Accidental Sire(43)

Speaking of grown-ups . . .

"Where's Georgie?" I asked. "I thought she'd be here for the fancy blood alone."

"She likes going to watch the card games. Especially when Dick loses. She learns new curse words."

I busied myself with little straightening-up tasks as the guests filtered in. The prospect of seeing Gigi in a space where I couldn't politely avoid her was intimidating. Not because she was mean or snotty. Heck, she'd been downright sweet every single time I'd talked to her. But being reminded that she was the one who got away from the boy with whom I shared an incredibly confusing emotional connection was just demoralizing.

But if anyone asked, it was because I was trying to avoid Dick's pretty (human!) granddaughter with the weird Boston-Irish hybrid accent. Nola seemed like a nice girl. It was believable that I would want to avoid eating her.

Libby was a sweet-faced little blonde wearing a "Half-Moon Hollow Elementary Room Mom" shirt-which I did not expect. Nor did I expect Jane to introduce me to Libby as "the one I've been telling you about." Which made the hiding-in-the-kitchen plan seem that much more reasonable.


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I managed to skulk around the pantry, shuffling bottles and plates, until they started the movie, something involving a lot of piano on the sound track. Jane walked into the kitchen, saw me dawdling over fetching Jolene some wet wipes for her face-stored in a drawer marked "In case Jolene eats ribs"-and wordlessly shamed me into walking into the living room. I dropped onto the corner of the couch, far from Gigi and Nola, and watched that chick from the Pirates movies deliver classic English literature while doing duck face.

It seemed that costume dramas were the theme this evening, if the huge stack of DVDs on the coffee table meant anything. Jane Eyre. Wuthering Heights. Sense and Sensibility. And Pride and Prejudice. There were a lot of versions of Pride and Prejudice. We seemed to be watching Pride and Prejudice right now, given how hard the male lead was glaring at the duck-faced Pirates lady.

I frowned. "You know, I've never really understood the Mr. Darcy thing."

The entire room froze, which was odd.

Jane's face was tense as she turned toward me on the couch. "Why's that?"

"I don't know." I shrugged, taking a drink of my blood. "Darcy insults Lizzie and blames it on being socially awkward. Assumes that she knows how he feels. And then he spews his feelings all over her and gets all butt-hurt when she not only has no clue how he feels but also doesn't feel the same way. Oh, and he pours his heart out in a ‘Here's why you're wrong not to return my precious pants feelings' letter."

Jane sputtered, "But-he-what?"

"There's even a meme about it," I said. "Firthing: when you stand around staring intensely at someone you like but never man up and say something about it."

Jane clenched her entire face. She went temporarily Muppet on me. I pressed my lips together and wondered what the hell I'd said.

Aw, hell. The Persuasion quote in Jane's office. The stack of DVDs. Those weren't the group's DVDs, they were hers. Jane was a Jane-ite, a fanatical Jane Austen fan who bared her fangs at the merest criticism of Austen's works.

"She insulted Colin Firth," Iris whispered. She leaned toward Gigi, who had gone quiet and still, like a gazelle on the savannah.

Gigi whispered, "You cause a distraction. I'll get Meagan out."

Jane cleared her throat. "That is one way of looking at it. But if you read the books a little more closely, you will see that Mr. Darcy understands the errors of his ways very soon after the disastrous proposal and spends the rest of the book trying to make up for it. He's a flawed character who becomes aware of his flaws and improves himself. It's why he is Austen's best hero." 

"I always liked Henry Tilney," I said. Because I never knew when to stop talking.

Jane made the Muppet face again.

"How about we watch something nonhistorical?" Gigi suggested quickly. "How about Mad Max: Fury Road? You get Tom Hardy in leather, plus unexpected messages of badass feminism."

"Oh, I do love Tom Hardy." Nola sighed. "If more men in Great Britain looked like that, I never would have left Ireland."

"Which would have made Jed very sad," Libby noted. "Imagine the smoldering. No, seriously, just let me imagine it for a second, because I'm a single mom dating a single dad on an entirely different work and sleep schedule, and the last time we managed to have sex involved the back seat of my minivan while the kids were at a Little League practice."