Page 121 of Go Find Less
“Thank God,” Brett breathes, and I smile to myself. He’s been getting an earful for years about my frustrations.
“Don’t you dare sit there andgrin.” Mom whirls on me, finger in my face, and I rear back. Jesus. I feel like I’m back in college, having come home with my first tattoo - the one Fitz likes to trace, just under my bra line, that readsJust Breathe. My 19 year old self thought it was oh so creative. “All those years of college, and you decided to go design underwear.”
“Mama,” Penny says, her tone sharp. Big sister to the rescue.
“Would all of you stop it?” Papa’s voice rises above the thrum of conversation happening at a low volume, and everyone snaps to look at him. He’s the more emotional one, sure, but my mother is the loud one - only when she’s like this.
“I’ve already got several interviews lined up,” switching back to English, mostly for the benefit of the other people around us, so my mother will stop hiding behind a language she knows only we’ll understand. She opens her mouth to respond. “And for your information,allof them are for marketing jobs.” Her mouth snaps shut, and she stares at me. “Yeah, I’m not a total idiot. I’ve also got savings.” I hold my hand up, the other still crossed over my chest tightly. “Mama, you should have seen me in there.”
“She was channeling her inner Bee, for sure,” Vic says from the living room, and my mother rolls her eyes, seeming somewhat appeased. I look at my friend, and then the man standing next to him, and try not to suck in an audible breath.
God. Even standing in the shitty lighting of my parents darkly decorated home, I want to climb Fitz like a tree.
Hormones. Those are my hormones talking, I remind myself. A long day, lots of stress, a fucked up menstrual cycle. You are at your parents’ home.
But damn, those cheekbones.
“You need something else to wear,” I finally choke out, and then look back to Vic. “You think you can help him out with that one?” Vic looks at Fitz, sizing him up in about two seconds.
“I think I can do that.” He grabs Fitz by the forearm, dragging him toward the front door, but Fitz throws me a look that’s part concern, part terror before disappearing down the hall. I look around the room at the other men.
“Did we have a nice chat?”
“Not nearly enough interrogating,” Nolan answers, shaking his head.
“Booo.” Alex smacks his arm. “You had one job.”
“Dude got sentimental,” Brett says with a shrug, and I stare at him. Penny snorts, but then realizes her husband isn’t joking. Alex and Carla, too, are speechless.
My father says “He clearly cares about you, passerotto mio.”
“You told him, like, zero, though.” Nolan gives me a look that tells me he told Fitz everything.
“You loose-lipped bastard,” Alex groans, her head falling into her hands.
“I mean, we didn’t give him all the sordid details.” Brett’s grin makes me think otherwise. “Just the important ones.”
“The ones that make you sound like a badass,” Dylan adds, reaching for Carla’s waist and pulling her close. “Promise.” I toss the hand towel next to me at his smug face while he makes mooney eyes at my roommate.
“Promise, my ass.” I whirl on my father. “You said you’d take it easy on him, and instead you let tweedle dee and tweedle dumber tell the story?”
I tip my chin as both Brett and Nolan shout, simultaneously. “Hey!”
“Not to break up this party,” my father starts, ignoring my question and taking the baking sheet my mother holds out to him. “But I need to know who is staying here tonight, so I can make up the guest rooms.” He wipes a towel at the tray in his hands.
“Just the kids, I think, Papa,” Penny answers, and then looks around the group. We all nod. It’s a straight shot back home for the rest of us, and she and Brett can get Hunter and Aria in the morning, after they’ve had lots of coffee, and maybe some adult alone time. I shudder at the thought.
Down the hall, the front door opens and closes, and I hear Vic and Fitz talking, before one set of feet go upstairs, and the other pads down the hardwood hall. Vic comes around the corner to see us all staring, and he hesitates in the entrance.
“I sent him upstairs with a different shirt.” Vic meets my eye, and then smirks. “He’s headed to your room.”
I push off the counter. “Oh, fuck,” I stutter, nearly body-checking Nolan, and edging my elbow purposefully at Vic as I race by. I take the stairs two at a time, and when I make it to the first door on the right, I pause momentarily. The door to my childhood bedroom is closed - the words “Piper’s Room: Do Not Enter” glisten back at me in purple glitter on purple poster board. “Fitz?” I call out. There’s a beat before he answers.
“I’m decent.” I twist the handle, pushing the door open to see him standing in the middle of the room, arms crossed, the biggest grin I’ve ever seen him wear plastered across his face as he stares at the walls around him. “You were not kidding about Nick Jonas.”
Fitz
“Absolutely not.” I hold the shirt Vic handed me out like it’s covered in The Plague.