by Kira Graham
No one and nothing on this Earth besides Dad would eat Mom’s food. Willingly. That’s why we Sweet girls are all on the fuller side. I’ve been sneak-ordering pizza and takeout since I was seven, with the five of us hiding up in the attic to eat in secret.
“Rosetta, calm down. I told you, all you need to do to get that boy to notice you is go over there with one of my pies.”
We all suck in our cheeks to keep from laughing, and I notice Dad’s eyes narrowing in on Mom before he growls and declares himself heartbroken. Because all her pies belong to him. At which Mom titters and blushes like a schoolgirl.
Jeeezuuus!
It’s not enough that I have to hear these two going at it like minks, right? It’s not enough that I’ve heard my dad call my mom his “sweet, sweet cherry pie” while she’s been moaning. No, obviously I was a serial killer in a previous life, because now I’m being punished by getting to see my parents silently flirt and undress each other with their eyes.
Therapy, I think, musing about a new caramel bonbon I want to experiment with and wondering if taking a loan from Dad would be the end of the world.
My sisters keep jabbering, Rose about her undying love-hate crush on Achilles Hart, and Alex about the doctor’s appointment she has in order to “check on things”—by which she means she has a suspicious rash. With Al, that could mean anything since the woman is a hypochondriac. Sinai just broods as she always does, and snarls at Mom when she tries to get her to eat.
“I wanna live, Angelica! I’ve told you this a million times. I want to live long enough to see how long your eggs can go before they mold over.”
Sidenote. Sinai—or Sin, as we call her—is the only person deranged enough to tell Mom how bad her food is, because Sin is a foulmouthed, self-professed survivor of the Angelica Sweet cooking experience. Whatever that means. Oh, and she’s had a Tupperware of Mom’s scrambled eggs stashed in the safe in her closet since she was thirteen. That would be…eleven years ago, I think, my mouth pulling into a grin when I recall seeing those eggs just last week.
They’re almost pristinely preserved, without a speck of rot or mold on them. This leads us all to think that Mom’s actually been trying to murder us for years, but, without proof, and so as not to break Dad’s heart, we haven’t given it to the FBI for testing. She’d probably get the electric chair.
“My eggs! My eggs are just fine. Ask your daddy. He saw them last night.” She titters.
“Mom!”
“Gross.”
“Oh my God, I just threw up in my mouth!” I groan, nearly laughing when Dad blushes and avoids our stares.
“Now, Honey, you know—”
“Hush, Jack! They started this. I’ll finish it. I am a great cook. I managed to ‘cook’ the five of you just fine, didn’t I? I swear to the Lord, Jack, these girls think it’s easy to carry them inside your womb for months, experience gas and near starvation and swelling, and then don’t even get me started on what it did to my vagina to push them into the world!” she wails, her fake tears causing Dad to go stiff like a rooster, his eyes swinging our way and holding a warning.
Don’t ever upset Honey. Ever.
Dad’s a great dad. A wonderful dad. One of those fathers who was at every soccer game, every recital, and who never once missed out on a moment with us. Hell, Dad was the one who gave us all our period talks, no matter how grossed out we were or how we protested.
But Honey is his honey, and no one—but no one—upsets his honey.
“Mo-om,” Rose whines, rolling her eyes.
“Alex, Sin and Tee aren’t even really your kids.”
“I carried them, didn’t I?” she yells, her bosom shaking with every hard breath.
Technically, that is true. My aunts couldn’t carry children of their own to term, so very technically speaking, Mom did carry and birth two of my cousins. I’m calling bullshit on Tee because she’s adopted, though, no matter what Mom likes to argue about her origins. So, yeah, Betty has four pregnancies under her belt, but, honestly speaking, that doesn’t give her a lifetime free pass on the cooking.
As for cooking us, Rosetta is only half-baked, as far as I’m concerned, and while I love my sister, I am not ashamed to think that she’s a half-boiled bad egg. She’s stalking Achilles Hart, for God’s sake, and has been for going on eighteen months now.
“Let me buy the store,” Dad starts again, when we’ve argued Mom’s capabilities to death, and somehow I find myself choking down her eggs to prevent another fake, tear-jerking glare.
Oh my God, my life is a rollercoaster, I think, tuning Dad out as well as Mom and my sisters while they argue the merits of saving my ass. Again. By the time I’m swallowing to keep the eggs down and washing it all down with coffee that tastes like tar, I hear something that makes my body turn to ice.
“I met this lovely boy at the grocery store the other day,” Mom suddenly yells, bouncing around on Dad’s lap—oh my God, how did she even get there?—and making him smile and wince in a way that has me desperate to run.
And keep running.
One, because Mom’s bouncing around and making Dad turn purple is something I will not, absolutely will not, think about. Ever. Ever, I tell you! Two, the first date that Mom ever set me up on involved an amusement park, puking, and Sin’s cousin’s best friend, Tom Stutter. The puking part was bad enough, as were his high-pitched, extremely feminine screams. On the Teacup ride! But what killed me about having to make nice with Tom is the fact that his lips reminded me of that driving instructor on Sponge Bob.
Trust me, ladies, when a man has a full mouth, sometimes it isn’t a good thing. And yes, the kiss he planted on me was after his puke marathon, thanks to the heart-stopping Teacups that are no longer my favorite ride. Talk about freaking trauma. But the kiss itself wasn’t all that bad, even though I could taste something sour behind the mouthwash he rinsed with, compliments of my purse. No, nuh-uh, the bad part was having him suckerfish half my face off to the point that I ended up walking around for a week with a purple bruise just under my bottom lip that people mistook for cold sores. Because that’s what it looked like.
The second blind date that Mom arranged involved a pizza delivery guy who smelled like pepperoni and unwashed balls. I’ll never eat pepperoni again, dammit. It was my favorite pizza topping, too. Blind date number three isn’t something I talk about a lot, unless it’s with my therapist, Sandy Beach—swear to God, that is her name. How cool is that?
This will be “I want to kill myself blind date number four”—but yes, I will do it if Mom’s lined up anything better than Pepperoni Balls, Puke Fish, or The Date Who Shall Not Be Named.
I really will.
“Mom. No. Just no,” I whine, shooting my sister and cousins a filthy look when they start to giggle, their enjoyment of my plight enough to make me consider the scotch under my pillow as a curative against life.
Mom just sighs, because she’s more than aware that she’ll win this argument, just as she did all three other arguments, and gives me her best smile. That makes her look psychotic.
“But Cleo, the date is tonight.”
Goddammit!
Chapter Two
Adonis
I don’t want to go on this date, but another ear-splitting argument with Ma is about as welcome as the lecture I’ll get from Dad if I bail on this woman.
“Don’t pout, man. It’s pathetic,” Achilles mutters, sputtering when I flip him off and lean back in my chair, closing my eyes tiredly.
I’m exhausted after a month and a half of negotiations and back-and-forth with the owners of the chocolate company I’ve been trying to acquire. When I started my company, I had no plans to ever branch out into other fields. It was supposed to be property development all the way, until Dad got on my ass about diversification and the wisdom of always having a backup plan. Now I build large neighborhoods, sell toys, and also, if this deal finally pushes through, make chocolate that my ma swears is the best thing that ever happened to Georgia itself.
/> When she heard that the little chocolate company was failing, and that her favorite brand would be no more, I swear I think she cried for a solid week. Until Dad damn near ordered me to fix it because he couldn’t handle his Lovey crying all the time.
I snort at the thought of seeing my big-ass father, with his still-rippling muscles and his “don’t fuck with me” glare, in a tizzy whenever Ma sheds a tear. And yet that’s just what happens whenever Ma gets upset.
An upset Lovey makes for an upset Creed, and when Creed Hart gets upset, things get broken. Or destroyed. Like the time one of his work rivals called Ma fat and had her nearly killing herself with a diet. My brothers and I still laugh when Blake Crow is mentioned, and I’ve heard that the once-billionaire is now living out west with his mother, selling insurance.
Because Dad didn’t take kindly to his wife’s eating less, killing herself with workouts, and, as he put it, “ruining my ass.” He cried the day Ma dropped two pounds, and, while I couldn’t see it, because I refuse to look at my mother’s ass, he swore that she’d lost some of her “cuddliness.”
Jesus.
That being said, I know the hellfire that will rain down on me if I stand up the daughter of Ma’s newest best friend and call her out for setting me up.
I swear, I think that Angelica Sweet was hiding out in the toilet paper aisle just waiting to pounce on me, and, if that’s true, then I know for a fact that Ma must have given her my schedule. To ambush me and basically sell her daughter to me. Like a piece of meat.
I don’t even know what this woman looks like, and yet I’ve had four calls from Ma demanding to know where we’re going, what I intend to do with her, and worse, if I’ve had my annual testing done so that this Cleo girl can be assured I’m clean.
I don’t ever want to think about that again. Not ever. When a talk with your mother includes questions like, “Have you had your prostate checked?” and when a box of boxers arrives at your office with a note saying, “These are more roomy while giving support,” you might start to wonder if your own mother isn’t trying to stud you out to the local giggle squad of fertile wombs.
“Oh, stop being so dramatic! You think you have it bad? I have to sneak out of my house at four in the fucking morning to avoid Rosetta Sweet. Do you know what it’s like to have to anticipate your stalker and then spend an entire day with her when your mother invites her to lunch? Without telling you?” my brother grumbles.
“Rosetta Sweet?”
“Yeah, asshole. I told you about her just yesterday when you caught me hiding in the bathroom at the restaurant. Remember?”
I sort of do, I guess. I wasn’t listening all that much because I was still laughing about the fact that he got his foot stuck in the toilet and had to spend the rest of lunch smelling like his own piss.
“Eh. A little. Ma was jabbering about this date, so I was a little tied up trying to keep her from selling my sperm to some chick I don’t even know,” I say sarcastically, cursing when he chuckles.
“You’re the oldest, Ad. If anyone’s nuts are getting auctioned off, yours should be the first.”
“Like anyone wants those old-man balls,” Paris grunts, his face split in a grin as he sidles into my office, followed by Ares and Zeus.
Yeah, it’s like that. My ma’s Greek, and she has this obsession with their mythology that rivals even her obsession with my father. She named us all after her favorite gods and demigods, except Paris, the lucky bastard, who was incubating in her womb while she was reading the Iliad.
My name sucks, as far as I’m concerned, and it gets no better as Ad or Addy, as Ma calls me. Once, a kid in class called me Donny. Like I’m that loser from New Kids on the Block or some shit. I cleaned his clock for him, and most folks just refer to me as Hart now.
Not that I mind. The person I truly feel sorry for is my cousin Nikos. His middle name is Hymen—I shit you not.
“Girls want these balls. Tight, big, virile balls,” I mutter, throwing a stapler at the asshole when he laughs and shakes his head in disagreement.
“I saw you in that banana hammock you think is so sexy. Total old-man hangy balls. Wear trunks, for God’s sake! Like a real man.”
“There’s no support in trunks. And it’s not a banana hammock—they’re European-style trunks. Only a real man is confident and hot enough to wear them,” I defend myself, flushing when my brothers all laugh and shake their heads in disagreement.
“The last time you wore that shit, Miranda Fells almost swallowed her tongue. You were flashing knobbage like you read about,” Paris quips helpfully, ducking when a box of tissues flies his way.
Damn assholes live to torment me, and it seems they have a new topic when Ares smirks and shares a look with Zeus. The guy is usually quiet and “above” our banter, but apparently he’s willing to stoop to our level today.
“Talking about showing off your knob…I hear Ma’s got you set up on a blind date. I hear you’re halfway down the aisle and into fatherhood already.”
“Hey, fuck you, assholes. I am not interested. I’m only going because Pops called and warned me not to make Lovey cry!”
Which sucks, because Athena Hart cries whenever the need strikes, and it’s usually at the expense of one of her sons. Me. To be frank, I’m the one who gets stiffed when she turns on the waterworks because, unlike these little bastards in front of me, I always cave.
What? She’s my ma. I don’t like it when she cries.
“Ooooh, and the great Adonis Hart can’t stand it when Lovey cries,” Paris quips, flushing when I remind him about his three-o’clock ice cream run just last week when Ma got a craving for something sweet.
I laughed myself sick when Pop told me that story, and laughed even harder when it came out that Ma had put the ice cream in the freezer after one spoonful because, “Ooh, that’s colder than I anticipated.”
Fucking schmuck is as attached to those apron strings as I am. The others, too, for that matter. Just yesterday, I witnessed Paris getting a mani-pedi with Ma because she didn’t want to go alone. And Achilles? He spends every Sunday with Ma at church, because while Creed Hart will do most anything for Ma, church is not one of them.
“You know what happens when she turns on the tears, man. Pop calls, and if I refuse to do something, the old bastard lets the air out of my tires. Or gives Gigi different food, so that I get to spend days cleaning liquid dog shit off any surface that she goes near. No, thank you. Besides, it’s just one blind date among the many I’ve already had. I’ll do the same thing I did on every other one. Make her hate me.”
It’s a tried and tested method. I’ve done everything from telling a chick that she’s a little loud, to ordering salad for my date while I enjoy a premium cut of steak. My personal favorite is when I once let slip that I’m into BDSM and collaring.
One woman was so shocked that she went to the ladies’ room and never came back. Now that’s what I call a raging success. Not that I don’t date, because I do. A man’s gotta get action somewhere. The problem is, I tend to steer clear of what Ma calls “good girls” and stick with the kind of women who know the score. I don’t want to get married and produce the next line of Harts—not yet, at any rate.
When—or if—I do choose marriage and a family, it’ll be when I actually want those things, and with the way that I’m feeling now, that’ll be never. A wife requires love and attention and children…well, what the hell do I know about what they need? The only experience I have with any kids is when Nikos comes over with his son, Ari.
I like the kid—don’t get me wrong. But they’re messy as hell, they want shit all the time, and it’s exhausting just watching them to make sure the little imps don’t hurt themselves. Nikos looks like he hasn’t gotten a full night’s sleep in five years, and the kid is just so…busy. All the fucking time.
I work hard here at Hart Inc. I make good plays, but in the long evening hours and when I’m off the clock, I like two things. Relaxing at home with a cold beer and a good gam
e on the tube, and having sex and then hurrying the chick on her way.
Not that I don’t respect them or anything, because I do. I have a mother I would kill for, and I understand respect and equality and all that shit. Commitment, though, is not happening. So I don’t commit, and I never give women the impression that I will. Simple. No mess. Just pleasure, and then we both move on.
“Remember that blonde who thought you wanted an arranged marriage?” Paris laughs, his amusement so strong that I find myself eyeing my computer monitor. To throw at him.
“Yeah, yeah. That story’s old.”
“Old? Dude, that story will go down in the annals of Hart history. She was totally on board with everything she assumed you wanted and even brought along her medical file to assure you of her fertility.”
I would laugh along with them, but the truth is, it was fucking harrowing. Marta. Her name was Marta, and she really believed that we were on the way to…whatever the hell it was she was thinking. I can’t say. All I know is that I turned her down and then spent the next three months being stalked. This isn’t even a funny case of infatuation like Achilles has with this Rosetta woman. No. What I got was a lunatic who’d break into my house and rub her pussy all over my pillows because she wanted to lure me with her smell or some shit.
That wasn’t bad. I mean, I love pussy, like any guy does, and one that smells good is gravy to me. It was waking up in the middle of the night, tied to my bed while she tried to jack me off into a cup, that scared the hell out of me.
Nothing makes a guy softer than the thought of being violated for his sperm, and trust me, it was a violation, no matter what some men might think. Good old Marta is now somewhere in Washington with her parents and court-ordered to see a shrink every day for the next two years of her life.
I went easy on her in the end, but only because I felt so damn sorry for the woman that I couldn’t see her tossed in jail. Whatever made her snap, whatever made her think that coming at me that way was okay, it was bad enough that she won’t ever be the same again. I put her in the care of her folks, and hope and pray that I’ll never have to see her again.
