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and started dragging him towards the front door.
    Eliot let himself be led. Given his impressive muscle mass, I couldn’t have actually made him move otherwise.
    When we entered the restaurant, I greeted Eva, one of the longtime waitresses, with a friendly nod.
    “It’s a good thing you’re hear,” she trilled. “If you had missed another dinner you probably would have been on the menu next week.”
    She was probably right.
    Eliot was gripping my hand hard. I thought his terror at meeting my family was actually pretty cute. He was a former Army Ranger, after all. He had faced down terrorists and crazed soldiers – but my family was causing him to quake in his stylish cowboy boots.
    I led Eliot to the family booth. I was relieved to see that my mom hadn’t arrived yet. The family booth is one of those long, rectangular tables made up of three eating surfaces – with gaps in between. Derrick was sitting at the far end. I slid into the booth next to him, making sure to leave room for Eliot on the end.
    Derrick looked surprised when he saw Eliot. “You brought reinforcements, I see.” He nodded at Eliot in greeting. I had no idea how well they knew each other. I did know, though, that Derrick would be telling Jake about this. That was an uncomfortable conversation in the making.
    “ Don’t be a pain,” I admonished Derrick. “Where is everyone?” I looked around the table. Only two of my cousins were there – Mario and Justin. They were busy talking to each other, though, and not paying attention to anyone else.
    “Upstairs,” Derrick supplied. “In the apartment.”
    The second floor of the restaurant was actually a really nice two-bedroom apartment. Through the years, pretty much everyone in the family had lived in the apartment at one time or another. To my knowledge, it had been empty for the last six months.
    “Why?”
    “Sally is moving up there.”
    My Aunt Sally was one of the free spirits in my family. She was on her second husband, after her first one turned out to be gay. Two of her kids were fully grown, but she had a 10-year-old daughter with her second husband.
    “Why is Sally moving up there?”
    “She’s leaving Steve.”
    Steve was Sally’s second husband. In her zest to make sure she didn’t marry another homosexual, she had married an overt redneck the second time around. I missed the gay guy. He was a lot more fun.
    “Why?” Personally, I never understood why she married Steve in the first place. I’m guessing her surprise pregnancy in her thirties had a lot to do with it. My grandfather had spent weeks lamenting the fact that a grown woman didn’t know how to use birth control.
    “Wouldn’t you leave him?” Derrick wasn’t fond of Steve either.
    “I never would have married him.”
    I took the time to explain the Sally and Steve information to Eliot. My family used to embarrass me when I was a teenager. Now I just find them funny. Eliot merely shook his head. “You have an interesting gene pool, don’t you?”
    “You have no idea,” Derrick answered for me. “Half the family should be committed and the other half should be locked up.”
    “Where do you fall in that scenario?” I asked him.
    “I’m the only normal one.”
    Right.
    Family members were slowly starting to descend from upstairs. My aunts Sally and Marnie were in deep conversation when they got to the table. “I’m going to go up there and paint tomorrow.”
    “Why are you going to paint? It looks fine.”
    “I don’t like the color.”
    They both pulled up short when they caught sight of Eliot. He didn’t exactly fit in. I could see a miasma of thoughts flitting through their minds. Marnie was the first to speak. “Who is this?”
    I introduced Eliot, who got to his feet to shake both their hands. Derrick was watching the scene with a mixture of bemusement and genuine curiosity. “I can’t wait until your mom sees him.”
    When Marnie realized whom Eliot was, and that he was the one who had been