“Oh.” He nodded as though digesting this information. “Then why don’t you just call it Spanish mad then?”
“Because Mexican Spanish is different than Castilian Spanish—Spanish from Spain. Just like Dominican Spanish is different than Cuban Spanish, or Venezuelan Spanish, or Costa Rican Spanish. The Spanish I would use to curse you, should the need arise, would be of the Mexican variety.”
“Ah, I get it. In Tennessee we have our own way of speaking, idioms that don’t make any sense to the rest of the English-speaking world.”
“Like what?” I was all ears. I loved this kind of stuff.
“Well, let’s see . . .” He shifted in his seat as we stopped at the light, his eyes moving over me. “My momma used to get mad and say, ‘Well that just dills my pickle!’”
This made me grin. “Did she really?”
“Yep.” Jethro nodded once, a rumbly chuckle making his shoulders shake. “Cletus also says it sometimes.”
Now I laughed. “That fits him somehow. My new goal in life is to get your brother to say those words.”
“He plays banjo in a band and is real judgmental of people who can’t sing. This one time he said, about a fella who was trying to jam with them, ‘He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.’”
I snort laughed. “See that one would translate well in any language. Speaking as someone who can’t sing, that’s mean, but it’s also funny.”
“It is mean.” Jethro turned his attention back to the road and made a right. “But then, Cletus is kind of mean.”
I studied Jethro’s profile, thinking about his assessment of his brother. Cletus didn’t strike me as mean. Clever, perceptive, odd—yes. Mean? No.
“I don’t think he’s mean.”
Jethro gave me a sideways look. “Yeah, well, you didn’t grow up with him. When he was a kid, he was really mean. Used to make other students cry.” He paused, obviously lost in a memory, and then added, “He use to make his teachers cry, too.”
“But that was when he was younger.”
“So?”
“So, don’t you think it’s a little unfair to judge your siblings now for labels assigned to them when they were kids?”
Jethro’s easy smile morphed into a thoughtful one, and he raised an eyebrow at me, like he found this concept intriguing but didn’t quite understand enough to agree or disagree with my point.
So I explained. “Growing up, I was the funny one.”
“What?”
“I was the clown. That’s all I was. My oldest brother was the artist. My other brother was the disappointment. My sister Maya was the beautiful one, and Rena was the smart one. Marta was the serious one. I was the clown.”
Now he looked vaguely dismayed. “What does that even mean?”
“It means people expected me to be funny, because I was funny when I was a kid. But they never expected me to be anything else—smart, serious, beautiful, creative, or disappointing—I was just funny. And if I wasn’t funny, well then they assumed I wasn’t feeling well.” I glanced around our surroundings, realized he’d taken us on a detour. “Where are we going?”
He must’ve been absorbed in our conversation or his resultant thoughts on the matter, because he blinked a few times and glanced at the road like he was surprised by where we were.
“Oh, I wanted to pick up coffee before we went in. We have plenty of time.”
“Good plan.” Now I understood why my mug had been empty. “Anyplace in particular?”
“Daisy’s.” He paired the single word with a sly grin.
Immediate and thrilling anticipation had me smiling like an idiot and leaning forward in my seat. “Really?”
“Have you had a doughnut yet?”
I shook my head vehemently. “No. No, I haven’t. I’ve had none of Daisy’s doughnuts.”
“Then this’ll be a treat.”
I stopped myself from bouncing in my seat. Since relating my Daisy doughnut fantasy to Jethro some weeks ago, where I imagined he would lick the smudge of frosting from the corner of my mouth, the fantasy had grown more delectably scandalous. Frosting on nipples—both his and mine—may have been involved. It wasn’t even about the doughnut or the frosting.
It was the licking, the tasting, the savoring. The idea of him devouring me, him being insatiable for me.
“What about my family?” he asked suddenly.
“What?” I panted, lost in my lusty thoughts.
He shifted in his seat again, his hands opening and closing on the steering wheel. “You’ve met my siblings. What labels do you think we grew up with?”