“I brought three bathing suits. Which is ridiculous since I will have to wear a mumu the entire time if I don’t want to burn. And that giant hat you got me,” she added, looking sad again that she had needed to fold it up a bit to get it to fit in her suitcase.
“We will go when the sun is going down some days so you can enjoy it without getting burned.”
“Sounds perfect. The beach is so dreamy during sunup and sundown anyway.”
Clueless.
She was perfectly clueless.
Just how I wanted her to be.
“I like her,” my father told me the next morning, after picking us up from the airport, bringing us back to his place. Where we were greeted by no less than twenty-five people.
The rest of the night was a complete blur of food I had missed, faces I had missed, laughing, dancing, and catching up.
My gaze moved across the beach to where Gemma had a set of twin one-year-olds on her hips–my second or third cousins or something like that–dancing and jumping around to make them throw their heads back and squeal over and over.
“Yeah, I like her too,” I agreed, smiling.
“She wants them, right?” he asked, meaning the kids.
Oh, she wanted them alright.
Once things with us got stable, once she found her dream job, it was like she felt comfortable enough to let her clock start ticking. And tick it did. We couldn’t leave the house without her getting heart-eyes over babies in stores or restaurants. She gushed over them at work. She found every excuse to go and visit the ones belonging to the guys from the office.
She wanted them.
Likely a lot of them.
And she had enough heart and patience to do that.
“Yeah, definitely.”
“She’s outgoing,” he added.
To him, that was a giant compliment. I’d learned with my time with my family that they preferred women who were friendly and personable, not shy or uptight types.
My family was outgoing, outspoken, out everything.
To Gemma’s credit, she hadn’t even looked shocked when they’d broken out some risqué jokes right in front of her the night before. And hadn’t run screaming when my cousins got into a fist fight over who made the better jerk chicken, of all things.
Though a part of that might have been that she had admitted to me that she found a few of their accents a bit tougher to understand right away, so she hadn’t known what the jokes or arguments were about.
She’d nearly been in tears about it, too, begging me to understand she was trying. Like I could fault her for struggling to understand them at first. I’d just wrapped her up, assured her that I had the same issue my first trip there, that the understanding would come.
“What you mean you never had Bammy?” my grandmother demanded loudly, drawing my attention over toward where she was settling the babies down on a blanket to have a snack. Which, apparently, was what the kids were having. “Lincoln loves Bammy,” she added, her tone–to an outsider–might have seemed a little harsh, accusatory.
“I would love to learn how to make it,” Gemma told her, not missing a step. “Lincoln loves a home cooked meal. It would be really nice to be able to make some of this food back at home.”
“Lincoln,” my grandmother called, walking away from the kids, dragging Gemma with her. “Ima teach her to make Bammy.”
“Right now?” Gemma asked, looking torn. She wanted to learn, but she hadn’t meant right that moment.
“Go get your cooking on, baby,” I told her, kissing her temple. “I’ll come fetch you in an hour or so.”
“She cooks for you, yeah?”
“Pretty much every night,” I agreed, nodding. “And some lunches too.”
“Good. That’s good.”
“Is everything all set up?” I asked, feeling anxious about everything falling into place, worrying about any little thing that could happen to screw things up last minute.
“All set. We’re waiting on her family.”
They would be getting in at the crack of dawn the next morning. My father was going to sneak out to go get them, bring them to their hotel, set up a plan to pick them up the next evening to bring them down to the place.
“I’m nervous,” I admitted.
It was strange, at times, to have your father, but have him so far away, so often out of touch. There was a connection, but he had never really been my sounding board, the person I went to with my problems. Thanks to the closeness with my mom and aunt, they had always been who I went to for advice.
But my mom was gone.
My aunt wasn’t around.
And this really felt like something you shared with your father.
“You love her, yes?”
“Yes,” I told him immediately, no hesitation. “More than anything,” I added.
“And she loves you.”
It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway. “Yes.”
“What’s there to be nervous about then?” he asked, slapping a hand on my shoulder before turning away.