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It really didn’t start like this. Camila wants the world to know that. It really, really didn’t start like this and she’s pretty sure that no one (except maybe Eda) had any intentions of it ending up like this when Darius was the first to invite “everyone who has a somewhat parental role in my son’s life” around for “wine and quiche or takeaway pizza if I decide that I’d rather die than stand around in the kitchen for hours”.
She thinks everyone, including her, just came because it sounded like a good fucking way to spend a Thursday evening-slash-night and because it’s kind of a weird position to parent a kid with we-kind-of-just-saved-the-world trauma so it’s nice to get pointers from other people in that same weird position.
Darius even invited Alador, which according to Eda’s drunken ramble of a text message that she privately subjected Camila to when they were added to the group chat for the express purpose of coordinating this wine and casserole-or-maybe-pizza binge, was a big deal. Really, it should have been like the semi-awkward school dinners that Camila used to host when she still had time to be on the PTA, before it was one of the many things that she had to give up in favour of her new hobby called Caretaking Of The Dying Husband.
But it wasn’t. It didn’t end up like that. It ended up with Eda body-slamming into a very purple and very dripping effigy of Belos (thanks Alador) after slamming a whole row of bright-green shots dispensed by Darius, which was why he was too busy to make the abomination, because he was preparing Camila’s round after confirming with Perry that he wasn’t mixing together any liquors that would kill a human.
And Camila still remembers just how fucking good it had felt to throw herself on top of that squishy fuck, elbows first and screeching while everyone else whooped. And now it’s the sixth time, and they’re holding it at Camila’s for the first time. Darius is helping her in the kitchen, which means that he’s sitting on the counter, already hitting the wine and trying to attentively keep up with what she’s doing.
“You said that Hunter likes this dish?” he questions. Camila has a feeling that if she says no, he’ll get up and walk back into the living room and drop himself into Alador’s lap. Alador’s currently having a passionate discussion (argument) with Harvey about the logistics of “a really bitter fucking divorce, sweet Titan, good thing you made that career change because I really needed someone to talk this through with, thank you, man, I’ll pick up Willow and Amity from Flyer Derby next week as a thanks so you can make your Suburbs and Subarus group meeting” so Camila decides to hum something that might be agreement.
(Suburbs and Subarus is, according to Luz, a Demon Realm version of Dungeons and Dragons with more soccer moms but just as much bloodshed and violence. Camila can see it. Camila might join Harvey’s party. She could fuck someone up. She’s got plenty of character work already done after her years-long rivalry with her nemesis on the PTA, Margie.)
“I’m good at Demon Realm food,” Darius insists, “Very good, in fact. I’m just shit at Human Realm stuff according to Hunter. Which is annoying. Because I’m the cook.”
Camila snorts. “You’re the cook?”
“Of course,” Darius preens, “I mean, I know that my competition isn’t great—it’s either Eber or Alador if we’re not counting Hunter. Alador would burn water. Eber doesn’t believe in cooking and thinks that it’s totally acceptable for everyone to just tear into a goat lying on its black with the skin still on and not even the stomach torn into!”
Camila decides not to poke that bear.
Camila has gotten good at deciding not to poke bears or figuring out which bears really need poking and which will kill themselves by bothering someone like Darius. She keeps slicing the tomatoes, humming to herself. She doesn’t ask Darius to help her, not because she thinks that he wouldn’t, but because she knows that he wouldn’t help her with this specific task and would run circles around himself trying to find a good excuse as to why.
Eda insists that it’s an improvement in the way that “Darius would just usually tell you to fuck off and then leave in a huff anyways” but Camila can’t help but look at those pristine white gloves that Darius always wears and know that there’s a reason for them. Even if it’s a reason that Camila doesn’t know. It’s the same way that Hunter didn’t like wearing short sleeves for the longest time.
Even if Camila couldn’t visually confirm an issue, she would be an idiot to deny that one existed. She would be the kind of idiot who wants to deny uncomfortable things in the hopes that they never come knocking on her door. She knows that’s not how the world works.
“Do you know why Eber didn’t come today?” she asks. Darius shrugs.
“He lives with me,” Darius tells her, “And he is one of my closest friends. I see him as a brother and I don’t know where my life would be without him, but there are many sides of Eber that I do not and never expect to understand. There will probably be something large and dead on my kitchen table as an apology when I get back tonight, though. But there will not be context.”
Camila laughs.
“I don’t know if I should say that I’m sorry or that I’m jealous. Are you going to make any of your good pies with that potential meat? Or ooh,” Camila exaggeratedly gasps, “Your tortellini!”
Darius runs a hand through his hair, recently decked out with loc extensions that she’d brought back from a business trip (she doesn’t want to know how he attached them to the abomination or how it has enough structural integrity to be pulled back into the messy ponytail that he’s sporting tonight), chuckling a little to himself. “I suppose I just might,” he says, sniffing the air, his ears twitching, “As a thanks for you and your generous offerings of hellish basement air mattress to anyone who’s too stupid and gets too drunk to find their way home through the portal.”
Camila quirks her brow. “That implies that you’re going to be one of them.”
Darius shrugs again. “Or my boyfriend’s going to be. Or one of my oldest friends, the degree of old where you’re kind of responsible for their behaviour. And we all know that you don’t want whatever Eda decides to thank you with.”
“Sometimes I do,” Camila argues, “Especially if it’s terrifying and has teeth. Or if it’s alcoholic. Sometimes it’s both at the same time, and you’d think I’d be weirded out by the bottle blinking at me, but I mean, that had been some good shit.”
“Which is about a fifty-fifty chance with Eda.”
“What? The horrifying alcohol?”
“The everything about that whole sentence.”
“True, true.”
It’s the sixth time they’re doing this, which means that unlike the first—that completely took everyone by surprise and totally was nothing like any of them wanted at the time at all even though they’d all readily agreed when Eda suggested “fucking some shit up, you know, we have no kids around and we should just break shit and scream, I have baseball bats in my hair”—they have expectations. There’s things they’re going to do and they all know it.
First, they’re going to cook some food and eat it like they’re ravenous trash pandas (it’s a good word for racoon, sue her. She’s got too many teenagers in her life to not claim the good stuff for herself) instead of functional adults, then they’re going to drink wine and other boozy delights (they’re going to be constantly drinking, let’s be honest) and they’re going to talk shit and then eventually they’re going to beat the ever-loving fuck out of an effigy of someone who sucks ass.
It's always Belos, but sometimes it’s also Odalia or Margie or that bitch from the health insurance. Darius and Alador are very generous with who they’re willing to make; all they need is one good photo. And that’s why Camila’s still on Facebook. (She’s also on Facebook for all the juicy hometown gossip that you just can’t get anywhere else.) (She needs to know who’s almost willing to take out a contract on their neighbour because they loudly prune their hedges at six in the morning every Sunday morning.)
Darius goes swinging like a fist inside of a batting cage, Camila’s tongue leaping to touch her teeth even though it’s Darius and she knows that the grinning Belos being beaten to goop isn’t actually the real deal. Camila wishes that they’d been able to keep Belos alive in such a way that he couldn’t ever harm anyone again but Camila could laugh out loud as she watched his teeth fly across the room.
Camila’s leaning back in her designated lawn chair, handing an ice-cold beer to Raine—who knocks it back in one greedy slug. “Good thing it’s not expensive beer,” Camila quips and Eda grins.
“When do you ever buy expensive alcohol?” she teases.
“When I’m not sharing it with you animals.”
“Suuuuuuuure.”
The last time Camila drank expensive alcohol, it was a champagne that Manny’s sister had bought her. It’d been intended for when he finished chemo. He’d been too sick when they decided to throw in the towel: the alcohol would have interacted with multiple of the medications he’d been on. He hadn’t known about the expensive champagne in the back of the hallway closet, so Camila had just hidden it better and they’d never spoken about it. She opened it at three in the morning when Luz had fallen asleep and she didn’t know what to do with herself in the silent house. She took one sip of it and poured the rest down the drain.
She broke the bottle in the backyard with Manny’s mallet.
The memory used to press like a blade against her throat, but now it’s a set of steady hands against her shoulders. She’s not devoured by the certainty of what happened—of the fact that she’s alone and that she’s relatively uninterested in ever being wrapped in another man’s wedding ring. She doesn’t like the bullshit about how you live forever in the faces of the people who love you, but she sighs like Manny did when she tried to fight people when Eda does feral shit that should land them in the drunk tank if not for Darius’ charm.
And it feels a little like she’s stealing Manny’s breath, but it also feels a little like he’s resting his hands against her shoulders like he’d do when she made him laugh so much he was unsteady on his feet.
And that means something.
Means a lot, actually.
She spent a good while either pickling herself in the nothingness, in the truth that she’s experienced all the highs and now she’s stuck with the dregs at the bottom of the coffee pot. She spent even longer being stubborn about it—dragging herself into wakefulness every morning, into her boots, out into the streets, to Luz’s school, to work. But that’s not the truth—none of it is the truth. She’s not tarnished or famished because of what happened—she’s not doomed. Sometimes shit happens; sometimes shit happens and then you die, but most of the time, shit happens and then you live.
And you find yourself shining a bat to beat on purple goo in your enclosed backyard.
You don’t need to weave a neat, cohesive narrative with perfect ups and downs leading to a perfect, satisfying finish. Just because your husband dies of cancer and it’s horrible and you feel awful about it because when he died, you were sickly happy because it hadn’t been fast and you’d started to think you didn’t love him because you couldn’t cause him to OD—it doesn’t mean that you have to become tragicomic. You’re still allowed to live. You’re allowed to meet new people. You will, whether it’s witches or a cashier who laughs at your bad puns or a coworker who’s not as much a massive asshole as the rest of them, who recommends you an album that’ll become your favourite.
Your life didn’t end when you were thirty-eight. You’re drinking moonshine with semi-reformed petty criminals and mysophobic revolutionaries now.
And that means something to her.
Means a whole lot to her, actually.