by Kim Deister
Tom snorted and headed up the stairs, sneezing every couple of steps. I wondered if he was going to make it to my bedroom without having a catastrophic terrarium accident. But when I offered help, he insisted he was fine. Men. When he stopped for a breather on the landing, I called up to him.
“Incidentally, should frogs be as big as a Chihuahua? Or do you let the girl feed that thing steroids?” I realized I was somewhat lacking in amphibian knowledge, but I didn't think frogs were supposed to be quite that huge. And I thought it was a fair bet that steroids weren’t a great idea, either.
Tom laughed before answering me. “That might be a slight exaggeration, don’t you think?”
“Whatever. It’s big. Too big to be normal.”
“Always the cynic, aren’t you? You’ll get used to him. If Mac can, you can.”
I huffed as he turned back to the stairs and moved out of sight. I wasn’t so sure about that. Nor was I sure I wanted to get used to him.
Still carrying my bribe, I went back to my kitchen. Mac was already there, sitting on the counter drinking coffee and talking to her daughter. Kyra stood next to her, holding the creature, the ghost of a glare still on her face. Pretty attitudinal for someone who just invaded my house with an amphibian and bugs. One of them had emptied the backpack into a neat row on the counter. It was a rather more audible display of “food” than I was used to having in my kitchen. I was still staring at them with a look of intense disgust when Kyra began to lecture me.
“You aren’t going to be happy,” she sniffed. “But the worms have to be refrigerated. The crickets can hang out on the counter, though.”
“Um, excuse me? You want to put worms in my fridge?” My sister, always so supportive, laughed at the horrified expression on my face as she hopped down and left the kitchen. I was less amused.
“Yes, Auntie Cass. But they can’t get out of their container, I promise.”
“They damn well better not.” I peered at the plastic tubs as she put them way too damn close to my guacamole. The tub of crickets was the size of a peanut butter jar and it sounded like the symphony of a nightmare. Gross.
After desecrating my kitchen and lecturing me some more, my lovely niece and her pet disappeared into the living room and left me alone with the worms and the crickets. I poured orange juice into tall glasses, trying not to slosh every time a cricket chirped. My sincerest hope was that by the time I made it into the living room, the frog would find its way to where he belonged… ensconced within the security of his tank. But when I peeked into the living room, I saw that Kyra hadn’t made a move toward making that happen. Instead, she sat curled into one of the chairs by the window cuddling it and crooning to it like it was a newborn baby. I didn’t know whether to coo about how cute she was or be disgusted by the whole thing. I leaned towards the latter.
“I can’t believe I agreed to this,” I muttered under my breath as I waited for my sister. I continued to grumble when she came into the kitchen. She hauled a big picnic basket that seemed to hold the world’s supply of chips and dips onto the counter. “I know that you seem to think that I need to get out more and get a life. But a frog and live bugs? Not exactly what I thought you had in mind, Mac.”
She glanced across the counter at me as we unpacked the basket, a smirk on her face. “I don’t know, sis. After all, you do seem to kiss an awful lot of frogs. Or is it toads? Either way, maybe you should try an actual frog this time.”
I stuck my tongue out at her, not intimidating her in the least. She smiled at me and laughed at my angst. “You're hilarious,” I grumbled. “Besides, if I'm kissing toads, you all are the ones throwing them at me. So, it's your fault, not mine."
I smiled at her with a triumphant grin. Score for Cassidy. She looked at me and I could see the gears turning in her brain as she weighed her options. Was she going to come back at me with a zinger or just acquiesce to my superior wit? I could see my win in her face when the zingers fled. It was almost too easy.
“Actually,” she paused, chewing on her lip in the way she did when she was about to ask for something big. “I was hoping it could be a little more than frog-sitting…”
I was right. It was too easy. My eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Excuse me?”
“I was hoping that we could make this a more permanent situation.”
A chill of horror washed over me at her words. “And why would we be doing that?”
“Tom seems to have developed a bit of an allergy to Finn.”
“I noticed the nonstop, life-threatening sneezing.”
“So, we were hoping…”
“I’ve been guilt-tripped by one Richardson already today. Don’t make it two,” I warned her, shaking my finger in her face. Then I gave up all pretenses of resistance. “Besides, what’s the point of even trying? We all know Auntie Cass will cave.”
“Yes, we do,” answered my sister smugly.
“Bitch.” I rolled my eyes in exasperation. I loved my sister, but she tended to take advantage of me sometimes. It got annoying and, of course, every time I complained to my mother about it, she told me it was my own damn fault for giving in every single time. The woman had a point, even if I didn’t want to admit it.
“At least it’ll give you plenty of time to practice kissing frogs!” My sister’s comment elicited a rude finger gesture just as Tom walked into the kitchen.
“Rude,” Tom commented dryly. “And I could hear you two cackling all the way upstairs.”
“I’m saving your allergic ass and your lovely wife is giving me crap. She’s the cackler.”
“What? I simply told her that she kisses a lot of frogs and that maybe a real one like Finn would be a better bet.”
“Don't quit your day job, Mac.”
But I couldn’t argue that she, too, had a point. My history with men was almost legendary in its epic failure, to say the least. Fortunately, before my sister could really get on a roll, Kyra came over to eat doughnuts and the conversation changed. However, unfortunately, the creature came, too, and sat on the counter next to Kyra’s plate, staring at me the entire time.
The proverbial doorbell saved me when it rang. Kyra ran upstairs to put Finn out of harm’s way in the tank in my room. Out of sight, out of mind. I hoped. But I knew my niece well enough to know it wouldn’t stay there for long.
The front door opened before I could get to it and Grandma Fiona blew inside on a cloud of lavender. Hot on her heels was her boyfriend of the moment, a guy almost fifteen years her junior. The cougar. Of course, since that put him in his mid-fifties, it wasn't entirely scandalous, although that didn’t stop my sister and I from teasing her mercilessly. Jack carried a huge crock-pot into the kitchen and I lifted the lid and sniffed deeply. For an Irish woman from the old country, she could cook the hell out of Mexican food.
“Hello, darling,” she trilled. “As you can see, I brought you my magical queso.”
Magical? When Grandma Fiona labeled something as “magical,” it was a warning to be wary. She professed to have mad witchy skills, but I had yet to see the fruits of that endeavor. Her magical recipes tended to involve weird ingredients that I didn't want to know about mixed into foods that they shouldn't be. This usually left us with not only a magical failure, but culinary and often gastrointestinal ones, too.
All of her magic seemed to go awry, not that she’d admit it. A few months ago, I came home to find my bedroom filled with ladybugs after an attempt to charm one with some sort of love spray that was supposed to help me in the romance department. I ended up with ladybug bedding, ladybug curtains, a hundred ladybug tchotchkes. That was bad enough, but there had also been at least a thousand live ones that infested my house. That particular love spell of hers resulted in a $700 fumigation bill. And bedding that I hated. So “magical” worried me.
“Please tell me that you mean ‘magical’ in the sense that your queso rocks. Please tell me there’s nothing weird in it,” I begged. I cast an uneasy eye towards the crock-pot.
&nbs
p; She mock-glared at me before slapping Jack, who had tried and failed to choke down a laugh. I didn’t blame him. He’d recently been the recipient of one of Grandma’s “protection” spells. It had landed him in the ER with a raging case of food poisoning.
“None of you have any appreciation for my spell casting,” she sniffed.
Before she could get rolling, we heard the front door open again. I followed her out to the front hall to find my parents coming inside, each of them carrying a small stack of pies. Kyra raced down the stairs to help and skidded to a stop, milliseconds before crashing into her great-grandmother.
I started to close the door when a car I didn’t recognize pulled into my driveway. Tom brushed past me and went outside to greet the driver. With the arrival of Finn, I had forgotten all about him and I thought I’d rather spend the afternoon with the creature. However, the mystery man carried a few bottles of wine, a point in his favor. I might need one of those bottles before the end of the day. Maybe two.
The rest of Tom’s family pulled into the driveway one right after the other. Within moments, my front hall was filled with too many people trying to socialize. Grandma Fi and her boy toy stepped in and directed everyone through the house and out the back door, thus preserving the little sanity I still possessed.
While Tom and the mystery man followed the migration of people, I escaped to the kitchen in a useless attempt to postpone the inevitable. Conniving bitches, all of them. I was being snarky, but I hated the awkwardness. But before I could brood too much, the sound of small, running feet on the back deck came closer. Kyra burst into the kitchen with a wide smile, my amphibian-related sins forgiven. I braced myself impact just in time for her to throw herself at me.
“You gave me a fairy party! It’s so cool!”
“I’m glad you like it, sweet pea,” I answered. “Now that you’re speaking to me again, give your favorite auntie a hug.”
She squeezed me tightly. I felt her talking into my neck, but she was so nuzzled into me that I couldn't make out a single word. I unwrapped her from around me just enough to hear her.
“Say again?”
“I said that you have to be my favorite auntie because you are my only auntie. Daddy has brothers and they don’t have wives. Why do you always forget that?”
As if I couldn’t ascertain her disdain for my intellectual capability with just her words, she rolled her eyes to seal the point before pulling away and running back outside. I heard her out on the deck discussing my memory issues with Tom. Her voice was a balanced combination of disgust and worry. Little kids could be so literal.
After she finished cataloging my issues, her father laughed. There was another, deeper laugh, too. Matt, my uninvited guest. The conversation soon turned to a discussion of some criminal case Matt was handling. First strike for him, talking shop at a party. I was generous, since technically he could have two strikes before even getting up to bat. I mean, who shows up at a stranger’s house on a family occasion, knowing it’s a setup? Of course, it was possible that Matt was completely clueless, in which case I couldn’t blame him for it. Open mind, Cass. Give him the benefit of the doubt.
I’d almost forgotten about the conniving women currently under my roof until I heard them coming toward the kitchen. I mentally steeled myself for the onslaught I knew was coming. But it was Kyra’s day and I didn’t want to spend it angry and upset. They annoyed the hell out of me, but I knew they did it because they loved me. They just wanted me to find a good guy. I appreciated the sentiment, just not their methods or the nut jobs they chose for me.
I turned to face them and found my mother, sister, and best friend clustered together in the doorway, eyeing me warily. Their faces confirmed my suspicions. Matt was a setup. Taylor tried to win me over with cuteness as she batted her eyelashes in a fruitless attempt to prove her innocence. Mom and Mac were uncharacteristically subdued as they tried to gauge my reaction. My grandmother, however, showed no regret and no caution when she pushed her way through them. She came straight at me with arms akimbo.
“Now don’t you lump me in with these three miscreants, my girl. I am innocent of all charges! I had nothing to do with this attempt at matchmaking, although you are in desperate need of a man. Besides, you and I both know that I am above such underhanded doings.”
It was a great speech and almost believable. However, it was ruined when she took a page out of Taylor's book and batted her eyelashes at me. She was as innocent as they were, which was not at all.
“I love you, Grandma Fi, but you are full of shit and you know it. Need I remind you of my date last night? That was all you. And you should know… your ‘nice, older man’ tried his damnedest to take my virtue.”
She rolled her eyes and let out a snort of derision that I suspected was directed at my claims of virtue. But she didn’t even try to defend herself, just waving my words away before turning back to the others with her hands on her hips.
“You three should be ashamed of yourselves, foisting another young man on Cassidy. And what of the poor, young man when our sweet Cassidy doesn’t even give him a chance and breaks his heart, ruining him for other women for the rest of his life? Shameful!”
I glared at my grandmother, her compliment-insult combo not lost on me. Never mind that I had used variations of this argument over and over again, without all the heart-breaking and ruination stuff. No one listened when I said it, although Grandma Fi got creativity points for twisting my words and using them against me.
“I see your Irish gift of blarney is at full force today, isn’t it, Grandma Fi? You might be innocent of today’s setup, but you can’t put it all on these three. You’re just as bad with your meddling. Forget Mr. Handsy. Remember your friend’s grandson you forced on me? Connor, that ‘nice’ Irish boy? The one I found in my bedroom wearing my lingerie after he broke into my house? Remember him, Grandma Fiona?”
“I’d hoped you’d forgotten that unfortunate, little incident by now,” she muttered. “But look at it this way… without kissing a lot of frogs, how will you find your prince?” Echoing Mac’s words, another sign of a carefully planned siege.
“Yeah, well. Finding a grown ass man in your bedroom wearing pink satin panties and a matching bra is a little hard to forget. It’s the kind of thing one tends to remember,” I responded with no small amount of sarcasm. “And the majority of guys you people choose for me are more of the poison dart frog variety, rather than frog prince. But I will give you points for creativity. Claiming your innocence by berating these three, all while guilt tripping me into giving this guy a chance? Well played, Grandma, well played.”
She beamed at me, happy at my words. It was just like her to ignore the criticism and focus on the compliment, even one as thinly veiled and sarcastic as that one. She made it difficult to stay mad for long. The other three, however…
The three offenders in question still stood crowded in the doorway. I leaned back against the counter and faced them with my arms crossed over my chest. The glare I gave them was a lot less mocking than the one I’d given Grandma Fi. I stared at them for so long without speaking that all three of them started to squirm. It was the epitome of awkward silences. Even Grandma Fi started to get a bit twitchy. When I finally did speak, Taylor and my mom actually jumped.
“So, what do you have to say for yourselves, ladies? You all set me up. Again. I guess I have you to thank for this one, Mac, don't I? Although the rest of you suck, too, for helping her.”
My attempt at soothing my words with sarcasm and a light tone was lame at best. The need for self-defense was strong in all three of them and they began talking over one another as they tried in vain to justify themselves. My grandmother stood next to me with her arm wrapped around my waist, glaring at them in her attempt at solidarity. But we both knew she wasn’t entirely innocent. She may not have picked this one out, but she was complicit. Her age was the card they had played to convince me to host this little shindig at my place.
“Give it
up, Grandma. You're just as guilty and you know it." I whispered to her as the trio kept talking. They were completely oblivious to the fact that I wasn’t listening to any of them. She smiled up at me with a guileless expression on her face that I didn’t buy for a second.
They showed no signs of stopping any time soon, so I put two fingers in my mouth and let out an ear-shattering whistle. It worked and, for the moment, silence reigned supreme. Taylor had an amused expression on her face, but Mom and Mac were chomping at the bit to yap at me some more. However, to their credit, they stayed silent.
“She’s right about one thing, or at least partly right,” I said as I gestured towards my grandmother. “Do you ever think about the guys you stick in the middle of it? I’m not talking about the Connors of the world, who are a special kind of hot mess. But what about the perfectly decent guys who get roped into this? It’s not exactly fair to them either.”
“That’s the point,” snapped MacKenzie. “They are decent guys. And you still won’t give them a chance.”
Entirely missing the point. I loved my sister, but sometimes her holier-than-thou attitude ticked me off and this was one of those moments. Her voice practically dripped with snottiness and I felt my blood pressure beginning to rise. Even my mom, well known for her own occasional bouts of sanctimonious attitude, gave Mac a surprised look.
Taylor took a step away, wisely separating herself from them as she tried to blend into the background. My hangover headache was back in full force and I was still suffering the downward spiral of last night’s pity party. I was not in the mood to deal with Mac when she was in a snit. I took a deep breath and did my damnedest to harness my inner chi before I spoke.
“Look, Mac, I get that all you guys are trying to do is help and I appreciate that. But I’m twenty-six years old. I should be allowed to pick out my own men. Setting me up once in a while? That I can accept. But all the time? It’s too much and it needs to stop. I’ve told all of you the same thing…nine times out of ten, your matchmaking isn’t going to end in a happily ever after. What you want for me, while maybe well-intentioned, just isn’t necessarily what I want for myself. And before you say it, it has nothing to do with Luke. Believe me, I’m well aware he’s a flaming ass. But I think we can all agree that I might have some trust issues after that debacle. Pushing me into one guy after another isn’t going to help, especially when I have zero interest in them. I appreciate the sentiment, but I need to do this on my own, even if it means making a mistake or two along the way.”
