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“No– No Gino I’m serious, like… the smell was so strong Koilee complained about it from the kitchen.” Carlo’s hands point towards the ceiling, palms up, fan whirring, lit up yellow from a lamp in the corner. Three bodies sprawled on a king sized mattress with sheets tucked in so tight it felt like they were for display rather than warmth. Tastyville is warm this time of year, not unpleasantly so, and a cold front was forecasted a few days from now.
The hotel suite was comfortable, spacious, and yet his little cousins still ended up in his room after Little Edoardo had gone to bed. A western plays quietly in the background, Bruna’s eyes are closed and her hair, still wet from the shower, is sprawled on the pillows. Carlo rambles about a Scooperia customer who had smelled heavily of weed and lingered for far too long. “I mean, I could do edibles or a vape, but dio mio I don’t think I could ever smoke it.”
Bruna reaches all the way across Gino’s body to slap at Carlo, missing and hitting both the mattress and her cousin’s ribs, her short arms misjudging just how big a king sized mattress really was. Gino doesn’t even react, too tired and too used to their antics to care that he was collateral damage. She withdraws with a mocking laugh from her kid brother and still doesn’t open her eyes.
“I don’t ever want to see you high, you are bad enough when you’ve had too much to drink.” She mumbles, tiredness lacing her voice. The three of them are old, much too old to be staying up into the wee hours of the night talking back and forth over cigarettes and champagne how they used to. Carlo, even as the youngest, feels the strain of aging take its toll. This time, he’s the one to reach over to hit her, leaning up on his elbow and slapping her on the arm. Having his eyes open probably helped. She squalls and he laughs, retreating further to the edge of the bed when Bruna is suddenly fully sitting up with intent to kill. She lunges at him, but Gino throws his hand up to keep her from flinging herself over him before she can get too far. He thumps Carlo on the side and Bruna, seemingly satisfied by the whiny noise of pain he’d made, lays back against the mattress. She adjusts her white nightgown and grumbles something incomprehensible and lost to the white noise.
Gino thinks he enjoys these moments, though they seem few and far between nowadays. His cousins, all grown up, off doing their own thing and not needing his babysitting anymore. Not that he had ever enjoyed watching over them, no, he actually remembers having a firm disdain for being called to be the adult while Edoardo whisked Giordana off on some fancy date that lasted far too long. Bruna was always far too talkative and Carlo pushed his buttons on purpose and didn’t sleep until far beyond Gino’s own bedtime. By the time Bruna hit her teenage years and began to feel more like a real human to him he had begun to tolerate them a bit more. But then she’d turned 18, and then Carlo had turned 18, and it really dawned on him that he wasn’t needed anymore.
Carlo still wiggles into bed with him on bad nights and Bruna cries into his chest when she’s feeling particularly lonely, even though Carlo had recently breached forty and Bruna was fixing to hit fifty. He guesses he was still needed, just in a different way. They didn’t quite depend on him the way they had as little ones. He fidgets with his shirt in the hospital, there’s chatter about. He wipes his nose on the back of his sleeve and allows a newborn swaddled in cloth to be placed into his arms. Carlo’s birth is a disaster and Gino doesn’t get to meet him until he is several weeks old. There’s a vague memory in the back of his head, like a fear, that he wouldn’t be able to meet him. Thirteen and having to have his clothes tailored to fit his height, Gino could fit his youngest cousin in just one hand, tiny and squirmy, 7 weeks premature.
Carlo sighs loud enough to pull him out of his thoughts, having stopped pouting by now.
“I’m not excited to play tomorrow, my feet hurt already.” He crosses his bony arms over his chest, tilting his head till he could see the other two in his peripheral.
Gino chuckles, then clears his throat. “At least you can sit down, it’s hard to do that when you play the standup bass.” He’s made this joke a thousand times, everytime Carlo complains about being tired or wanting to sit down, which he did often enough to annoy the other three members of the quartet.
A grumble, the wave of a hand, his little cousin dismisses him and instead shifts his body closer till he and Gino are shoulder to shoulder. He turns his head to look the other in the eyes.
“I’m gonna see Roy tomorrow.” is all that he whispers, a faint smile on his lips, something dreamy hidden in his eyes. The corner of Gino’s lip twitches, exhaling harshly through his nose.
“Are you now?” Carlo loved to tell people his plans, couldn’t keep anything to himself, but then again, it wasn’t Romano-like to keep secrets. It was nice Carlo had found himself someone he seemed more serious about; Roy was a very nice boy, maybe a bit on the young side if he thought too hard about it.
Carlo just hums and closes his eyes, turning his head to the ceiling. Bruna is damn near snoring. He feels like it’s about time to tell them to go back to their own rooms, that there’s no point in wasting the money on beds that they refused to use, but Gino too feels sleep pull him in. They’re much too old to be having slumber parties anymore, but sometimes Gino likes to feel young again. Bruna mutters something in her sleep as he pulls her closer and Carlo sighs comfortably, settling into his older cousin’s side the way that he had been doing since he was in diapers. Though, he’s not the size of Ginos’s hand anymore, he’s nearly his height. Gino used to tease him for being short, but when puberty hit it hit him hard.
They’re all a bit older now, but it doesn’t feel like much has changed either way. No matter how old they get they’ll always be his baby cousins, and he’ll always let them spend the night.