Dear God, I was turning into my mom.

“It’ll be fine,” I mumbled to him, slapping him on the back as I headed back into the house to grab the midnight blue tablecloth I’d been reusing for the boys’ birthdays the last couple of years. Inside, my mom was hustling around the kitchen, preparing trays of vegetables and other easy finger foods I’d picked up the night before. She shot me that tight, distressed smile she always had on her face when people were going to come over.

When Drigo and I were kids and the holidays would come around, we’d hide. My mom, who was normally a very clean, very meticulous and tough-loving human being with a pretty good temper—as long as you didn’t say something she didn’t like or do something that embarrassed her—turned into a walking human nightmare. Not being around when she needed help wasn’t very nice, but the crap that came out of her mouth when she was trying to be perfect was a lot more “not nice.” A few times, Rodrigo had texted me RUN if he’d gotten wrangled into one of her moods.

And in this case, even though this was my house and it was only a bunch of kids, family members, and the nearest neighbors coming… I wasn’t expecting any differently. She’d complained about my lack of baseboard cleaning as soon as she had shown up, and then proceeded to walk around the house with a wet towel cleaning them, before going in my bathroom and the one the boys shared and making sure they didn’t have pee and poo stains all over the walls or something.

So I wasn’t ashamed of saying I had smiled at her and got the hell out of the house and her way as quickly as I could, busying myself with other things outside.

The box of decorations was right where I’d left it earlier in the living room, and I could hear the boys fighting from Josh’s room, more than likely playing video games until everyone showed up.

“Guys, will you help me decorate as soon as you get a break, please?” I called out to them, pausing in the living room with my hands holding the box to listen to their response of “Five minutes!”

I knew better. “Five minutes” was open to interpretation.

“I’m serious! Right when you’re done! The faster you help me, the faster you can get back to playing.”

They might have groaned, but they might have not. I wasn’t positive. All I heard was “Okay!” yelled back distractedly.

A girl could dream.

My mom’s back was to me in the kitchen, and I speed walked as fast as possible through it and back out the door so she wouldn’t catch me. She didn’t. Thankfully.

Surprisingly, only a few minutes later, the boys came outside. Louie immediately asked with a frown, “What’s wrong with Abuelita?”

To which I responded, “She’s a little cuckoo during parties, Goo.” The expression he shot over his shoulder as he glared at the door that led inside the kitchen made me crack up. He looked deceived and surprised. The kid had no idea my mom was crazy beneath the surface.

Between the three of us, we set up the rest of the decorations, the moonwalk looming over the yard, calling all three of our names, but somehow we focused and finished organizing everything about fifteen minutes before the time on the invitations stated the party was set to start.

“Diana, did you invite your neighbors?” my dad asked from his spot at the grill.

“Yes,” I confirmed with him for the second time. My thinking was, if I invited them, they hopefully wouldn’t complain when my visitors parked in front of their houses. Just two days ago, Louie and Josh had walked around, leaving invitations on doorsteps as I waited on the deck with Mac. I’d made them address the envelopes and almost died when I saw how Louie had spelled Dallas’s name.

“Hello!” a female voice shouted from over the other side of the fence.

All of us—my dad, Josh, Louie, and me—all turned to look in the direction we’d heard the speaker.

And sure enough, four different people peeked over the chest-high fence. Three of them were smiling; the fourth one not so much, but they were all well-known and loved faces. At the front, the taller of the two women in the group, was the face I’d just seen on television a month or two ago. Pretty, a hair older than me, and at one point, someone I resented a lot because she was so awesome and magnificent, and I was… not.

But that had only been when we’d been little kids. My cousin was nothing short of amazing, especially because she didn’t think or act like she was too cool for school. Nobody likes a stuck-up, snobby bitch, and she was nowhere even close to that. I was probably more of a stuck-up, snobby bitch than she was.

“Sal!” I yelled, waving. “Come in!”

She beamed at me, swinging her arm over the top of the fence to undo the latch and push the door open. She filed in first, followed by her mom who was my aunt, and her dad who was my dad’s brother, and all the way at the end was her husband. I didn’t think I would ever get used to calling that man her husband. Out of the handful of times I’d met the retired soccer player, I’d probably only been able to look him in the eye twice.

Sal smiled as she walked over, her arms extended forward like she hadn’t seen me in years. Which was true, it had been almost two years since I’d last seen her in person. Living in Europe most of the year didn’t leave her with a whole bunch of time to come back home. “I’m sorry for crashing the party without RSVPing—”

“Shut up,” I mumbled, taking her in a hug. “I didn’t even know you were in town.”

“We flew in yesterday. I wanted to surprise my parents,” she explained, squeezing me. Pulling back, she grinned and I grinned back at her. Despite being two inches taller than me, we’d each inherited our dads’ eyes and leaner frames. Where hers was a work of lean, muscular art, mine was more a masterpiece of Pop-Tarts and good genes. Average: the story of my life. Slightly lighter skinned, which she got from her mom, and way more freckle-faced, the family resemblance was still there between my cousin and I. Our parents used to say that, when we were really young, we would tell everyone we were sisters. “Rey!” she called out over her shoulder.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my uncle and aunt talking to my dad, giving him hugs, and Reiner—I had a hard time not calling him by the name half the world knew him by—standing off to the side by them. At the call of his name, he said something to my dad and came over to us, all long and lean and too good-looking.

By some miracle, I managed to keep my face even. He was my favorite cousin’s promised one after all. The love of her life, for real. I wouldn’t hold it past her to cut someone if they put the moves on him. She might be well-off now, but she hadn’t always been. You could take the girl out of the hood, but you could never take the hood out of the girl.

“Rey, you remember my cousin Diana,” she stated rather than said.

“Hi,” I kind of giggled for a second before catching myself and extending my hand out toward him. I couldn’t be too greedy and ask for a hug; the only person I’d ever seen him hug other than Sal had been her immediate family and my mom. She’d talked about that hug for three months afterward.

“Hello,” he stated evenly, shaking my hand firmly.

Switching my gaze back to my cousin so I wouldn’t get caught ogling the hottest forty-two-year-old in the world too long, I grinned back at her as if a man worth over three hundred million dollars hadn’t just been touching me. “Are you hungry? We have water.”