“You're my least favorite mother.”
She kisses my forehead. “What an honest insult.”
“Hey, you could technically be my least favorite parent now.”
“Not for ten more months!” They're doing a spring wedding. I'm the maid of honor, which is kind of awesome.
“Unrelated note, it's not fair you get two beds and I get none.”
She laughs. “Yeah, let's take care of that.”
“Just you and me?” I'm smiling. I'm setting her up.
She holds up her hand. “Dream team.”
I smack it with mine. “Dream team.”
I don't see Alexis until a full two hours later, after Aanya's left (and after I unexpectedly cried for a completely unexpected six minutes after Aanya left) and we're sitting down for dinner. Which is more pizza, because no one has it in them to cook after a day of moving in ninety degree weather.
In fact, I don't even see Alexis at first, because she's hidden under the table. I hear a little unnf noise as I shove my chair in, so the first interaction I have with live-in almost-stepsister is punching her in her ribs.
“Hi, Lexie.”
She runs out from under the table and hides behind her dad's legs. He chuckles and scoops her up and sets her back down in front of him like she's smaller than she really is.
“It's just me,” I say, feeling unbearably awkward. She liked me when she was a toddler. “You remember me.”
“Of course I remember you, I'm not a goldfish.”
This is when it occurs to me that I might be a complete idiot, because I've managed to worry about a whole lot of inconsequential things over the course of this move (I spent ten minutes deciding if I should bring my old toothbrush or buy a new one—I ending up doing both) and I never thought about the fact that I have no idea how to talk to a little kid, especially one who apparently thinks I might think she's a goldfish.
“Alexis, let's sit down at the table, okay?” Dominic says. “Taylor and Sara made you carrots and peas to have with your pizza.” Really Dominic made them—which means sticking bags of frozen vegetables in the microwave—but I get what he's doing and I appreciate it.
Alexis comes and sits at the table but doesn't eat, just scrapes her fork over her plate while we all try to hide our cringing. Then my mother says, “Alexis, are you excited about kindergarten?” and Alexis lights right up and starts talking about her new backpack, and damn you, woman, I thought you were going to stand with me in our discomfort, but no, it looks like I'm going to be alone in my fear of the not-yet kindergartener.
By far the worst thing is that this segues into a conversation about me starting school, too.
“Don't be nervous, mija,” my mother says. “You always find such good friends.”
I don't really know what she's talking about. In my high school career, I've pretty much only had Aanya, Jake, and three very innocuous boyfriends.
“When does it start, again?” I ask.
“Tuesday,” Dom says. “Guess they don't want to start you kids off with a full week right away!” He's got the Dad-joke thing down pat, I'll give him that.
My mom squeezes his wrist and says, “Taylor, Dominic got a little surprise for you. Tell her, honey,” and God, it's just too cute for words. Her eyes are so warm they're practically melting. I wonder if this will ever get annoying, or even start to gross me out, like how Aanya fake-screams when her parents kiss. I don't think that it will.
Dominic can barely look away from her to talk to me. “Alexis's mother's new husband had a son around your age. Goes to your school.”
Alexis's mother's new husband's son. It's going to take me a while to learn to follow these blended-family lineages in conversation.
Oh, God. Is he trying to set me up with this kid? No, that would be weird. That would be completely inappropriate, right? We're practically related. My mother's fiance's ex-wife's husband's son. Is that close enough for me to be allowed to be completely creeped out? Because I'm completely creeped out.
Maybe he's cute.
No, then I'm just creeped out about someone cute, that's not any better.
“He's going to pick you up tomorrow and show you around, show you where the kids—teens--hang out,” Dominic says. “Lisa says he's a good kid, and that he just got his car so he'll look for any excuse to drive it around.”
“That sounds nice,” I say, though I'm a normal human so really that sounds pretty terrible. But it's sweet of him to think of it, and it'll mean a lot to my mom for me to be gracious, and come Tuesday I will be grateful to know someone, and I'll reward myself for surviving the ordeal with ice cream in my new bed. So it could be worse.
It's in that new bed, that night, when everything kind of hits me, just the weight of the day. I've been preparing for the move for so long that I forgot to prepare for the part when it was over. When I'm just here, in my new room, with the walls that still smell a little like grass-green paint. And the view from my window is a different street with a different streetlight and a different—but still present, they must be everywhere—couple across the street that changes without closing the blinds. Until I go off to college, this is what I'm going to see before I go to sleep.
I think about Alexis next door to me, looking at her same view as always. I know she's awake, because she's thumping her foot against our shared wall.
It feels like we're looking at each other.
2
Dominic's ex-wife's new husband's son is named Lucas. He picks me up punctually. He's nice enough
