Page 29 of Green
6
Theo
“Stop cleaning, Grandma!”
It was one-thirty, the last guest had left half an hour ago, Chloe and Ethan were downstairs, and Gemma hadn’t stopped humming or fussing around since then. She had kicked off her heels and removed those enormous round earrings, but she was beyond tipsy and it was like watching a toddler pretending to tidy up. I should have just sat back and enjoyed the show because she was so fucking cute, but I knew she was going to pass out any minute and I was afraid she’d do it while she was holding onto a bunch of bottles and cut herself.
“You could help me out, you know,” she said, bumping into the dining table.
“Rosa’s coming late tomorrow morning to clean up.”
“We can’t make her clean all this up.”
“I’m paying her overtime for the extra visit.”
“Okay, well I’m just…pre-cleaning.”
She just didn’t want to stay still because she was afraid I’d keep grilling her about Ben.
“Maybe we should give her the margarita machine? You don’t want to keep it? Do you? I don’t think you and margarita make a good team.”
“I’m sure Rosa’s teenage son would love it. And I think you’re just jealous of me and Marge and Rita.”
She didn’t acknowledge my dumb joke, groaned, and finally stopped moving. “I’m so tired. I partied so hard.”
I laughed hard. “No. You didn’t.”
She sighed. “I tried…I’m so hungry. There’s no more food in the house.”
“Oh yes there is.”
“There isn’t. I checked. Protein powder doesn’t count as food.” She pouted. She could barely keep her eyes open. She was going to go down fast and soon.
“You’ve been looking for what you want in all the wrong places.”
She wrinkled her brow at me. “What?”
“Hang on.” I got up off the sofa, went to my room, and returned with a bag of potato chips and oatmeal cookies. We had both consumed way too many carbs already, but it was Cheat Day. Nothing counts on Cheat Day. “I knew you wouldn’t eat enough when we had people over so I hid a stash in my closet.”
She clasped her hands at her chest and swayed. “You hid food in the closet for me?” She grabbed onto the back of a dining chair for stability. “Awww. Walker.”
I tore open the bag of chips. “Well. It’s for me too.” I was fresh out of the Old Dutch chips that my Mom sent a month earlier, but these would do. I dropped back down to the sofa, held the bag up to lure her, and watched as she came towards me, one foot carefully placed in front of the other, leaning a little further back than any sober person would.
She landed on the sofa right next to me and hugged the bag of chips to her chest like it was a stuffed animal she’d just won at a fair. “Haaaahhhhhh,” she said. “You.”
“Not mad at me anymore, are you?”
“Didn’t say that.”
I switched the TV input from Blu-ray to Apple TV and started up aBob’s Burgerson Hulu. She liked to watch animated stuff to relax. If I put on anything live action she’d start paying attention to the set design and go into work mode. Even when she’s drunk. If I wanted to torture her I’d put on a Wes Anderson movie. She’d start levitating and use paper clips to force her eyelids open.
This, I knew, but I didn’t know if she liked it rough. I didn’t know what she tasted like down there in that place of hers that I’d never seen. I didn’t know how she kissed when she was really turned on, and I had no idea that I was about to find out.
She rested her head against my bicep and stuffed a cookie into her mouth.
“That was a pretty good party, right?”
“Huh?” It was like she’d forgotten we just had a party at our house. “Oh yeah. It was. I’m gonna miss those guys.”
