5. Trying To Keep Up

5

TRYING TO KEEP UP

“ I ’m so glad most of my kids are here today.”

Laken looked at her mother as she was getting snacks out to put on the island.

Everyone was here but Braylon, who was in Lake Placid with his girlfriend to meet Lilian’s family.

“Is that a shot at your second oldest?” she asked. They tried to get everyone together for at least two holidays a year. It was hard when you had eight kids and they lived all over the place.

Laken, West, Abby and Foster flew in this morning on her brother’s private jet. They couldn’t stay long either because Abby was in her sister’s wedding on Saturday and they had to be back in upstate New York by early tomorrow.

“No,” her mother said. “I want everyone to find that someone special and settle down.”

“But you would rather they still come home for the holidays?” she asked. “You can’t have it both ways. Be happy that Abby was willing to come this time. And you had us all together over the summer to meet Abby. We never come home in the summer.”

“I know,” her mother said.

She felt free to talk about this since West and Abby were in the other room and she’d come in to help her mother. Abby would be in soon, but sometimes she liked having time as the only one with her mother.

“It just means you can spend more time with your daughters,” Talia said, coming into the room.

So much for time with her mother alone. Not that there had ever been any alone time when she was growing up.

“You get Mom all the time,” she said.

“I want to move out,” Talia said. “Will you be on my side to do it?”

“Nope,” Laken said. “Not unless you’ve got a job to pay for it.”

Talia sighed. “I’m making money.”

“You are,” her mother said. “Your jewelry is beautiful and we all know it.”

“If that is your passion, why aren’t you putting together a business plan for West?” she asked Talia. Everyone got the opportunity to run or have a business, if not work for West.

Talia was still dragging her feet even though she’d graduated from college in May.

“I don’t know if it’s my passion,” Talia admitted.

“Really?” her mother asked. “Since when?”

“I’m still trying to figure it out,” Talia said. “Why do I have to know now what I want to do with the rest of my life? I’m not Laken who knew she wanted to be a man dressed like a woman.”

“What?” she asked, all but screeching. “Where the hell is that coming from?”

Her mother was laughing. “She means that you want the same power as a man but want to look like a woman. That has been your goal. A power position. Correct?”

Her mother wasn’t wrong. “I guess,” she said, putting her head down and going back to slicing vegetables.

“Don’t cut your finger off,” Talia said. “We know being in the kitchen isn’t your thing.”

“It’s not my thing when I’ve got twenty other things to do. I can manage to cut vegetables and put a salad together.”

“You can,” her mother said, holding up two carrot sticks. “But you’re just doing it any which way it happens rather than making sure it’s perfect.”

“It’s food that goes into our mouths. It tastes the same whether one stick is thicker than the other.”

Talia started to giggle and Laken looked at the smirk on her younger sister’s face.

She knew her sister was taking the carrot sticks into a sexual thought but wouldn’t comment with their mother in the room.

“Grow up, Talia,” her mother said. “If you’re comparing what I think you are to a carrot stick then you haven’t been with the right man.”

Her jaw dropped. “Eww, Mom.”

“Hey,” her mother said. “I’ve got eight kids. Do you think I haven’t seen a...carrot stick a time or two in my life?”

She held her hand up to her mother’s laughter to cut it out. Even Talia was laughing too.

“You two are gross.”

“Don’t be a prude,” Talia said.

“I’m hardly a prude.”

Just because Laken didn’t date much and couldn’t remember the last time another body was in a bed with her didn’t mean she was a prude.

It was more like she had no time.

Could be why her brain was on overdrive thinking of Jamie though.

“When was the last time you went on a date?” Talia asked.

“Laken is too busy conquering the business world,” Abby said, coming into the kitchen. “I’m so jealous of her and her drive and wish I was more like her.”

“Don’t be jealous of Laken,” West said behind his girlfriend. “Not everyone is meant to climb the ladder like Laken. You have to do what makes you happy. What makes Laken happy is getting more out of her big brother.”

She laughed and winked at him. “This new acquisition is a lot of work and you know it.”

“I do,” West said. “Once you get started.”

She sighed. “Next week I’m meeting with Jamie to sit down. You know, Abby, I could use someone like you on my team. HR experience and hiring, the policies and procedures to manage. Just say the word.”

Abby smiled but didn’t say much. She probably shouldn’t have put her brother’s girlfriend on the spot like that.

She knew West wanted Abby to move closer and Abby didn’t want a charity job.

This wouldn’t be one. Never.

This would be building her team with strong players just like Jamie had said.

“Speaking of work,” her mother said. “I was talking to my brother the other day. Phoenix is struggling with his business, it seems.”

Phoenix was her mother’s brother’s oldest of nine kids.

Having a lot of kids ran in the family.

Laken supposed she should be lucky that her mother didn’t have multiples like her Uncle Austin did. Aunt Carolina and Uncle Austin decided to be cute and named all their kids after cities.

Phoenix, Paris, London, Dallas, Bronx, Siena, Rome, Memphis and Raleigh. Ages thirty-one to twenty.

She hadn’t seen her cousins in longer than she could remember either.

Didn’t even talk to them much but got updates from her mother at times.

She was on social media but didn’t bother to check on things.

Who had the time?

“What’s going on?” West asked.

“No clue,” her mother said. “Just that Carolina said he had all these ideas and dreams and maybe rushed into it.”

“That’s too bad,” West said and let it drop.

Her brother was good at helping anyone who needed it and put his siblings first. But outside of the siblings, if someone else wanted it, they had to come to West and present like any other investor would.

“How are Uncle Logan and Aunt Amber doing?” Laken asked of her father’s brother and his wife. She had four cousins on that side.

“They are well,” her mother said. “Got all the kids home for Thanksgiving. You know they are spread out some too. I can’t get over how no one is married, but at least some are dating. Kind of like my kids. Dating, but no one is married or has kids. Do you know how many kids I had at your age, Laken?”

“I believe it was five kids,” she said, doing the math in her head. “And yet you kept going. We weren’t enough for you?”

“I had a lot of love to give,” her mother said.

She moved over and put her arm around her mother. “You did and you do. Now Talia gets it all.”

“It’s suffocating,” Talia said and was looking at West.

“Don’t look at me,” West said. “I’m not paying for you to have your own place. You ultimately have your own apartment downstairs and come and go when you want.”

“That’s right, Talia,” his mother said. “Don’t leave me just yet.”

She decided it might be time to change the subject or her sister was going to be blowing her phone up whining that Laken only made it worse.

“West,” she said. “I’ve got an idea about Jamie’s business.”

“No work talk,” her mother said. “What did I tell you?”

“You know it happens when we are all together,” she said.

“It happens with you talking with Rowan, Elias and Nelson because you don’t see them as much. But you two see each other all the time. So, no.”

“You heard Mom,” West said.

But when their mother moved to the other end of the kitchen, she leaned in and whispered. “Think of Nelson. Maybe put him in there to oversee things. It’s close enough to you to be mentored and me to keep an eye on him. Braylon too. He wants that part of it. Learning from the ground up might open his eyes but help too.”

“I like where you’re going. I’ll think about it,” West said.

“I hear you two,” her mother said. “No more work.”

“I’ll bring the snacks into the other room,” she said, pouting.

Laken just couldn’t shut her job off.

She didn’t think it was the fact she wanted an edge and wanted to be thought of as powerful.

It was more the fact that she knew she had to work twice as hard to be taken seriously.

When she walked into the family room, there was Jamie Wilde talking on the TV. He had a black pinstriped suit on, a light pink shirt and a darker pink pocket square in. His tie was a mixture of pinks and he had black sneakers on his feet with white soles on them.

He was standing next to a few other broadcasters and they started to laugh and pick up footballs and toss them while Jamie talked about the spiral and release of the quarterbacks playing today.

“Earth to Laken,” Rowan said.

“What?” she asked.

“I asked you to pass over the plate with the cheese and meat on it. If I reach over you Mom will see it and come lecture me on manners,” Rowan said.

“You always had the worst of them,” Nelson said.

Those two brothers got along the best even though they didn’t see much of each other anymore.

“You’re one to talk,” Elias said. “All of you.”

“I’m getting a beer,” Foster said. “Who else wants one?”

“I stocked up,” Elias said. When everyone’s hands went up but hers and Abby’s, Elias stood up to help Foster bring them in.

“You don’t drink beer either?” Abby asked.

“I have and can. Just not in the mood for one now. Maybe later.”

“Since when have you been so interested in football?” Nelson asked.

She looked at West. He wasn’t one to announce to everyone his business deals if they weren’t public knowledge yet.

West shook his head at her and that was all she needed to know and decided to stop talking about work.

“It’s all you guys watch on Thanksgiving. I’m just trying to keep up.”

“So you can retain it in your memory and have something to talk about the next time you’re meeting with a bunch of jocks,” Rowan said, laughing. It was a joke, but her younger brother had no idea how close he actually was.