Coming Home (Morelli Family 6)

Drifting over toward me, Vince says, “Mia, this is Jessica. Jessica, Mia.”

Blondie gives me a great big smile now as she hauls her beer over toward Vince. “Oh, hi. It’s so nice to meet you. This one here’s been telling me all about you. You’re a lucky girl.” She says this with a wink, then dismisses me completely, turning her attention back to Vince. “Can you open it for me? You know I can never get it.”

Vince rolls his eyes at her, but takes her beer and pops the cap off anyway.

“Thank you,” she says, with exaggerated sweetness.

Is she trying to annoy me? Maybe he told her I get jealous and to try to trigger it. I mean, it’s fucking working; I hate this girl. But I tell myself to dial it down, because I have to get through this whole dinner without glaring her to death, and also, Vince is not mine. This is an old impulse. I’ve always been possessive with him—this is just my heart’s muscle memory at work.

Still, I hope I never see her again after tonight.

Jessica could come over and help me serve dinner, but she doesn’t. Vince and Ben take their seats at the table, and she joins them so I’m left to serve everyone like a fucking maid. Even when Jessica thanks me, it aggravates me.

I’m pretty thoroughly annoyed by the time I sit down with my own plate to join them. I didn’t sign up to come here in the first place, and now I’m basically the help. Vince’s dad is surly as hell. His bimbo girlfriend is unashamedly eye-fucking Vince while we eat, and I really want to grab a fistful of her bottle-blonde hair and shove her face-first into her salad.

This has to be intentional. No one throws themselves at another human being this hard in front of their own significant other.

Ben still doesn’t care though. He’s the only one at this table who rightfully should care, and he does not. He’s not in the least bit attentive to Jessica. When she does try to talk to him, he doesn’t answer her and she just has to move right along, like he didn’t literally ignore her as she was speaking to him.

It’s like a big, blonde train wreck that I can’t walk away from. Not because I’m horrified and I can’t stop watching, but because I’m literally stuck at this table and I can’t leave.

Vince isn’t nice to her, either. He’s nicer than Ben is, but mostly he seems to like picking on her. Maybe he’s doing it for my benefit. Maybe he’s nicer to her when I’m not here, but he doesn’t want me to think he likes her or something.

Or maybe he’s being an ass because she likes it. It certainly doesn’t seem to bother her. She still looks at him like he’s a bronzed god and she wants to lick his abs—and other areas of his body, I’m sure. It’s an awkward, horrible thought, but I wonder if she has. As much flirtation—even if one-sided—as is going on there, is it possible Vince is banging his dad’s girlfriend? Or, was. I’m sure he didn’t bring me here if he planned on continuing to bang her, but given how attractive she is and how hard she’s panting after him, I have to wonder.

I’m trying to ignore her, but when I glance her way, I realize she’s looking at me in the bright-eyed, expectant way of someone who just spoke and is awaiting a response.

“I’m sorry?”

“I said, did you like your bikini?” she asks me. “Vince told me to pick one out for you. He said you liked nice stuff, so I thought you’d like that, but I’ve obviously never met you, so I was just taking a shot in the dark.”

“My bikini? Oh, yeah. Yes, it was lovely. You picked that out?”

Nodding, proud of herself, she says, “Yeah, I only had a picture to go off of when I picked out your make-up; I hope I got you the right shades.”

So, she’s Vince’s personal shopper? Cool.

“Yeah, the shades were right,” I murmur, desperately shoveling food into my mouth faster so I can wrap up this dinner and… well, actually, I probably have to clean up afterward, too. Goddamn, this is some reverse Cinderella bullshit.

I want to go to bed.

I want to go anywhere this annoying girl is not.

She’s talking to me again. “It’s so warm out tonight. We should go for a swim after dinner.”

I’m just about to tell her it’s impossible to swim after dinner, that we will both definitely die if we try, but Vince is already saying, “Good idea. Mia hasn’t been in the pool yet.”

There’s nothing I want less than to go in the pool with this girl. Literally nothing.

“We spend a lot of time in the pool,” Jessica tells me, inexplicably shooting Vince an openly flirty look, like I should find this charming.