Pure Belleza | ✔️

(27)

At around ten that night, after a a FaceTime lunch date with Max, which included Mom being oblivious and Dad giving me the death stare while he chewed on seasoned chicken and salad. Followed by a long work out in the gym, Milly called me.

She had to inform me that Abby was laying on her bedroom floor, eating ice cream and sobbing about a fight that she'd had with Flynn.

She said she would fill me in when I arrived. But assured me it wasn't quite as tragic as my sister was making it out to be.

Amalia still had my car, so I took Max's. Mom and Aunt Spence were mixing margaritas in the kitchen while Nathan had opted for joining Dad at the game tonight.

He was enthusiastic as fuck to be on the sidelines while Dad did his thing. Nathan was a coach himself. For the same team Dad had played for in high school. He hadn't been the coach back then though.

Dad had once offered uncle Nathan a job as assistant coach for his team. But Nathan turned it down because he didn't want to leave Archwood.

Mom explained he had an emotional attachment to the house that their parents had lived in. He would die in that house, she said. Which was fair enough. He was seventeen when his parents died and left him with nine year old Mom.

He'd done a bit of expanding and renovating on the house after Spencer moved in but he refused to sell or move and I understood that. Memories were meaningful and it was all that he had left. He deserved to hang on.

When I arrived at Milly's, I knocked on the front door. It didn't have a handle. Just a pin pad that required a seven digit code and the door mat read 'Home to the Jolliest Bunch of Arseholes.'

Pam opened the door a few moments later. The short round woman had an apron on.

"Lucas Lahey," she chimed in her thick British accent. "Come in, come in. You're just in time. Smell that? I've been baking. I need a cut throat honest opinion and you are just the man for it. Your sister is too nice. Can't trust that kind of sweetness to give some real feedback.

"Just like my cousin, Kat. Tells a person one thing to her face, bitches about the same thing to another. She's got a new job. She's a waitress at some hot spot in the middle of London. So now of course, she thinks she's the most superior lass on the planet because she poured wine for Tom Hittledon. Whoever that is."

Pam is the coolest. She is. Her one flaw might be that she likes to share the smallest details that are not in the slightest, related to the topic.

She is an absolute whizz in the kitchen though. She reminded me of a strawberry blonde Nigella Lawson. Looks and all.

Their home wasn't quite as clean cut and aesthetic on the inside as it was on the outside.

She'd added her own touch to the place. The living room was full of antique cabinets that held porcelain dolls and china plates. The couch was vintage with gold and cream pattern. Tall vases and an old coat rack sat in the foyer.

The kitchen had teapots with cosies sat on the window sill, vintage recipe books and retro appliances. It was an odd scheme for such a modern house. But somehow, it worked.

It added character.

"Right, I've been doing a bit of shortbread this afternoon. But I just can't seem to get the consistency right," she explained, walking over the kitchen island where a stack of cookies were sitting on a wooden cooling rack.

If they tasted as good as they smelled, then there shouldn't be an issue.

"You know I'm just a little frazzled. I spoke to my Mother in London this morning. The daft cow has put her bloody hip out. She was climbing a ladder? Can you believe that?! At her age?! You should have heard the berating that I gave her. She doesn't know how to sit her arse down and hire a bloke to clean out her gutters. Daft old woman, cleaning the gutters at her age."