Holly shrugs and pours me a generous glass of Malbec. “Whatever, I gave him the best three minutes of his life.”

I knock back half of my glass in five seconds. Getting sloppy at someone else’s family dinner? Probably not a good idea. Especially when that family is giving me a place to stay.

“Oh, you must be Bree!”

I’m body-slammed into a hug before I realize what’s happening. It’s death by suffocation. With my last breath, I inhale the scent of warm honey and soft florals. I guess there are worse ways to go.

“I’m Nora,” she says when she pulls away. “It’s so lovely to meet you. Holly has told me so much about you.”

“All good, I hope.”

Nora smiles. She’s all rosy cheeks and dimples with wild blonde curls. She looks exactly like Holly and Freya. Emma and Eva have the same coloring as Aggie, whose strawberry blonde hair I catch out of the corner of my eye.

“Wow, you look like one of those Instagram girls who travel to all those fancy islands,” she gushes. “Have you been to Fiji? Did you stay in one of those water bungalows?”

“For the love of God, Freya, stop giving her your phone.” Nora glares across the kitchen at her daughter, who has her hand around the neck of a bottle of white wine.

“But how else will I know what Ollie and Willa are doing?” Aggie frowns.

“You FaceTime them on the weekends,” Nora says. “You don’t need to stalk them on the internet.”

“But they don’t tell me everything they post online!”

“For a good reason, I imagine.” Nora walks over to the oven as the timer screams for attention.

It’s chaos.

Aggie’s crying about not having a phone. Freya’s going on about Archie and penguins and what shoes to bring to Antarctica. Holly’s finishing the bottle of wine. And Eva hasn’t pulled off her headphones long enough to acknowledge anyone’s existence.

It’s chaos.

But the good kind.

It’s the kind of chaos that all good families have.

When the doorbell rings, Gran screams from the living room that she’ll get it. I pick the wrong moment to take a sip of my drink. I almost choke when I hear what comes out of Gran’s mouth next.

“Callum Malloy!” she shrieks. “You’re going to catch a cold if you don’t start buttoning up your shirt.”

“But how else will the world know that I finally grew three chest hairs this week?”

“My boy, I promise the world will keep turning.”

I decide that Callum is a popular name. I’m sure Mairead is full of men named Callum who don’t know how to button their shirts. They’re the equivalent of Jessicas in the East Village who have this too shall pass tattooed on their ribs. They’re everywhere. Like cockroaches.