Not a surprise and also not a rarity, not by a long shot. Thus I didn’t know what trouble was “a-brewin’” until I started to look away and my eyes caught on Tabby.

Oh boy.

She was standing about ten feet away. She was also looking at Shy and the way she was looking was like her entire world just came to an end.

This was not good.

Tabby had pulled her shit together. This didn’t mean she didn’t come home drunk once, as in drunk and puking all over the entryway. And this didn’t mean Tack didn’t lose his mind when she did and she didn’t get a lecture. But she was a teenager. That shit happened. Tack knew it and busted her chops but he didn’t go overboard.

Mostly, she was Tabby, sweet, cute, smart, charming. She and her Dad were tight. She and her brother were tight. And she and I were tight. She got good grades. She came home (mostly) by curfew. She dated boys of an appropriate age who only slightly scared the crap out of me seeing as they were all good-looking and players-in-training but were also totally into her. And it helped Tab’s Dad was a badass and he more than slightly scared the crap out of Tabby’s boyfriends.

But this wasn’t good. Not only because Tabby was seventeen and Shy, at twenty-two, was out of her league for at least another year but also because Shy was Shy. He was a dawg. He racked ‘em up and nailed them down so fast, if it could be recorded as a world record, it would.

And he was a brother. It was not as if Tack wasn’t aware of all this.

On this thought my eyes slid to my old man to see he was, indeed, aware of all this. All of it. I knew this because his face didn’t look happy and it didn’t look that way even though his eyes were covered by his own mirrored shades and those shades were pointed in the direction of Tabby and Shy. Tack had Mitch, Dog and Gwen’s father Bax standing close to him talking but I knew he wasn’t involved in the conversation.

His mind was on his girl. And his brother, the dawg.

Crap.

“’Cause ‘a Gwen then ‘cause ‘a you, I been to my fair share of these boys’ jamborees and it hasn’t escaped my notice that boy is fine,” Elvira stated at my side. “He’s rough, he’s young, he makes me feel like a cougar but that don’t mean that boy ain’t fine. So fine, a girl could convince herself she don’t mind he’s a player. ‘Love ‘em, leave ‘em’ could be tattooed across his chest and a girl could convince herself she don’t care just so she could see the weapon he’s packin’ in those faded jeans. May have been some time since you bitch-slapped your way to kicking that motherfucker’s ass, girlfriend, but I think your girl there has tastes that run toward heartbreak. And it looks like this is not lost your man and he’s not takin’ to it too good.”

Tack must have felt my eyes because his shades came to me. They locked with my eyes and then he slowly shook his head. We weren’t close but I still knew he blew out a sigh.

No, this was not lost on Tack.

“Makes matters worse,” Elvira kept talking and I tore my eyes from Tack’s shades and looked at her, “that boy won’t go down to no bitch slappin’, sister. He gets a whiff he’s got a go and she comes of age, you better arm yourself with more than pepper spray. I’m thinkin’… machete.”

“No way Shy would go there,” I informed her and her eyebrows went up.

“Girl, you crazy? She’s gorgeous and he’s on a mission to have a bedpost that’s made up ‘a nothin’ but notches.”

“She’s also his brother’s daughter. He won’t go there,” I told her authoritatively because I knew, Shy might be a dawg but he was also smart, a good guy and loyal and he’d rather cut off his own arm than disrespect Tack like that.

“Then your problem is her, ‘cause a girl don’t look that forlorn unless she’s in deep,” Elvira returned. “That ain’t no crush. She likes him, straight up.”

She was not wrong about that.

My eyes drifted to Tabby who had, fortunately, been engaged in conversation with Meredith, Gwen’s Mom, Roberta, a friend of Mara’s, Tracy and Camille.

“Oowee!” Elvira suddenly screeched, I jumped, twisted and saw Gwen approaching, her tiny, new baby Asher bundled in her arms. Elvira had both her arms extended, fingers wriggling. “Give me that little, cuddly, baby commando.” Gwen arrived, transferred Asher to Elvira who immediately cuddled him close to her chest, dipped her face to his and cooed, “Who’s gonna grow up, kick ass and take names? Who’s gonna be my little badass?”

“Elvira, stop putting ideas in his head,” Gwen ordered and Elvira kept Asher snuggled close to her substantial cle**age but her head snapped up.

“Girl, he can’t even cogitate. Calm down.”

“He’s Hawk’s. He has superhero powers. They’re latent, you can’t sense them, but they’re there. Trust me. Stop giving him ideas. He’s not going to grow up to be a commando. He’s going to grow up to be anything but a commando.” She looked to me. “I don’t know what that is. I also don’t care. Hawk being Hawk, I’m pretty certain every bullet in his arsenal is stamped with a male chromosome that will not be denied. I’m screwed. I already envision decades of living through fights, blood, drunkenness, puke and pregnancy scares. I don’t need to be finding assault rifles under beds and sitting on ninja stars that have fallen into my couch.”

Elvira lifted a hand to the side of baby Asher’s head, covering the whole of it but her target was his ear and I knew this when she snapped, “Gwen, shut yo’ mouth. If he don’t grow up commando, how’s he gonna make his fortune, make men quake in their boots and nail down his own fine piece of ass?”

Gwen’s eyes on Elvira bugged out then they went to the heavens. “Someone, deliver me. Or better yet, deliver Elvira. Maybe to China.”

“I don’t mind China,” Elvira told Asher in a baby-talk voice. “They got good food there and they created Jet Li. Now that’s a boy who knows his shit, Asher, and he’s got a kickass name. His Momma couldn’t ‘a made up a better name for a badass. With a name like that, only one route that boy could go down in life, the route straight to badass.” Her head came up and her eyes locked on Gwen before she finished, “Kinda like the name Asher Delgado.”

“My next boy I’m naming Nigel,” Gwen shot back.