Two Arts

Chapter 38

A.N. Welcome back to night #1 with the family. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Nate gave me a side hug as soon as I was within range. We hadn't had a chance to properly greet each other beyond the big communal greeting from when Sadie and I had joined the family.

"How's school?" He asked, his eyes darting in Sadie's direction. He was not asking what he truly wanted to ask.

I raised an eyebrow and shrugged, "Still cool, what about Europe? How was all the walking?"

He lifted his shirt and uncovered his stomach, "I am still working on putting some weight back on," He pinched thin skin on his very lean abdomen, sculpted muscles in perfect sight, "They don't tell you how scrawny you get if you never stop walking for seventy-five days."

I shook my head, "I can't believe you did that," I thought about having to walk nonstop for that amount of time and had an extremely difficult time finding any of it appealing.

I figured each of us felt the need to prove ourselves in different ways, for me it was my Ph.D. program, and for Nate, that was what worked best.

"You've met Nat before?" Nate pointed to his girlfriend.

I furrowed my eyebrows, "I think I've only seen her in pictures, nice to meet you," I offered her my hand.

Natalie and Nathan. Nat and Nate. Cute.

Sadie and Angie. Angelica and Sadie.

Instead of taking my hand, the woman pulled me in a hug, bringing me back out of my thoughts, and smiled, "Nice to finally meet you," She told me genuinely.

They had dated for a bit over a year, but Natalie hadn't come for Christmas at my moms' the previous year, which was the only time I had seen Nate since they had been dating. She seemed very nice.

After a few minutes of small talk with the two, I felt Rory tugging at my arm. I looked down at my sister, "Is everything alright?"

She nodded and held up a half-munched cupcake, "I'm all done, do you want it?"

It was chocolate.

"Why not? Thank you. Where is mom?" I looked around while carefully peeling some of the paper off of the poor cupcake. All frosting had been licked off and parts of the top were missing.

She pointed in a direction and following her finger I realized that Sadie and Mom Amelia were laughing together at something.

I excused myself with my brother and his girlfriend and walked over with Rory.

I wanted to know what they were laughing about.

"Hey," I lightly bumped into Sadie's shoulder with mine. My hands were too sticky by then.

She smiled at me and looked puzzled at the horrible state of my cupcake.

"It's Rory's leftovers," I explained before taking a bite.

"I should've guessed," She crinkled her nose at the child and used the napkin she was holding under her rosé glass to try and clean off some of the dark buttercream from my sister's face.

She eventually folded the dirty napkin in half, wiped the condensation off of her glass, and used the damp clean corner of it to finish up cleaning my sister's face.

"I think it's almost bedtime for you," My mom told the kid.

"Nuh-uh, Mom Laura said the wedding is like a holiday and on holidays we stay up late, remember?" She reasoned.

Sadie plucked a piece of my cupcake from the paper cup while listening to the banter.

"Today isn't the wedding day, you can stay up late for that," Mom Laura jumped in to help her wife.