Prose Scene 8

Gina exhales heavily, letting the air blow through her lips in what Laura-Mom calls both a horse breath and unattractive (Gina always ignores the second half of that). From across the table, Uncle Joe raises one amused eyebrow.

“Whatcha got there, poker face?”

What’s she got? She’s got a sister butchering Christmas carols on the piano even though it’s only two days after Thanksgiving, another sister and mother and uncle absolutely slaughtering her at poker, and nine high in her hand. Nine. High. Hence the horse-breath sigh.

She pastes a winning smile on her face. “Life in my breath and love in my heart, Uncle Joe. That’s what I’ve got. Give me a whole new hand, please.” Mama Rae and Allie and Uncle Joe all laugh at her expense as Uncle Joe deals her five new cards. Pair of threes, she sees, glancing down. Fantastic. How the hell is she supposed to bluff her way out of this?

She scans the room for inspiration, but there is very little of it. Cate is still absolutely killing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” (and not in the good way), Laura-Mom and Aunt Lindsey are laughing about something in the kitchen, and Zoe is curled up in an armchair by the window reading something on a piece of paper with — hold on, a very interesting smile on her face.

“Your bet, Gina.”

Gina drags her attention back to the table. “Yeah, I’m all in.” With a bright smile, she pushes all her chips into the middle of the table. Joe meets her bet, takes all her money, and releases her from the game.

“You always try to bluff your way out,” Joe says as he scoops her chips into his pile. “You should know better by now, m’girl.”

“I guess I always think I’ll be able to get you to play into my hands,” she says with a shrug, grinning only on the inside. She has an awesome poker face, thank you very much. Her poker face has allowed her to escape from the table and head over the corner of the room where much more interesting things are developing.

Zoe looks up when Gina flumps into the armchair opposite her. “Lose at poker?”

“Yeah, Joe killed me, though the cards I was getting weren’t doing me much good. What are you reading?”

“Nothing,” Zoe says, a little too quickly, Gina thinks. She arches an eyebrow.

“Nothing?” she repeats. “Doesn’t look like nothing. Looks very much like something, dearest cousin. Let’s see here.” And she snatches the paper from her cousin’s grip.

“Gina!” Zoe cries with a little laugh, reaching for the paper, but Gina turns to the side with practiced ease, holding the whatever-it-is slightly out of reach as she examines it.

It is, of all things, a letter, handwritten, and the first thing Gina sees as she skims over it is the name of Zoe’s father, which is particularly eye-catching because Zoe doesn’t tell people about her father. Gabe knows about him, but Gina doesn’t think this is a letter from Gabe. One-handed, Gina flicks to the end to find a name.

“So, who is Alex and why is he writing you letters?” she asks. Zoe glares at her and snatches the letter back.

“First of all,” she says primly, “you shouldn’t make assumptions. Alex could be a girl.”

Is Alex a girl?”

“No, but that’s not the point.”

“You,” Gina says, pointing at her younger cousin, crossing her legs and leaning closer, “are evading the question. Why is this Alex who is not a girl writing you a letter?”

Zoe rolls her eyes. “It’s part of a school project,” she says, smoothing the pages in her lap.

“Well, that’s boring,” Gina says. “So boring I don’t believe it.”

“Why not?” Zoe speaks with infinite patience, and Gina inwardly rolls her eyes. You’d really think her family would learn by now — they give her crap for all her “misguided matchmaking attempts,” but she notices things. She’s never really wrong. If she sees something, it’s almost always there, even if nothing comes of it.

“Because school projects don’t talk about the things you talk about.”

“We’re talking about pizza toppings and our favorite books.”

Gina grins wickedly. “Not on the page I saw. I saw a young man being tortured by the fact that he couldn’t read your words for four days.” Zoe rolls her eyes again and before she can finish the gesture, Gina keeps going, “and I saw discussion of certain someone you don’t tell people about.”

That gets her, Gina notes with satisfaction. Zoe blushes and looks away and takes a moment to regain her composure. Before she can come up with a response, Cate flits over. “What are you guys talking about?”

“Zoe’s secret boyfriend,” Gina answers.

“Gina,” Zoe protests, sounding exasperated, but Allie turns around, interrupting from the poker table before Zoe can continue.

“You have a boyfriend, Zoe?”

“No,” Zoe says, emphatically. “I have a penpal, which Gina is blowing out of proportion in true Gina fashion.”

Gina offers her a winning smile. “Just one of the services I offer.”

“A penpal, huh?” Laura-Mom asks, coming in from the kitchen with Aunt Lindsey. “I had a penpal for a while when I was your age. That kid in Sweden, Linds, you remember?”

“I remember you wrote, like, twice and then stopped,” Aunt Lindsey says, and Laura-Mom laughs.

“You are distracting Zoe from the topic at hand,” Gina informs them. “Which is telling us all about her boyfriend.”

“That will be a short conversation,” Zoe says pointedly.

“Because you don’t kiss and tell?” Gina asks, waggling her eyebrows up and down. Zoe rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, that’s it exactly,” Zoe deadpans. “If you or anyone else has an actual question about my penpal or my project, I’d be happy to share, but I won’t indulge your search for romance that doesn’t exist.”

Everyone does have questions about the project, of course. Theirs is nothing if not a curious, supportive, and invested family. Zoe talks about social experiments and letters to strangers and connecting across voids of age and life experiences and anonymity, and it’s actually pretty interesting. Social science is still a science, after all, even if it’s different from the science Gina is normally immersed in.

“Fascinating as all that was,” Gina says in an undertone when Zoe is done and everyone has moved on to other things, “like, legit, Zo, that all sounds really cool, actually. But,” here she deposits herself into Zoe’s armchair, forcing her cousin to scoot to the side to accommodate her (which she does with only the tiniest exasperated sigh), “but, let’s get real for a second. Alex. Tell me there’s not something more there.”

“There’s not!” Zoe says with a laugh. “Alex is a friend, and I care about him, but it’s not romantic.”

“No?” Gina presses. “Not on either end?”

“I –no.” Here Zoe looks down for a moment and sighs. “He has a thing for his best friend, who is — kind of awful, but whatever. Not important.”

That’s what you say, Gina thinks with satisfaction, but decides to let it slide for now. What she actually says is, “Tell me he’s cute, at the very least. Something pleasing to look at.”

Zoe laughs. “Well, I can’t, because I’ve never met him and I don’t know what he looks like. But if it will satisfy your matchmaking heart, I guess his essence is cute. How’s that?”

It’s Gina’s turn to laugh. “Cute essence. I have to remember that one. Ah, well. Another dream crushed, I guess.”

And she starts to stand up, but Zoe says, “What made you, I mean, not that you ever need a reason, but, um, what made you ask?”

Gina almost lets the smile slip out. Almost. But she has a killer poker face, so she keeps it casual and shrugs. “You told him about Thom. You don’t tell anyone about Thom.”

“Oh.” Her eyes flick down for a moment, and is it Gina’s imagination, or does she look disappointed by that? Was she hoping for a different answer? Something that Gina saw in his letter, perhaps? But when she looks up, Zoe is all smiles again. “No, he’s got kind of an awful home life, I think? His dad’s no picnic, for sure, and he was hesitant to trust me at first, so I thought if I could show him that my — dad is, you know, no picnic, either, maybe he’d open up more.” She shrugs again. “Like I said, I care about him. We’ve become good friends, and I think his holiday’s going to be rough. I dunno. I wish I could do more for him than just writing, but writing’s all I really have.”

“Well, I am not the therapist in the family by any stretch of the imagination, but I think writing is probably doing more good than you feel, at least if the snippet of letter I saw from him is any indication.” She waggles her eyebrows again for good measure, and Zoe laughs and shoves her out of the chair.

Gina walks away, deciding to relent and leave Zoe alone — for now. But she’s going to keep watching. She knows what she saw, even if it was only a smile that smacked of something. Because when it comes to something (despite what her family will try to say), Gina has never yet been wrong.

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