What I Thought Was True(73)

Cass lifts an eyebrow at Nic. “Cruz, hey.”

“Bro,” Nic returns, practically snarling. He swings the weight to the other arm. More curling. More glowering. Cass’s eyebrow remains in an elevated position. How does he do that?

“Shiny.” Emory smoothes Cass’s hair, pushing it behind one ear. I notice now that it’s longer than usual, and has a little wave to it. It is shiny. I practically have to sit on my hand to avoid reaching over and brushing back the other side.

I need to do something to break the tension. “Sure you don’t want a snack?” I ask, forgetting how lame that offer seemed when Mom made it.

“Nah. I’m fine. Thanks, though.” His eyes meet mine and linger a few moments before returning to the paperback edi-tion of Tess. Who I’m starting to hate even more than before.

Look back at me. What was that you were thinking?

Mom has settled herself on the couch with a book that, naturally, has one of the more aggressively sexual covers. Most of hers are not quite so bad, but this one has a guy with his shirt off, one thumb hooked into his overly tight white, practically painted-on pants, crooking his index finger out at the viewer.

Come and get me, baby.

Nic’s set down the first weight with a thunk; picked up an even larger one. Em’s now resting his head on Cass’s shoulder. His lashes float down, snap up, drift down again. He’s falling asleep.

It all just keeps getting better and better.

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I start to say something, though I’m not sure what it could possibly be, and in comes the missing piece in the whole situ-ation, Grandpa Ben, carrying a large plastic bag in which there is an enormous dead fish, judging by the size of the tail fins sticking stiffly out the top. He’s got another bag full of kale greens and root vegetables and is grinning from ear to ear, prominent front teeth accounted for.

“Look what Marco caught—right off the pier at Sandy Claw.

He got three even bigger than this monster.” His voice drops.

“Above the legal limit, but who’s counting? Can you believe it?

We eat well tonight!” He stops, noticing Cass. “Ah, the young yard boy. Como vai, meu filho?” His delighted smile spreads even farther across his face as he looks back and forth between me and Cass. “Você tem uma namorada? ”

Cass said he didn’t know Portuguese. Please God, let that be true.

My grandfather did not just ask him if he had a girlfriend. If Cass got that, I’m going to go over and knock myself out with one of Nic’s weights. The fifty-pound one should do nicely.

But his blue eyes are simply questioning, searching me for translation.

“He wants to know how you are, and if you like, um, fish.”

“I do,” Cass tells him, “thank you. And I’m fine.”

Emory’s now definitely asleep. Drooling on Cass’s last clean shirt.

“You will stay to dinner!” Grandpa Ben orders, one finger extended, a Portuguese tyrant. “Você vai jantar conosco!” He pulls a sprig of lavender out of the vegetable bag, tucks it into the vase beneath Vovó’s picture. Blows it a kiss. Then marches majestically to the kitchen counter, calling, “Yes? Yes?” over his shoulder.

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“I’d love to,” Cass calls after him. “I’m starving!”

This time there is no mistaking the laughter in his eyes, or the way his glance lowers quickly to my lips, then returns, innocently, to meet my eyes.

I give up, bury my face in my hands.

“I’m having a great time,” Cass says, very softly, so quietly perhaps my big-eared mother and nosy cousin can’t hear. “All good.”

Is it? All I know is that I can’t seem to stop—this—or slow it down. Or remember exactly why that’s what I want.

Here’s what happens before dinner. Nic finally gives it up and goes to shower, shouldering past Cass’s chair, unnecessarily close, waist wrapped in a towel, muscles bulging. Implica-tion: Mine are bigger than yours, minor-league swimmer boy, and I can mess you up if necessary. Cass does not look intimidated.

Mom asks Cass to carry Emory to the couch. Em wakes up halfway, perhaps because Cass has him awkwardly slung over his back, head hanging. He starts to melt down until Cass agrees to read his current favorite book, which involves a “dear wee little fairy who lived under a petunia leaf.” Seven times, until Mom takes pity on either Cass or me and shuffles Emory off to take a bubble bath.

Grandpa Ben, in some sort of Old World display of machismo, reincarnating himself as a knife salesman (did he really ever do that? I haven’t heard one single story about it up till now), decides he needs to whack the head off the fish with 254

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one blow, and chop up all the vegetables with some sort of enormous butcher knife. Cass and I try to slog through more Tess but keep getting interrupted by loud thwacks and Portuguese curses from the kitchen counter.

Nic comes back in and he and Cass have another manly conversation in which they both use monosyllables and say basically nothing.

“Hey, man.”

“Dude.”

As the fish is cooking, Grandpa Ben comes over to the table and sits down across from us, grinning broadly once again. I shut my eyes, waiting for him to interrogate Cass about his suitability as a husband, but instead, he gives a startled, con-cerned exclamation.