For several long, awkward moments, the gorgeous girl just stared at me and then at her hand in mine, as if trying to figure out how she felt about what I just did.
TBH, same.
She twisted our joined hands to a normal handshake orientation. "A regular old handshake would have sufficed, Lord Bridgerton."
I grinned at her. "Which brother am I?"
Her frown was surprised. "You've seen it?"
"I have a mother, a sister, and a shitload of female cousins. My family hosted watch parties. As in, Mom and Delia made actual tea and crumpets and little weird sandwiches with cucumbers and shit. I still don’t even know what the fuck a crumpet is, honestly. But yeah, I watched it."
“And when you say you have a shitload of female cousins…?" she prompted.
I sighed. "My extended family is…let’s go with fucking colossal. It doesn’t quite cover it, but it’s close.” I pulled beers and mixed drinks while I talked. "My dad is one of eight brothers. All eight of them are married with at least one kid, although most have two or three. So just from my dad's brothers, I have twenty-three cousins."
She spluttered in shock. "Holy fuck."
I laughed. "I'm not done, though, so hold on to your tits, Smokeshow. The Uncle Rome I mentioned? He's not actually my uncle, technically.” I frowned. "I…wait, what is he? First cousin once removed, maybe?” I waved a hand. “Who the fuck cares? Point is, he's my Dad's cousin—my dad's grandfather had a twin brother, Lucas. Great-Uncle Lucas, who we all call Papa Lucas, has triplet sons, Roman, Remington, and Ramsey. Uncle Rome and Aunt Kitty have six kids, Uncle Remy and Aunt Juneau have two, and Uncle Ram and Aunt Izzy have one, so that's another nine cousins.”
"Oh my fucking god."
I held up a finger. "But wait, there's more!"
She blinked at me. "No. There’s more? You're kidding!”
"Nope. So Papa Lucas and Mama Livvie got married late, like, second marriages for both of them kind of thing." I waved a hand. "The details don’t matter. Point is, Mama Livvie has five daughters, who we—meaning the cousins—call our aunts even though, again technically, they’re not actually aunts. They all got married and had kids, and between the five sisters and their husbands, I have another…shit, gotta think about this one…um? One, two, three…uhhh…fourteen cousins. Or what we call cousins, regardless of the actual technical relationship."
"And you, like, see all these people?" she asked. "Regularly?"
I nodded. "Absolutely. Uncle Xavier and Aunt Low don't live here in Ketchikan full-time, but we see them several times a year at least, depending on Aunt Low's shooting schedule and what Uncle Xavier is up to."
She rubbed her face. "Fuck me, I have so many questions. But first, you're telling me you have, like…what? Forty…six? Forty-six cousins? Or cousin-adjacent relations? That you see regularly? Like, you know them, not just a 'this person is my relation but I only see them on Thanksgiving and Christmas' kind of thing."
"Yes, ma'am. I know them all, I love them all, and I've grown up hanging out with all of them. Most of them either live here or come back frequently. We're a very close family, the Badd and Goode clan."
"No." She facepalmed herself. "Goode? Seriously?"
I nodded. "Mama Livvie is Olivia Goode. Her daughters all took their husbands’ names which means they're all Badds, so we’re all technically the Badd clan, but we refer to Mama Livvie's whole side as the Goode side, and we're the Badd side. And Goode is G-O-O-D-E, by the way.”
"A family with the last name Goode married into a family with the last name Badd."
"Yep."
"And you have forty-six cousins and a number of aunts and uncles I can't even begin to count."
I laughed, nodding. "Yep. Twenty-eight aunts and uncles."
"And the cousins…these aren't multiples?"
"Well, I have two uncles who are twins—Canaan and Corin, and they married twin sisters."
I had to pause the conversation to serve some customers at the other end of the bar, and then returned to the service bar once the other bartender, Elias, came back from the bathroom.
“The more you tell me, the more unlikely this whole story seems," she said.
I rolled my eyes and laughed. "What possible reason would I have for making this up?"
"I'm not saying you are, I'm just saying it sounds made up." She eyed me, thinking. "When you say ‘Aunt Low's shooting schedule…’”
