Charming as Puck(67)

Muffy’s there. With Aunt Hilda. And Maren.

This is…unexpected.

Muffy’s in crazy curly bedhead and red footie pajamas, her feet stuffed into Ugg boots, and she’s scowling over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. Aunt Hilda’s in a pink boa, sunglasses with flamingoes at the edges and pink lenses, pink leather knee boots, black leggings decorated with ghosts and pumpkins, and an oversize Christmas sweatshirt with Buddy the Elf.

Maren’s in work clothes.

She looks oddly out of place. Not that Aunt Hilda and Muffy look in place, but the three of them are a weird combination.

“Um…” I start, because I’m hungry, tired, and borderline mad at myself for not just saying fuck it and sneaking into Nick’s bedroom for some hanky-panky last night.

Aunt Hilda leaps up, knocking the table and making Muffy’s second mug of coffee slosh over the edge. “Kami! Oh, my sweet niece. I am so sorry for my big mouth.”

“It’s okay,” I start, but she grabs me in a huge hug.

“Muffy yelled at me the whole ride home. I forget this is like that time she got kicked out of med school for sleeping with her professor.”

“Mother,” Muffy grits out. She’s always been cagey about the reason she left med school. I’ve always assumed she’d tell me if she wanted me to know.

“Or so the story goes,” Aunt Hilda adds hastily. “I don’t actually believe that bullhonky, do you?”

“What happened with Nick?” Maren asks. “You okay?”

“We’re fine,” I tell her.

One corner of her mouth twitches, and I realize she knows.

She knows his mother caught him going down on me.

Which, strangely, actually explains why she’s here. Felicity’s probably at Nick’s, which means Maren got the check on Kami task.

“Oh, good, you’re up.” Mom bustles into the kitchen in her usual khaki pants and simple blouse. She stifles a yawn and heads to the empty coffee pot, then gives a side eye to Muffy, who doesn’t notice, because she’s now double-fisting her coffee and alternating sips out of each mug like that’ll wake her up faster. “And you’re getting a ride home to change from your dear cousin, I see?”

“I’ll call you a Lyft,” Muffy mutters.

“We were just about to ask Kami about how Nick proposed,” Aunt Hilda declares.

“He didn’t propose,” I say over the rattle and thumps of coffee cans and mugs dropping all over the kitchen. “Go easy on him. He’s never had a real relationship before.”

My mom frowns. “He’s thirty years old.”

“He’s been in a relationship with himself for all of those years,” Maren offers helpfully. “He has some experience.”

“Not helping,” I tell her.

She wrinkles her nose. “It’s hard to help. I’ve known him too long.”

“People change.”

“Yeah, but…how much? Sure, he’s probably beginning to realize he can’t play hockey forever, but do you want to be the thing he stumbles into doing instead, because it’s easy, or do you want to be the one thing he’d actually give up hockey for?”

Considering how our whole relationship started—way back in February—the only honest answer is, “Both.”

I’m probably a complete and total idiot.

“Why didn’t you stay with him last night?” Aunt Hilda demands. “Oh, Sally, don’t make that face. Our girls are old enough to have responsible, protected sex. I know Muffy does it at least twice a month.”

Maren’s eyes bulge, but Muffy just sighs and goes back to sipping off both her coffees.

“Hilda,” my mom says pleasantly, “shut up.”

I have a sneaking suspicion Aunt Hilda is living vicariously through Muffy’s fantasies, but considering I ran away from a bar last night because the man I’ve secretly been in love with for years found out that I’d planned our Christmas wedding a year ago, I don’t have much room to talk.

Or to spill her secrets.

My dad walks in, phone in hand, earbuds tucked into his ears. “I don’t care what your book says, black holes will always be more interesting than quarks, and string theory is hypothetical.”

“Morning, Dad,” I say. “Tell Atticus hi for me.”

He waves, stops dead at the sight of the empty coffee pot, and shoots a scowl at Aunt Hilda and Muffy. “But the greatest curiosity in the cosmos,” he says, “is if we can send a person into a black hole.”

Maren rises from the table. “I need to get to work. Kami, you want a ride home?”

Muffy pops up like her body just got a jump from cables attached to her coffee mugs. “Yes. Yes, she does. And we need to talk about your profile.”

Your profile? I mouth to Maren.

“Bet your dogs need to go out,” she reminds me.

Oh, shit. She’s right.

I hug Mom around the shoulders and wave to Aunt Hilda and Dad, who’s arguing with Atticus now about astroparticles. My dad and my brother both love a good intellectual conversation to get themselves ready for their days.

“Your family is so weird,” Muffy mutters to me while we troop to Maren’s car.

“Says she whose mother has no filter,” Maren points out.