue on Maddie again. “May the hinges of our friendship never grow rusty.” I glance over and catch Maddie’s eyelashes flutter.
Because Eddie’s a hot shot actor, he raises his pint of the black stuff to Maddie and Ma and says in his comparatively mediocre brogue, “May you have all the happiness and luck that life can hold, and at the end of your rainbows, may you find a pot of gold.”
Fuck you, Eddie.
“Deadly,” Maddie sighs, fanning herself. But she’s just being polite to my brother.
My ma winks at me. Then she takes Maddie by the arm. “Come, my dear. It’s time to feed you to the Italian wolf. You want a pop?”
Maddie glances back at me, confused.
“A soda,” I translate for her.
“Oh. Sure. Thanks, Mamie. Whatever you’re having.”
“Well, I’ve been sipping Jameson from a flask, but I can mix it with a Coke if you want an Irish cola.”
“That sounds perfect.” They wink at each other conspiratorially.
My brother and I both watch Maddie go.
Eddie swallows a big gulp of stout, sighs loudly, and proclaims, “She’s hot.”
I smack the back of his head while still guzzling my contraband Irish beer.
“What? She is.”
“I know that. So where’s your girlfriend?”
“She’s in LA, actually. With her family.”
“Oh yeah? Is it that friend of yours? From college?”
“Who—Birdie?” He forces a laugh. “Nerdy Birdie? No. She only dates other nerds. She’s a nerd snob. And so not
