Golden Boy

T W E N T Y - T W O

My family dinners were always something that I looked forward to. My dad would spend the whole afternoon at the grill making ribs or chicken, and my mom would spend the whole day baking goodies for our desserts, normally making way too much for our family of four to consume without crashing from the sugar. 

Olivia would normally help our dad with the cooking, making the side dishes of rice and veggies—her specialty. Meanwhile, I would pretend to help my mom with the baking knowing all too well how particular she was and how quickly she would take over if she thought I was doing an inadequate job. 

After everything was finished, we would all sit down at the dinner table, catching up on our day and trying our best to make each other laugh. We weren't the perfect family, but once a week, when we ate as one, it was easy to forget that we weren't. 

Sitting in between Dayna and Jace was a completely different story. I have never been around family members who were so detached that they did not have anything to say to one another if not to yell. It took Jace a couple of minutes to settle into the chair and agree to eat dinner with us, even though he hadn't taken more than a couple of bites of the pasta Dayna had cooked, even though it tasted like a slightly better version of the one he fed me for dinner earlier this week.  

My eyes bounced between the two of them, feeling like a mediator in a boxing match, waiting for someone to step out of line so that I could call a foul, or whatever it is that referees do. 

Dayna and Jace were currently having a starring contest, which Dayna was clearly winning. Jace pretended that he was unaffected, but really I could tell he was cracking under the intense pressure of Dayna's gaze. She was relentless, boring into his soul and seeing every part of him that he was afraid to show. She took down his defenses with one long glare to the point where Jace shifted uncomfortably, unable to stay still. 

I never wanted to run away from a dinner table filled with delicious food so badly in my life. This was the complete opposite of every family dinner I have had in my life. No one ate, and the conversation was as dead as roadkill. 

Jace finally cleared his throat, setting his fork down. "Dayna, I need you to fix Elliot."

"No," she simply responded, reaching for another helping of the Ceaser salad, pilling it high on her plate to balance out the pasta.

Jace narrowed his eyes, clenched his jaw tight, and sat back, crossing his arms. "You always told me to never reveal magic to anyone no matter the circumstances, and now when it's convenient for you, you decide to put Elliot's life in danger by letting her know everything."

Dayna grabbed the pitcher of water and poured herself a glass, taking a long sip, watching Jace over the rim of the cup. She set the cup down and cleared her throat. "You put Elliot's life in danger the second you waltzed into her room and put a memory block on her and then left to do who knows what, thinking that everything would be fine," she paused, closely watching Jace's expressions harden. "Then you proceeded to expose her to our world, repeatedly, and ever since then she's been in life-threatening situations that could have been ultimately avoided, and naturally you want to put the blame on me because you still don't know how to own up to your own screw-ups."

"Everything would have been fine if the memory block—"

"Jace you don't get it. This isn't about Elliot. This is about you and your inability to live a quiet, danger-free life—"

"We have magic Dayna! There's no normal life for us. You have to stop living in this fantasy that we can all live in a two-story house with a white picket fence and a dog in the yard. We will never be like the rest of the world."