Excerpt:

“Is everyone going?” She kind of hoped he was leaving his kids at home, not that she didn't like his kids – they were better than any kids she knew, really, but for some reason she worried they'd become tiresome to manage or possibly get lost, she had an anxiety over that in particular, that it would be up to her and Judy to keep track of Kate and Tobias but they would turn their backs for an instant at some snack bar or other and poof, gone. It wasn't like they were small children anymore, and even if that did happen it wouldn't be such a big deal. Toby had to be eighteen, Kate was thirteen or fourteen now. Kate had been a newborn the first time Judy took Taylor to Egypt, when they'd turned their long friendship into something more than that had ever been.

“Of course everyone's going.” He looked her in the eyes. “You don't look like much of a theme park kind of girl, though. You like places like King's Island?”

“Never been. I wanted to try Cedar Point sometime but it's like an hour further away.”

“Cedar Point is way better. Not that I'm likely to survive a trip to the 'natti to King's Island either, so another hour on top of that is impossible. All in all it's going to be about as much fun as a nail through my dick.” He eyed the bottle of wine she'd opened for the band women, who had left just as he was coming out from the back. “Cork that, for fuck's sake. I don't care if it's just a seventeen dollar bottle. All the life of the thing is seeping out into the air.” But he was smiling at her, as if griping about her mistakes was much more pleasant to him than considering the horrors of their upcoming family trip.

“I just opened it. Going to have another glass here in a bit, would you like one?”

He made a face. “You and your French wine. I should send you down to scope out some good Beaujolais – or at least to prove once and for all that there's no such thing.”

“A Beaujolais isn't really a French wine. French quarter, maybe.”

“Laissez le bon temps rouler,” Aaron said with a flat American pronunciation, 'Let the good times roll', the battle cry of Mardi Gras.

“Que la fête commence,” she replied, better French for the same thing, but with the implied meaning of getting this party started.