Chapter 10 – Family dinner

He panicked for a short while before taking control of himself again. Since he didn't have the first idea about cooking, there was obviously no way he could prepare today's dinner, and definitely not without making his family suspicious. He took a look at the time on his phone. It was already 8 pm, quite late indeed to prepare food for seven people. He put on a sorry expression and answered her.

"Ah, sorry, Grace. I was too focused on something and lost track of the time."

"No no no, it's ok, don't worry."

She quickly reassured him, as if she was afraid to hurt his feelings. She had always doted on him and it seemed that it was still the case. He continued.

"Is it alright if we order something? I don't think I will make it in time, today."

She seemed a bit disappointed to hear that, not the rebuttal sort but more like sad that she would not be able to eat what he would cook. Nevertheless, she didn't let her feelings out.

"Yes, no problem, I will go tell Mom."

She turned around and went down the stairs, leaving him to go back inside his room. A few tens of minutes later, he heard through the door his mother shouting that dinner was ready. He turned his computer off and directed himself to the living room, on the first floor.

There was a table big enough to sit with eight people and he could see that they decided to order pizza since it was covered in different sorts of the food. It seemed that he was the last one to arrive and everyone else was already there, probably hungry due to the late dinner. He approached and sat at one of the last remaining seats. Seeing him here and sitting down, the women seemed pleasantly surprised.

"Are you going to join us today, Ben?"

The way his mom expressed it suggested that it was not always the case. He nodded and Grace followed up.

"It's great to eat all together. Even if you are the only boy in the house, you don't need to be so quiet and reserved."

"That's right, kiddo. I know it's not easy to be surrounded by these stupid girls all the time but everyone in this house loves you, so you don't need to worry about anything."

That was from his grandmother, who lived together with them in the house. Everyone seemed to agree, some of them blushing a little hearing that declaration. He now had a small idea about how his previous self was behaving, thanking Grace in his mind for steering the conversation in this direction. Since they all seemed to wait for him to say something, he went ahead and answered.

"I am sorry I have been distant with you. I will try my best to spend more time with you. I-I also love you all."

He tried to give them what he hoped was a shy smile while uttering these lines. Even in his eyes, it was a bit cheesy. However, the effect was tremendous. As if they never expected him to say something like this, the look on their faces was quite hilarious. After they processed his words, all of his sisters blushed without exception while his mom and Grandma gave a big grin. His mom stood up, ran up to his seat, and took him in a big manly (womanly?) hug, out of nowhere.

"That's my darling son! Mom is so happy to hear you say that!"

Since he was still seated and she was standing, his head went directly into her abundant chest and he couldn't deny that the sensation was amazing. She smelled good, too, and he was very happy to stay like this for as long as possible.

"You always looked so annoyed whenever I did that in the past, now look at you being so docile. I see you didn't lie, I can feel the love right now!"

"Stop it, Mom, we are having dinner. Leave Ben alone and go back to your seat."

Nova "rescued" him from his mother, who went back to sit down with a pout. The dinner started at that time and everyone enjoyed the large number of pizzas on the table. The atmosphere progressively became more relaxed as they saw him eating the same fast food as they did without any complaints and smiling at them when they were looking at him. They even started talking about things more freely, like which male celebrity was hot, or that some of their friends claimed that they managed to hook up with a guy, and any other similar subjects. After the meal, they started to clean up the table. Once they were done, he turned toward his family.

"Sorry about today's meal, I will prepare dinner tomorrow."

"Don't worry kiddo, we are the ones always profiting from you preparing dinner. I remember when you got sick two years ago and we tried to make dinner without you. It's a good thing that the whole house didn't go down in flames! Ahahahah!"

The anecdote put quite a few of them to shame as they frowned at their grandmother and avoided looking him in the eyes. Since the mood was very good overall, they decided to watch a film all together. The living room had a giant TV and enough space on the sofa for three of them. He was placed in the middle of it, his mother and grandmother taking place on both sides. His sisters were not completely happy with the seating arrangement but didn't protest, choosing to use chairs or to sit directly on the floor. They choose to watch a romance movie, which ended up being pretty good, though he often had to adjust his sense of values to understand some of the interactions. After the movie, they each went back to their respective room. He didn't forget to set up the alarm one hour earlier for his lesson with the school nurse and went to sleep, tired from a long day full of surprises.