Authors: Chantilly White
Behind her, as though a switch had been flipped, the sudden influx of chatter announced the arrival of the hungry horde.
Melinda watched their reflections in the glass as her family and friends filtered in from the kitchen and the hallway, everyone talking over each other, the women carrying serving dishes, bottles of wine, and pitchers full of iced tea.
Her dad carried a basket mounded with garlic bread and, with a furtive glance over his shoulder, set it conveniently next to his place at the table. Melinda grinned. Her mom would make sure he didn’t hog it all.
Jacob approached in the slider’s reflection, stalking toward her with his arms straight out and rocking side to side like a drunken Frankenstein’s monster. He grabbed her by the elbows and lifted her straight up off her feet.
“Parsnip!” he said, bellowing the word and giving her a little jiggle before lowering her back down.
“Rutabaga,” she answered with a smile.
He wrapped one arm companionably around her neck and placed his chin on top of her head, his golden-brown eyes glinting like topaz-colored jewels as they met hers in the glass. “Sweet potato.”
“Rump roast.”
“Hey!” He straightened, hands on hips, feigning indignation. “Don’t talk smack about my rump roast. It’s grade-A, baby.”
Melinda made a face meant to take him down several pegs. “Please. Control yourself.”
“Come eat, you two,” her mom called, aiming the clicker at the giant TV to shut it off. Pushing another button, she turned soft, instrumental Christmas music on from the stereo instead.
“Your chariot, milady,” Jacob said to Melinda, turning and flexing one leg into a lunge for her to use as a foothold. He patted his left hand on his own ass. “Watch the roast.”
Ignoring that last comment, she tucked her purple-slippered foot into the crease between his hip and thigh and stepped up, boosting herself onto his back. His black cable-knit sweater bunched warm and nubby beneath her fingers. He grabbed her by the legs and jogged the fifteen paces to the dining room.
“Oh, man,” Jacob and Melinda whined in unison, surveying the seating as she slid off his back.
The chairs at the kid’s table were already filled by her cousins, Danny and Christian, as well as Danny’s best friend, Gabe McConnell, and the carrot-top, Christian’s best friend, Wendell Page.
Jacob put on a pout worthy of Rick’s stage career and kicked at Christian’s chair leg. “I don’t wanna sit at the grown-ups’ table.”
“Suck it up, buttercup,” Christian advised, smiling his extra-cherubic smile.
“Yeah,” Wendell chimed in. “You snooze you lose, and all that.”
“You’re twenty-one now, Jakey, you can handle it,” Danny said.
“You’re twenty-three,” Melinda pointed out to her oldest cousin. “And so are you,” she added to Gabe, who only grinned, his emerald eyes gleaming.
Next to her blond cousins, black-haired, green-eyed Gabe looked more like her relative than they did. Well... if her relatives had descended from fallen angels, maybe. Though he was a marshmallow underneath the tough-guy act, and a geek at heart, Gabe’s chiseled features, too-long hair, and dark-angel looks suited his self-created reputation.
“Yeah, but we’re faster than you two delinquents.” Danny stuck an uncooked spaghetti noodle—pilfered from the kitchen canister—in the corner of his mouth like a strand of straw and chomped on it, smirking at them and tipping an imaginary cowboy hat in their direction.
Melinda shared an exaggerated grimace with Jacob for form, then they slumped into the two remaining seats at the bottom of the table across from the rest of the younger generation—her theatrical middle cousin, Rick, and his best friend, Eddie Thomas.
“Stuck with us, are you?” Eddie said with a wink.
Jacob crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue at Eddie, who was also Jacob’s roommate at Cal State Fullerton.
“Hey,” Rick said, sitting up straighter and casting an offended glance at Eddie. Affecting a superior mien, he raised a dramatic hand to his chest, nose in the air. “These are places of honor. Someday, people will pay the big bucks to sit next to
moi
.”
Eddie rolled his eyes heavenward. From the kids’ table, all four guys burst into laughter along with Jacob and Melinda.
“That’s a good one, Ricky,” Danny hooted, pretending to wipe tears of mirth from his eyes.
“Is that the bedtime story you tell yourself every night?” Gabe wondered.
“That’s right, laugh it up, chuckle-heads,” Rick said, unoffended. He pointed at them each in turn. “See if I invite any of you to my future red-carpet events.”
“We’ll risk it,” Danny answered, still chuckling.
“Speak for yourselves,” Wendell said before turning to Rick. “Can you introduce me to some leading ladies?”
“I might be persuaded,” Rick said, studying the fingernails on his left hand. “For those who’ve proven to be loyal supporters.”
Wendell ignored Christian’s muttered, “Don’t hold your breath,” and gave a fist pump. “Yes!”
Eddie clapped a hand to Rick’s shoulder. “Whatever you say, big guy.”
Melinda grinned at Eddie. He was such a good guy, but she always felt a bit sorry for him.
Though quite handsome in his own right, Eddie became a shorter, brown-haired, gray-eyed duckling in the circle of swans that included not only her Thor-wannabe cousins, but also Jacob, Gabe, and even the not-quite-as-handsome-but-exuberantly red-headed Wendell.
When her brother was around, Zach added his dark good looks to the swan’s numbers.
With his quieter personality, Eddie tended to fade into the background in this particular group of guys, especially with women. Girls went for the swans, or Wendell’s goofy charm, never realizing the treasure they were overlooking.
If he hadn’t become like a second brother to her from the first day they’d met, she might have gone for Eddie herself.
Melinda took a long drink of water and avoided looking at Jacob. Some people might think she had a sister-brother relationship with him, too, growing up in each other’s pockets the way they had, but with Jacob, it was different. As close as they were, she’d never considered him sibling material.
When they were kids, she’d fully intended to marry him one day, because what could be better than being married to your best friend? Even when they bickered, there was no one she had more fun with than Jacob.
It was too bad they wanted such different things.
Jacob’s path would take him far from Pasodoro. Her goals planted her smack in the middle of it, where she was happiest, surrounded by friends and family. A romantic relationship with him would never work, much as she might have wished otherwise growing up. Their futures waited down different tines of the coming fork in the road.
Mitch’s lying face danced in her mind’s eye for a brief moment. Maybe if they’d been better friends, not just a couple… If Mitch had been more like Jacob...
Well. Melinda took another sip of water. There wasn’t anyone else like Jacob, and besides, one of the most important parts of any friendship, any relationship, was mutual trust. Mitch had proved he was untrustworthy.
“Jackass,” she said under her breath.
“What?” Jacob asked, an eyebrow raised.
Melinda brushed off the nagging thoughts, her cheeks pinkening. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. “Nothing, sorry.”
Uncle Allan’s boisterous guffaw drew her attention to the grown-up’s end of the table.
Eddie’s parents, Nancy and Peter Thomas, sat on the other side of their son, deep in conversation with her still-chuckling Uncle Allan.
For Melinda, the Thomas family’s Desert Rogue Horse Ranch formed the backdrop for some of her favorite memories—days spent on horseback with family and friends or fishing in their small lake. Nights camping beneath the stars.
Next summer, the ranch would host the third annual Seth Mazer Memorial Scholarship Rodeo, and they’d all go out to help, as usual.
Melinda’s chest constricted a little, thinking of Seth. It seemed incredible he’d been gone nearly three years. His death in the spring of their senior year of high school had nearly brought the entire town to its knees.
Seth Mazer had been one of those guys everyone loved, no matter what social group they belonged to. He had friends everywhere, was whip smart, multi-talented, and super cute, with a smile that could light a city block. He was a shooting star, the great-grandson of the founder of Pasodoro, and one of Melinda and Jacob’s closest friends.
Now, though the event was bittersweet, the annual rodeo brought the whole community together for a celebration of his life and to keep his star shining.
Every person in their dining room had known and loved Seth, and he’d often gone along on their family trips. They missed him every year.
Because thinking of Seth’s wacky sense of humor and devilish grin made her want to laugh and cry at the same time, Melinda blinked the moisture from her eyes and focused again on her tablemates.
Their party of sixteen was rounded out by Lois and Bill Tanner, Jacob’s parents. They sat across from the Thomases, wine glasses in hand, going over lists with her mom and dad.
“Jake, did you grab the camcorder?” Bill asked, raising his voice over the low roar of conversation flowing across the two tables.
Jacob, in the middle of waging a fierce fork battle with Eddie, answered without looking up. “Already in the trunk.”
As the salads began making the rounds of the table, Melinda studied Jacob’s parents. Bill Tanner was an almost-identical older version of his son. He had the same strong features, the same rich coloring. They were of a height, as well, and like Jacob, Bill stayed tanned year-round. The sun had woven copper streaks in his thick, sable-brown hair, still as lustrous as Jacob’s, and his topaz eyes sparked with the same golden lights, especially when he laughed, which was often.
Jacob’s mother, at nearly six-feet herself, was a bit of an Amazon—big boned, broad shouldered, and as strong as many men—and gorgeous, with big hazel eyes, high cheekbones, and the full mouth and charming, deeply dimpled smile her son had inherited.
They made a striking family portrait.
Bill caught Melinda staring and raised an eyebrow, exactly the way Jacob always did. She merely smiled at him and turned her attention back to the boys. Jacob and Eddie had called a truce on their utensil war and were now discussing the pros and cons of adding a psych minor to their respective majors.
“It’s midway through junior year,” Melinda said, surprised.
“Yeah,” Eddie answered with a small shrug as he forked salad into his mouth, “but we’ve got half the requirements met through our majors and gen-ed stuff already, so it’s not like it would be a big deal.”
“Do you need it, though?” she wondered.
Jacob’s major—kinesiology—suited his goals as a premed student. Eddie already had a double major—business administration and childhood development. Adding a minor to his heavy course load seemed like a crazy idea.
“Are you kidding?” Wendell asked from the other table, grinning at Melinda. “Jakey could use some serious head shrinking—don’t they make psych majors go through all those evaluations? Could save us a helluva lot of trouble down the line.”
Jacob gave Wendell the stink eye. “Thanks, man,” he said. “Great sweater, by the way. Speaking of crazy.”
“You like?” Wendell asked, checking out his violently orange-and-red cable knit with a grin.
“Goes great with the hair,” Christian put in, a smile wreathing his baby face. “I especially like the flames.”
“Say the word, you can borrow it any time,” Wendell said. “It’s a chick magnet.”
“I didn’t know chicks dug burning pumpkins,” Danny commented as he took a sip of wine.
“See this?” Wendell rubbed a hand over his ginger head. “Like moths to the flame, baby.”
“I don’t need a sweater for that,” Jacob scoffed.
Wendell scoffed right back. “Dude, you need all the help you can get.”
Gabe said, “Too right,” and her cousins added a simultaneous, “Amen.”
Shooting a finger-pistol at Wendell, ignoring the others, Jacob focused on Melinda, getting back to his topic.
“It’ll be good to have something extra to offer,” he said. “Working with injured athletes, there’s bound to be mental components to their care. Eddie’s gonna need all the help he can get with his camp. And actually—”
“I think it’s a good idea,” Eddie’s father broke in, patting Eddie on the shoulder.
Melinda raised her eyebrows at Jacob, wondering what he’d been about to say. He looked away from her, though he exchanged a weird look with Eddie. He didn’t finish his sentence.
“No doubt,” Rick agreed, still on the psych topic. He reached across Melinda to snag garlic bread from a basket. “Kids these days. Worse than Jake.” He twirled a finger around his ear, smirking when Eddie and Jacob rolled their eyes.
“Says the banana brain,” Danny said, tossing a napkin at his middle brother.
“Takes one to know one, dog breath,” Rick shot back without looking his older brother’s way.