Patrick introduced Maisie and Grant to his friends. Maisie did this little curtsy thing that she learned on her own; only Patrick caught the side-eye she flashed when she finished. The girls squealed over their outfits and even Adam was impressed with Grant’s loose bow tie.
“I wish I were still that cool,” Adam declared.
“Still? Were you ever?”
“Fuck you. But don’t you just want to give him a scotch, neat?”
“I offered him a martini, but alas.” He pulled Grant, suddenly shy, tight to his side and parted his hair to the side.
“How long have you lived with Patrick?” Jennifer asked.
Grant picked at a branch on the Christmas tree. “Since our mother died.”
“Oh, my god,” Daisy said. “That’s hilarious. You’re hilarious. Where’s the bar?”
She twirled in circles until she spotted the bartender on the patio. Patrick turned to his niece and nephew. “She thought you were kidding. She doesn’t really think that’s hilarious.” He looked up at Cassie standing nearby and made a face. Oops.
* * *
It didn’t work the first time, but Patrick was undeterred. He took the cheese knife and banged on his glass hard enough to shatter even Baccarat crystal, which, since it was part of the bartender’s service, this wasn’t. “Everyone. If I may . . .” Patrick bit the inside of his cheek. Lame. He was overcome with nerves. Why? It had been a while since he’d had to do any kind of public speaking, but didn’t he have a performer’s heart? He was looking down at the kid from the new drama on the CW that had tweens aflutter. The nerves came when the kid looked back. Patrick didn’t want anyone telling teenagers, but this guy was actually hotter in person in his thick Tom Ford eyewear and sculpted white tee that gave him a perfect James Dean edge. Was it legal to make eyes at him? Sure. Hollywood has employed twenty-somethings to play teenagers all the way back to the dawn of TV. Ron Howard was already balding when he played Richie Cunningham; that one girl from that nineties show was actually the president of SAG when she was editing a high school yearbook on TV. “Everyone?”
He surveyed the crowd. His costars, other actor friends, that burgeoning pop star whom Patrick had told smelled nice. （He misunderstood her reply; when she thanked him and said it was her fragrance, he didn’t immediately get that she meant it was her fragrance—something bottled and sold with her name on it for girls to buy at malls nationwide.）
Chunky Glasses, Emory something-or-other, wet his lips, put his fingers in his mouth, and whistled so loudly the dog jumped, almost completing a full somersault. Emory winked at Patrick.
Whoa. Does one ever become immune to hot boys winking? “Thank you.” He almost said Emory, but what if that wasn’t his name? What if it was something else, something trendy and embarrassingly dumb, like Every? “Maisie, Grant, and I wanted to thank you for coming to our little party.”
Maisie’s little voice pierced the quiet. “And Marlene!”
“Yes, and Marlene.” How quickly she’d become part of the family by doing nothing else but resting her chin on his thigh while snoozing. It reminded him of Grant falling asleep in the crook of his shoulder that first night as he told them stories. Suddenly the spotlight felt lonely. He didn’t want to be the center of attention without his ragtag crew. It felt wrong, incomplete. “Come up here, kids. For those of you who don’t know, it’s been a hard year for our family and it’s only July.” Maisie and Grant made their way to him and flanked their uncle; Patrick reached out and took their little hands. He felt like a political candidate, staging his family for maximum effect. He gave each of their hands a squeeze, how small and fragile and warm they felt in his own. How big and strong he felt in comparison. For a rare moment he liked who he was. He liked who he was with them. Not so much a guardian but a guard, someone to stand between their fragile selves and anything else that dared threaten them. “We decided instead of moping our way through a difficult summer, we needed a party. We needed you. ‘Before you can say come and go, and breathe twice; and cry, so, so, each one tripping on his toe, will be here with mop and mowe.’ That’s from The Tempest. I don’t know why that comes to mind. Except I’m tripping over myself trying not to break out in a freakish grin.” He squeezed the kids’ hands again, three or four times, as if he were tapping out the word happiness in Morse code. “The three of us have been muddling our way through. Except tonight. Tonight, instead of tripping on our toes, we shall trip the light fantastic.” He looked down at a confused Maisie and Grant. “It’s an idiom. Anything else I’m missing?”