“Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.” -Cary Grant

Thanksgiving was not a fun time for Nick. Sure he loved the food and he loved football but that didn’t make up for his family. More specifically, the women in his family.

You see, his mother and grandmother didn’t always get along. Well they did, but only after a few drinks. Just a few glasses of wine was enough to get them all buddy buddy.

It wasn’t that they would be getting along, it was the avalanche of embarrassing stories that came with that. Within an hour Nick would learn about every relationship the two had ever had and the sexual prowess of those partners.

It got even worse two hours in. That’s when they stopped telling stories, or at least whole stories, and just mentioned a phrase or word and would collapse in giggles. It made Nick scared for when he was old.

The third hour was when his aunt, Rachel, would decide she was fed up with them not speaking to her all night (she didn’t drink so, like Nick, she did not find the humor in their drunkenness.

She would first begin by sighing very loudly.

Then she would tap her foot.

Then she would grab the TV remote and flip through the channels.

Then she would settle on the most obnoxious show possible and turn the volume up very high.

Finally, she would turn off the TV and leave the room, usually saying something about how inconsiderate they were. Aunt Rachel was a champion at being passive aggressive. Nick was pretty sure that’s what she had majored in in college.

It wasn’t until the fourth hour, when the dishes had been washed and the football game over, that Nick was able to enjoy the one other thing he liked about Thanksgiving: sneaking beer with his cousin, Theo.

As previously noted, Nick did not like drinking. More specifically, he did not like being drunk. But Thanksgiving was the one time he didn’t care about that. His mother was drinking so she didn’t notice and they always had to stay at the house since his mother was always too drunk to get into the car so there was no issue.

Also, it wasn’t really sneaking beer. It was more Theo grabbing two beers from the fridge while Nick’s mom and their grandmother continued their little performance and walking to the back porch with Nick. Gwendolyn played with Theo’s younger sister, Lissa.

Theo was Nick’s favorite cousin, which wasn’t saying much. On his mom’s side he only had Theo and Lissa while on his dad’s he had… He didn’t really know.

Theo did not mind that it was not a huge deal that he was Nick’s favorite cousin. Nick was his favorite cousin and he only had him and Gwendolyn. He didn’t know anything about his father’s side either.

Not only were the women in Nick’s family utterly predictable, they also had the bad luck of choosing shitty husbands. His grandfather had left when Aunt Rachel, his mom was the oldest of the two, was six months old. His mom was two. He had been a drunk and in the long run they were probably better off, but his grandmother’s long line of equally shitty boyfriends had screwed his mom and Aunt Rachel up.

Aunt Rachel had married first. Her first husband, Ted, whom Theo was named for, left her when Theo was seven. Ted was not a bad man per say, he and Aunt Rachel were just bad for each other. Uncle Ted remarried to a woman he was not bad for and that was not bad for him and Theo stayed with them on some weekends.

It wasn’t the worst situation. They had no children together so there was no stepchild drama. Aunt Rachel didn’t like that Uncle Ted had moved on and that she was alone but made no effort to keep Theo from his father. Uncle Ted even had Nick, Gwendolyn, and Lissa over a few times.

As decent as Uncle Ted was, Lissa’s dad was a whole other story. A few months after Ted left, Aunt Rachel met and had a fling with a man named Charles. No one in the family ever referred to him as Charles anymore. He was either “that son of a bitch” or “your father,” the latter only when Lissa was around.

Charles, like his grandfather, was a drunk. But while his grandfather was just a lazy, sad drunk and left the family before he could hurt them, Charles was a violent drunk. It was a year and a half of drunken stupors and beatings before Aunt Rachel kicked him out and got a restraining order.

No one had told Lissa, who was ten, the whole story about her father. She was told that he was not a good person and that he wouldn’t be part of her life but they believed she was too young to understand. She also didn’t need the burden of knowing half her DNA came from a drunk asshole.

Theo was a year older than Nick, he was enrolled in the local community college. He did not see the need for him to go to college but went to appease his mother. He wished instead to become a police officer. Nick believed it was to help women like his mother, to save them from their own Charles’s. Nick also believed there were worse reasons to become a cop.

The two boys sat on the porch, drinking their respective beers, in relative silence. The girls had out hula hoops and were competing to see who was better. The sun was down and the porch light, which Theo had replaced when they arrived, probably to ensure they could continue their tradition.

“So you ever worry about them?” Theo asked suddenly, breaking the silence and pointing to the girls.

“Sometimes. But it’s more of a habit than anything else. Just the general ‘make sure they don’t run out into the street’ crap. Do you?”

“Constantly.”

“Any particular reason?” Nick asked.

“I don’t want them to turn out like our mom’s. Or grandma.”

“How so?”

“You know,” Theo said, taking another swig of beer.

“You mean when it comes to guys.”

“I don’t want to come home one day and have Lissa introduce me to a guy that’s exactly like her father.”

“Well we don’t have to worry about that yet,” Nick said, rationalizing. “They’re only ten and eleven.”

“It’ll be sooner than you think.”

“You’ve really thought about this, haven’t you.”

“And you haven’t?”

“Not particularly.”

“Well you should,” he said.

“You know not all guys are like Charles.” Theo flinched at the name. “She could bring come a guy like your dad.”

“Yeah and they’ll get married, have a kid, and make each other miserable.”

“Uncle Ted turned out okay though,” Nick said.

“My mom didn’t do so well.”

“She’ll be okay.”

“So you’re telling me that if Gwendolyn brought home a guy like your dad, you wouldn’t be worried,” Theo said.

“Don’t bring up my father,” Nick growled.

“See? You worry about this stuff too. You just don’t realize it. It’s like what you were saying about keeping them from getting run over. It’s practically the same thing in this family. Keep them from getting run over and keep them from letting an asshole get them pregnant.”

“Do we seriously have to keep talking about this?”

“No, by all means lets go back to sitting in silence as if nothing is wrong.”

“Do you always have to be such an asshole?”

“Only when I need to be,” Theo said.

“Just fuck off, all right?”

“Whatever you want, Nicky.”

“Don’t call me Nicky.”

“You’re no fun.”

Nick tried to go back to sitting in silence like he wanted but it was not as peaceful as before. Theo had gotten him thinking about their family, in all their flaws, and his father, who was particularly flawed.

His mother had married his father a year after Aunt Rachel had married Ted. Theo had just been born and there were pictures of him as a baby at the wedding. Who knows why they thought it was a good idea to bring a baby to a wedding.

Anyway, for a little while everything was good. Nick was born a year after they were married and when he was six Gwendolyn was born. That’s when things got bad.

His mother had continued to work after he was born, his grandmother had him at her house almost as much as he was at his own house, and she planned to do the same after Gwendolyn was born. His father did not like that very much.

His father was somewhere between Ted and Charles. He was not a drunk, not sober but still not a drunk, and he never laid a hand on Nick’s mother. But he was a vain man and a jealous man. Although there was no other man he could be jealous of in Nick’s mom’s life, he was somehow jealous of his children.

He did not like that in between her working and the children, Nick’s mom didn’t have as much time for him. His solution? Sleep with his secretary.

Looking back at it now, Nick was pretty sure that it was something of a temper tantrum. His father was demanding his mom pay attention to him and nothing else, no matter how much she loved her, their, children.

His parents divorced when Nick was nine and his father had married his secretary two months later. They divorced six months later and his father begged Nick’s mom to take him back. She refused and he began a fling with his new secretary. By Nick’s seventeenth birthday his father was on secretary number nine.

“Can’t stop thinking about it now, can you?” Theo asked with a smirk.

“You’re a real asshole, you know that?”

“I try.”

It was almost midnight when Theo went home with Lissa and Aunt Rachel and Nick finally got Gwendolyn to go to bed. His mom and grandmother had passed out on the couches and he and Theo were too lazy to move them earlier and Nick couldn’t move them by himself so he just went to bed.

When he got to his designated room he grabbed his phone that he had plugged in earlier. His mom did not allow phones at dinner so they could “bond as a family” and after dinner he was too lazy to come up and he found twenty texts, three from Tobias, one from Talia, and sixteen from Samantha.

Tobias, whose family did not get drunk and instead were very insistent on actual family bonding, sent a text in each of his stages of annoyance. Nick was actually surprised there wasn’t more:

4:45: Mom has decided that the only way we can really bond as a family is if we all play Twister together. Yes, even my grandparents and the toddlers. Kill me now.

6:00: Twister ended in grandmother landing on three year old cousin. Other cousin twisted her ankle so now my aunt and uncle went to the emergency room with her. I’m in charge of dessert. Yipee.

8:13: If you are drinking beer right now I hate you. I hate you I hate you I hate you. I also hate my family. Going to sleep at 8:30 even if it’s very early just to get away from them.

Talia’s text was very simple and to the point.

6:45: Call Tobias you loser. He’s freaking out. Doesn’t he have a girlfriend to call?

Samantha had sent many texts, each escalating until Nick seriously had to consider calling her parents and having them put her in a padded room.

4:00: Family is arriving. They’re half an hour late. Improvement?

4:45: Dinner is over early. What I ate: rolls. That’s it. My cousins are pigs.

5:00: Time for football viewing.

5:05: There’s no more beer (cousins again) and the uncles are mad

5:07: I am now being sent for beer. Do I have the look of a bartender or something?

5:07: Don’t answer that.

5:30: Family has all but forgotten football.

5:35: Now they’re drinking the beer that I was so gracious (and forced) to get them. They’re almost done.

6:00: No one in my family is speaking to me (at least the adults) because I refused to buy more beer.

6:03: So how’s your Thanksgiving going?

6:04: Oh wait, you don’t have your phone cause your mom is a phone Nazi.

6:05: Why do people call someone a Nazi when they’re ridiculous about something? It seems overzealous.

6:06: You should be proud of me for using an SAT word.

7:00: Family is starting to leave. I’m trying not to look to excited.

7:35: THEY WERE LEAVING BUT NOW THEY’RE NOT. COME OVER AND GET THEM OFF MY COUCH.

8:10: Tobias called in a panic and we had a nice talk about what a horrible friend you are. TEXT ME BACK OR ON SATURDAY I WILL KILL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP. IN OTHER NEWS, HOPE YOUR THANKSGIVING WENT OKAY.

Nick was pretty sure she had gone completely insane. Taking a seat on the bed, he called her back and found her still awake.

Neither of them went to bed until at least one thirty, after they had filled the other in on their nightmarish day, and Nick was able to calm Samantha down until she was almost optimistic for the next Thanksgiving.

Maybe some traditions weren’t so bad after all.

A/N: I wanted to spend a chapter so you guys could start getting to know Nick as more than just a lovestruck guy. Also you can look forward to more chapters about just Samantha and her life. Like I'm afraid if I talk too much about their Saturday nights and just them people will end up hating her (or at least entirely frustrated with her) and I don't want that. 

So what did you guys think? Would you be interested to hear more about Nick's family's history? What's your impression of Theo? I hadn't planned to include a cousin, just Nick's grandmother, but he just showed up and I kinda like him. Feedback (and voting) is always appreciated!

I can't believe the week this story has had! It now has more than 850 reads and I have 200 followers! Thank you to everyone who has supported me and this story!

The video on the right is from the musical "Bye Bye Birdie," the film version of it. My school is putting it on and I'm stage managing. It's really crazy and we open in March which means there's not that much time left. But the song is really cool.

Just the Highlights will be posted soon! And keep an eye out for my one shots for the story To Be Luminous. They're not written yet but they're due by April 7th so they'll be up sooner than later.

Finally, this is dedicated to flaurel, who's a relatively new reader of mine. She discovered this story a few updates a go and really liked it and I'm so glad she did!

The photo on the right is who I have cast as Talia, Liana Liberato :)