Teamwork

A distant beeping sound is the first thing Tom hears. He cracks one eye open, wincing at the bright sun streaming in through the windows-- windows that are definitely on the wrong side of him. He sits up, suddenly alert when he realizes he's not in his room, but after looking around for a moment, he relaxes back against the pillow because he's in a familiar room at least. Mike is on his stomach still sound asleep on the other side of the bed and there's an empty space between them just big enough for the beautiful girl they'd brought home.

As soon as he begins to wonder if she already sneaked out of the apartment for her walk of shame, the cracked open door swings wider and she enters the bedroom, carrying a paper plate and a bottle of water. Her light brown hair is still wild from their activities and she's wearing Mike's tee shirt from the night before. She grins when she looks up and her eyes meet Tom's. "Morning," she says casually as she jumps up onto the foot of the bed and walks up it to plop herself down in her original spot between the two boys, leaning her back against the headboard to stretch her legs out, crossing her ankles. "You boys have the diet of a couple of eight year olds. Your fridge is just sad."

"Is that my lunchable?" he asks when she sets the plate on her thigh to twist the lid off the aquafina she nabbed from the fridge.

"It's mine now."

"But I was gonna eat it later," he pouts.

She picks up one of the miniature pizzas before holding the plate out to him. "I'm willing to share."

Tom immediately goes to take the whole plate from her hand but she moves it out of his reach, shaking her head. "I said share, asshole. There's three pizzas and three of us."

"Latts isn't even awake. Besides, it's my lunchable!"

"Thanks, man," Mike croaks from her other side, voice thick with sleep as he props himself up on his elbows and rubs his eyes. "Really lookin' out for me there."

Tom ignores him, instead picking up his mini pizza and staring at it like he's never seen one before. "Did you heat this up?"

"Uhh, yeah?"

"But why?"

"They're gross if you eat them cold. You have to zap them in the microwave for a good twenty seconds to let the cheese melt a little."

"You're gross," he says, wrinkling his nose a little.

"No, you are if you eat them cold."

"That's how they're supposed to be eaten, you freak!"

"I can't believe you guys are actually arguing about this right now," Mike mumbles, shaking his head as he reaches over to grab the last pizza off the plate.

"He has no argument," Julia says confidently. "What's the frickin' point of having two types of cheese on them if you're not going to let it melt a little?"

Tom starts to protest but Mike cuts him off, telling him to shut up and eat his pizza, and although Tom pouts about it, he does what he's told. Julia eats hers, thoroughly satisfied that she's apparently won the argument, but when she's finished it, she looks over at Tom with raised brows. "So, how'd you like it?"

He only scowls, which makes her laugh because that means even though he's not going to admit it, he liked it her way. Mike nods his head in agreement when she looks at him and she smiles because she knows she's won two people to the right side her side. They sit in silence for another moment or two as she takes a sip of her water before replacing the cap on top of the bottle. "I'm still hungry."

"Me too."

"Me three."

"You wanna go get some breakfast?" Mike asks, looking up at her from where he's propped up on his elbows.

"Seriously?" He shrugs and nods and when she looks over at Tom, he shrugs too. "Alright. Yeah, sure. Just have to get dressed."

"Yeah, me too."

"Me three."

They all climb out of bed and while Tom goes down the hall to his own bedroom for a change of clothes, Mike just goes over to his closet and Julia pulls the clothes back on that she'd been wearing the night before. It's not exactly ideal breakfast attire, but it's all she has so she just goes with it. She finds her jacket on the floor in the living room and her clutch with its contents halfway hanging out of it on top of the ping pong table where they'd been carelessly tossed. She freshens up as best as she can in the large granite covered bathroom before going back out to the living room where both boys are waiting for her.

Things are a little awkward and quiet as they walk down the hall to the elevator and on the ride down to the main floor lobby and on the short walk to the little restaurant. They settle into a corner booth so that there's plenty of room to stretch out and not be in such close quarters and no one says a word until the waitress has come to take their orders and returned to the kitchen.

"So," Julia starts, dumping a sugar packet into her coffee and stirring it slowly. "You guys do this often?"

"Do what?"

"Go out to breakfast with a one night stand."

Mike laughs at her straightforwardness. "Never."

"What about you, Tom?"

The younger man shakes his head and smiles shyly, even though he was the opposite of shy the night before. "Nope. Never."

"Might be overstepping my bounds here, but don't answer if you don't want to. Is this the first time you two have....had the same one night stand at once?"

"Yeah, you'd be the first," Mike nods, throwing her a smirk as he raises his mug to his lips.

"Aw, I feel so special," she coos jokingly, placing a hand over her heart in fake sentiment.

"What about you? This the type of thing you do often?"

"What, one night stands or threesomes?"

"Either," Tom shrugs. "Both."

She laughs. "Hell no. You'd be the first on both counts."

"W-what?" Mike stutters at the same time Tom blurts, "Seriously?"

"Yeah, so?" Julia shrugs her shoulders nonchalantly and carefully sips from the steaming hot cup of coffee before placing it back down on the table. "I told you, Melissa and I don't go out like ever. Last night was a fluke. We are literally the most boring twenty-two year olds on the planet."

"Yeah, well you weren't so boring last night," Tom murmurs. "I mean, no offense, your roommate, yeah I see it. But you?"

"Melissa's just....different. She grew up with really strict parents, went to a super exclusive private school, now she works for a U.S. Senator. She just has trouble letting loose sometimes. Well, most of the time."

"What do you do then?" Mike asks, realizing for the first time that they didn't actually discuss that when they met the night before.

"Oh, I'm actually a teacher."

"Seriously?"

Julia chuckles at the surprised looks on their faces. "Yep."

"What do you teach?"

"Ninth grade English."

"Fuck," Tom laughs. "That must be like heaven for those guys. I never had any hot teachers."

"Me either," Mike says, shaking his head before taking another drink from his mug. "I'd have killed to have a teacher like you when I was fourteen. Probably would've paid a hell of a lot more attention in class."

"I'm sure you would," Julia replies with a smirk. "So what about you guys? What do you do?"

The two boys look at each other unsure but before they're forced to answer the question, the waitress arrives at the table with their food and for a few moments, Julia is too occupied with her ham and cheese omelet to remember that she'd asked a question. Just as the waitress walks away after refilling their coffee mugs, two girls in their early teens walk right up to the table with huge smiles on their faces and their phones in their hands.

"Excuse me, sorry to interrupt, but we're huge fans and we were just wondering if we could get some pictures."

Julia's eyes immediately snap from the breakfast intruders to the boys on either side of her. They look at each other again, avoiding the look of question and surprise written all over her face and Tom smiles and nods while Mike agrees with a "Yeah, of course!"

He stands up first and both girls get their photos taken with him before he sits back down and lets Tom do the same. Julia just observes the event silently and when they're all finished and Tom takes his seat in the booth next to her again, the two young girls turn back to the table. "Thank you so much!" they gush excitedly to the guys before they fix their gaze on Julia and smile sweetly. "Sorry to interrupt your breakfast."

They walk away before Julia can say anything, not that she'd even know what to say at this point, and once they're gone, she just shakes her head and goes back to eating her omelet. Mike and Tom exchange confused looks across the table then go back to watching her and, though she can feel their eyes on her, she takes her time chewing and swallowing before she looks up to meet their hesitant gazes.

"So," she begins, taking a sip from her coffee mug. "You guys are famous or something?"

"Not really," Mike shrugs. "Well, I mean kind of, I guess."

"And what are you not really but kind of famous for?"

The boys look at each other again and it's really starting to annoy Julia how they silently communicate all the damn time. "We play hockey," Tom finally says.

"Professionally?"

"Yeah, with the Capitals."

"Huh," she says casually and after a moment she shrugs. "I guess I should've known you guys were some kind of athletes. Regular guys don't have bodies like that."

Both of them get really cocky smirks on their faces but she pretends not to notice them as she keeps on eating her omelet. They slip into comfortable silence and no one else approaches them for the rest of the meal, except the waitress who comes to refill their coffee mugs.

Not being one who really goes out ever a lot, it takes a little while for Julia to realize that it is in fact Sunday morning and she does still have to go to her grandmother's house for lunch just like every other Sunday since the beginning of her life. Today is important because it's the first time in a month that her uncle will be there, having just returned from a long trip to Paris. "What time is it?" she blurts out, breaking the silence and when Mike pulls up his sleeve to show her the watch on his wrist, she gasps. "Shit, I'm late!"

The boys watch her curiously as she finishes off her coffee and then she gives Tom a gentle push to make him get up so that she can slide out of the booth. She reaches back into it for her bag and doesn't even think twice before leaning in to kiss Tom's cheek. "It was nice to meet you both," she says before turning to Mike and leaning down to kiss his cheek as well. "Thanks for....uh, everything. Maybe I'll see you boys again."

She doesn't leave any time for either of them to ask for her number or last name or any other piece of information that could help them contact her in the future before she darts out of the diner and out onto the cold streets.

Julia gets a cab back home and it isn't until she gets there and digs her keys out of her bag that she realizes her phone is missing from it. She was sure she'd shoved everything back inside her bag when she found it halfway dumped out on top of the boys' ping pong table but she must have somehow missed her phone. And now she has no way of contacting them to get it back; she could've called her phone but the battery would surely be dead by now. She wouldn't be able to find her way back to their apartment either. She was half drunk when they made their way there from the bar the night before and she's never been very good with directions anyway.

She doesn't have time to figure it out at the moment because she has to take the fastest shower of her life and quickly throw on one of her many dresses before blow drying her hair, throwing on some ankle booties, and grabbing her car keys on the way back out the door.

The drive to Bethesda is a relatively quick twenty minutes and when she pulls into the driveway of the little gray house, she's surprised to find that she's not the last one there. She walks up the short stone path and pushes the wooden front door open, announcing her presence loudly.

"You're late," a voice says from the doorway to the dining room.

Her head snaps up to see the tall blond man standing there with a serious look on his face and his arms crossed over his chest. "Oh please," she scoffs, rolling her eyes playfully. "As long as I'm not last, I'm not late."

He breaks out into a grin then, holding his arms open as she walks toward him and he wraps her in a tight hug. "Missed you, kid."

"I missed you too, Uncle Dante," she chuckles, pulling back to look at him. "How was your trip? Did you bring me anything?"

"How did I know that'd be the thing you cared most about?"

"Because this is the Cardini family and we're all materialistic as fuck even though we don't like to admit it?"

"Touché," he laughs. "And yes, we got you something."

"Yessssssss!"

"C'mon, Nolan has it in the kitchen."

Julia doesn't wait for Dante, instead ducking around him to make a beeline into the kitchen where her grandmother is sitting at the table with her uncle's boyfriend. A mint green bag sits on the little breakfast table between them and she goes right for it, ignoring the other two people in the room until the dark-haired man sets his coffee mug down to move the gift out of her reach.

"Excuse me," he says, acting offended. "We just got back from a month in Paris and you're more concerned about your gift than you are about me?"

"Hey, Nolan," she says, leaning down to hug him. "Welcome back to America."

He chuckles at her sass as he lets her go and then he slides the present back across the table until it's sitting right in front of her. She eyes it carefully for a moment before looking up at him hesitantly. "Oh, go ahead then," he says and she immediately digs into it the bag, excited to see what kind of gift they've brought back for her. She'd never tell her grandmother, but Dante and Nolan always win the gift giving contest in the family.

There's a small pale pink box inside it and she pulls it out excitedly before lifting the lid off of it to peek inside. "Aww!" she coos at the dozen beautiful little pastel colored macarons. "They're so pretty I don't want to eat them! But they also smell incredible and I really do want to eat them."

"Those came from this little bakery we found tucked away a few blocks off the Champs-Élysées."

"Thank you!"

"There's more, Jules," Nolan tells her, nodding toward the gift bag with a little smirk and she furrows her brows as she sets carefully sets down the box she's holding and goes back to the mint green bag to dig back into it. Her hand lands on something soft in the bottom and when she pulls it out, a loud gasp leaves her lips.

"Oh my God, you didn't!" she squeals, examining the beautiful quilted lambskin Chanel bag that her uncles have purchased for her in yellow, which they know is her favorite color.

"We walked by the original Cambon boutique. We couldn't not go in," Dante shrugs.

"Have I told you lately how much I love you?" Julia asks, throwing her arms around her uncle and kissing his cheek before doing the same to his boyfriend. "You two are the best!!"

"We know," Nolan agrees with a chuckle.

The older woman still sitting at the head of the table clears her throat as she gets up from her seat to go over to the kitchen island where she had been working on lunch. "Well, I know I didn't bring you some fabulous gift from Paris, but I did give birth to the person who gave birth to you. Don't you think that warrants a hug or something?"

Julia grins as she sets her bag down to walk into the kitchen behind her grandmother, wrapping her in a tight hug from behind. "Hey, Gigi Rose."

"Hey, baby," she smiles in return, patting Julia's cheek before she goes back to stirring the mashed potatoes. Julia makes herself useful by filling glasses with ice for everyone before pouring water into them and setting them out around the dining room table where the place settings are already ready for lunch. Once she's finished, she goes back to the kitchen to sit down with her uncles and admire her new bag a little more.

The huge wooden front door shutting draws all of their attention and a familiar voice calls out from the foyer. "Sorry we're late!" A few short moments later, her mother Angela walks into the room with a huge smile on her face and her boyfriend Rick right on her heels. "But we've got some news!"

"What is it?" Gigi Rose asks, momentarily looking up from where she's cutting the roast.

Angela says nothing but her smile widens as she holds out her left hand in front of her and Julia has to do a double take at the sizable diamond on her mother's fourth finger. "You're engaged?!" she squeals, jumping up from her seat and she lunges at her mother to wrap her in a tight hug. "Oh my God, I'm so happy for you, Mom!" The whole family swarms the couple, hugging them and congratulating them, before Julia pulls her mother over to sit in the empty chair next to her. "When did this happen?"

"This morning. Turns out Rick's a big softie because he remembered today makes exactly five years since we met. He took me out to the park to the exact place we bumped into each other and it was decorated with all these beautiful flowers and there was a violinist there playing our song. He dropped to one knee and I cried and some joggers gathered around to watch. It was so romantic!"

Julia squeals as she leans over to hug her mother again, squeezing her tightly and whispering how happy she is for her. She knows what a long, hard road it's been for Angela, who'd given birth to her at the age of seventeen and raised her on her own without any help from a man. Angela had sacrificed a lot over the years for her daughter and now she's finally getting to have the life she always wanted with all the happiness in the world.

"Thank you, baby," Angela chuckles, hugging her back, while both her uncles good-naturedly tease Rick about his proposal. He just smiles and shrugs it off because he knows he's a softie when it comes to Angela and he's not ashamed of it in the least.

"You're gonna have a huge wedding, right?"

"I don't know if we're going to have a wedding or not at all. It's such a big expense and it's only one day-"

"I told her that's ridiculous," Rick interrupts, leaning against the kitchen counter. "I'd have one bigger than the royal wedding if that's what she wanted."

"You're the sweetest," Julia grins at him before turning back to Angela. "Mom, you finally have the chance to throw a huge ass wedding. You have to! I'll even help you plan!"

Angela just smiles and shakes her head at her daughter. "I'll think about it. How about that?"

"Guess it's better than nothing," Julia scowls playfully.

"Brat."

The two women grin at each other until Gigi Rose announces that lunch is ready and then all other topic of conversation is momentarily forgotten.