He was also doing what he’d lived his life doing: making people feel like part of our family. There was nothing worse than feeling like an outcast, and by showing him she’d cover me at the bar while I made sure he was okay, Sadie had unknowingly shown qualities that my family thrived on. Compassion, loyalty, genuine friendship, and just being a good person.
It might have sounded trite, but it wasn’t. People could fake a lot of those, and they did with monotonous regularity, but whatever he’d seen in her when she’d said the words to me had shown him she was genuine.
Rubbing his chest, Elijah said pitifully, “I feel sad, too.”
Ignoring my cousin, she pulled back from Gramps and smiled at him. “Feeling better, you big git?”
“Your insults need working on,” he replied, looking at her with mock disappointment.
“I’m just breaking you in gently,” she assured him, squeezing his cheek before she climbed back over the bar.
“Hey, why does he get treated like the Queen of England?” Elijah snapped, and those of us who’d already experienced this with Sadie winced.
Spinning slowly, she leveled him with a glare. “The Queen of England?”
“Yeah,” Elijah replied, nodding and ignoring Gramps’ attempts to tell him to shut the hell up.
Drawing in a deep—and hopefully calming— breath, Sadie closed her eyes for a moment before opening them again and focusing on my cousin. I could have warned him to run, but I wasn’t that nice.
“I’m going to ignore that slip-up and answer your question. I’ve heard a lot of stories about him and your grandmother from Ariana, and people who are that nice deserve to be appreciated. Plus, I was raised to be polite.” She punctuated the last part by raising her eyebrows and looking at him like ‘maybe you should try it.’
Grinning, Gramps waved his hand through the air. “That’s kind of you, Sadie. I don’t like to brag, but I’m just as awesome as she—”
“Don’t make me tell her the truth, old man,” Elijah interrupted, shooting Gramps a smug look. “I know your secrets.”
Glaring at him, he hissed back, “I’m telling Lindee your secrets.”
Now that threat did have an impact on my cousin, judging by the panic that flashed across his face. Turning his back on Gramps, he returned his focus to poor Sadie. “Want to explain the issue about saying the Queen of England now?”
“Not really,” she shrugged, sounding bored as she cut up some limes.
“So, you won’t have an issue if I just, say, call you the Queen of England all the time?”
The knife in her hand slipped narrowly missing her finger, but she shook her head. “Nope, not even a little one.”
Leaning back, Elijah watched her closely. “Okay, then. I’ll have a Coke, please, Queen of England.”
Smiling tightly at him, she looked back down at what she was doing. “I’ve got to get these done. Ari, are you free to get the tw… Elijah a Coke, please?”
Elijah held his hand up and shook his head just as I started to get it for him. “No, I’ve never had a British Coke, so I’d love it if the Queen of England could get it for me.”
Dropping the knife with a clatter, she moved slowly away from us to the small fridge to get out a bottle for him and then came back and placed it calmly in front of him. “Here’s your Coke, I hope you enjoy it.”
“Jesus, I was hoping she’d shove it up his ass,” Gramps whispered to me, looking disappointedly at the bottle.
“Oh, I intend to do that, I just didn’t want to waste the beverage,” Sadie snickered, going back to her limes.
“Thank you, Queen of England,” Elijah said as he raised the bottle to his mouth.
Sighing, Gramps grabbed it away from him before he could take a mouthful of it. “Okay, you little peckerhead. Brits don’t like the term because it’s stupid, just like the way you’re acting.”
Looking confused, Elijah argued, “But she is the Queen of England. What the fuck’s the issue?”
This time, Gramps looked at Sadie and begged, “Please, for the love of all things sacred, fill him in. He’s been like this since he was born, and I promise you he won’t give up. If I have to hear him say Queen of England one more time, I’ll be the one shoving the bottle up his ass, full or empty.”
Rolling her eyes, Sadie leaned on her elbows on the bar and said slowly, “He’s made it a bigger deal than it needed to be, but for the sake of his arse hole, I’ll do it.” Then, focusing her attention on Elijah, she laid it out. “Calling her that is like calling your president the President of Washington instead of the United States. She’s the Queen of the whole of the United Kingdom—which, by the way, is made up of four nations,” she held up four fingers like he needed the visual proof.