Peter stood defiant on the neon-orange square on the multicolored path that he’d fought tooth-and-nail to reach, arms crossed as he looked up toward Jessica’s hand slowly approaching. Her fingers were wrapped triumphantly around her own plastic playing piece. A smug grin curled her lips as her arm stretched toward him.

                “Somebody’s not the le-e-eader anymore,” she sang. The girl’s thumb brushed playfully along her brother’s stomach as her piece passed the green, then purple, and finally orange square upon which the five-inch boy was waiting with his best poker face. She deposited the plastic bobble a full two squares ahead of Peter, who’d previously held a solid lead in the trivia board game, and gave him a sporting pat on the top of his head with the pad of her thumb.

                “All right, honey, let’s not rub it in,” Suzanne laughed from the other side of the coffee table around which the group was huddled.

                “I’m just letting him know. In case he didn’t realize,” Jessica snickered, flashing a wink to her tiny sibling.

                “Hey, it’s good you did. I definitely wasn’t paying attention,” Peter snarked. He turned around to Lisa, who knelt by a third side of the table, her arms folded on the glass surface.  “Lisa? Did you realize I’m not winning anymore?”

                “I don’t think so,” Lisa smiled warmly. “I could have used a banner, maybe. Or some sky writing.”

                Jessica broke into a series of girlish cackles, leaning back against the couch cushions and rolling her head back.

                “You all are really hilarious,” Erica droned coolly from her position on the living room armchair a few feet away, not even bothering to look up from her phone. “I’m, like, laughing over here.”

                Peter shot his older sister a dramatic eye-roll. He knew she’d promised their mother to be present for an entire hour of the game night plus the dinner, but that contract said nothing of participating or, indeed, sitting close enough to take part in the game. Still, Suzanne was picking up the slack.

                “All right, looks like it’s Erica’s turn again,” the woman announced pointedly to ensure her eldest child’s attention was diverted. She plucked a card from the stack. “I hope she’s ready, because I’m only reading the question a maximum of two times.”

                “Oh no, what if I don’t win?” Erica piped up dryly.

                Suzanne cleared her throat, releasing a groan from the seventeen-year-old, who at last cast her eyes just high enough to see both the gaming group and the group chat on her cell.

                “Okay, okay, what is it? Can I have one of the baby questions?”

                “Hey, those are only for ages six to thirteen!” Jessica defended instantly. She sat up higher from the floor, planting her palm flat on the game board and nearly toppling her piece.

                Peter’s knees vibrated slightly as his sister’s fingers thumped down a few inches away from him. He had to chuckle at the sudden panic in her blue eyes at the thought of losing her edge over the family if anyone else was allowed to utilize the tween-difficulty level.

                “Don’t worry, Jessie- I mean, Jessica,” he muttered sympathetically, correcting himself. He took a few steps forward and offered a consoling stroke to the girl’s finger. “I bet you still know more of the kid questions than her.”

                “Thanks,” the girl sighed, raising an eyebrow in effort to decipher if the boy was being supportive or poking fun at her trivia knowledge. Her hand ascended a few inches up from the colored cardboard surface. “Hey. You gotta stay on the square if you’re gonna be your own playing piece.”

                “Whoops. Didn’t even notice,” Peter smarmed, glancing down at the now-yellow square. He threw up his hands. “But what can ya do?”

                “Oh, no you don’t,” she giggled. Her fingers curved together as her palm flattened into a wall and cupped into her brother, nudging him aggressively back toward his previously orange stand.

                Peter grunted, putting imaginary effort into resisting his sister’s hand as she slid him along the glossy ground. His miniature hands sunk into the soft flesh of her palm, meeting the young girl’s tensed muscle beneath. Jessica couldn’t withhold her laughter again, and neither could Lisa.

                “I’ll repeat the rules: everyone stays in their own age group questions,” Suzanne explained with over-dramatized seriousness. She glanced back to Erica, who had returned to her phone screen. “No exceptions.”

                “Oh, dang,” Erica coughed. Her sarcasm was practically seeping into the cushions.

                “Although I’m willing to make an exception in the opposite direction and bump you up into the forty-plus difficulty, honey,” Suzanne warned. “We’ll see if that school of yours taught you anything about obscure vice presidents.” She cleared her throat and read out Erica’s appropriate question.

                Snorting, Peter threw a couple of airy punches into the peachy barricade of his younger sister’s hand, watching his fists barely even make a momentary indent in the creased pad of her palm. Both Jessica and Lisa had given in to loosely stifled snickering; he couldn’t help but pay particular focus to the redhead’s lilting laughter, not derisive or embarrassed, but purely joyful. God, she was adorable.

                “Maybe you should use one of the checkers for your piece, Peter, and you can be my playing piece instead,” Jessica suggested with feigned authority. Her fingers curled slowly in toward her palm, meeting her brother’s back. “You’d get to reach the end of the board then and feel sort of like you won, even though I did! I think you’d like that.”

                “Hey, don’t count me out so fast,” the boy laughed. His heart quickened slightly as his sister’s digits gently clasped him into her closing fist. Her skin was scented heavily of some frilly grape-related lotion. “Or Lisa! I think she’s planning a comeback.”

                “Are you kidding me?” the girl said, looking with joking dismay at her own piece in dead-last. “I don’t think I could win even if I got every single question right from now on. I think you guys have played this game too much.”

                “Maybe just a little,” Jessica offered. She ruffled her slender fingers around her five-inch sibling’s legs, letting them dance against her palm, and lifted the boy up from the board.

                Suzanne moved Erica’s piece forward, having received a half-satisfactory answer. She planted the card into the used pile, and looked to the other three in the room with amusement. “What’s going on over here?”

                “Oh, nothing. I’m just telling Peter why I think he should be my piece instead of his,” Jessica said. She cupped her brother into her palm, tousling his hair with her middle finger.

                “Mhm,” Suzanne said. “Why don’t you let your brother back down to his space now, so I can finish “schooling” all of you?”

                The entire circle broke into chortling at the woman’s outdated vernacular. Peter even heard Erica release an accidental peal of laughter. Jessica’s palm lowered back down toward the board, sliding into a soft disembark for Peter just as the oven timer bleeped loudly from the kitchen.

                “Pizza’s done!” Suzanne chirped.

                “Thank God,” Erica groaned.

                Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw a relieved smile creep over Jessica’s mouth. Her palm, at first tipping to let him out, instantly lifted back up and leaned his body into her fingers again, now with another chance for the game to delay. More importantly, with a chance to keep him in her protective grasp for longer. To the side, he watched Lisa patiently waiting, any hint of judgment hidden from her cheerful countenance as she folded her hands in her lap.

                “Why don’t you help me, Jessica?” Suzanne asked idly. Telepathically, Peter sent a major thank-you in his mother’s direction.

                “Hmm?” the girl mumbled, her mind clearly elsewhere as she looked up from the miniature boy in her hand. Her tongue lapped at the corner of her lip.

                “Pizza? I need someone who’s an expert at getting the pizza peel to go under the crust.”

                “Oh, okay. Peter, you wanna come t-”

                “I think your brother and these two will be just fine waiting for us for a minute,” Suzanne said. “Actually, why don’t we all take a break from the game and come sit in the dining room?”

                “Okay…” Jessica sighed.

                Peter received a last powerful whiff of the grape aroma surrounding his sister’s hands as her fingers brushed along his shoulders and hair. Finally her palm hovered back to the tabletop and tipped, letting him stumble to its surface. With some discomfort, he realized he suddenly felt just a touch more secure upon the game board, out of the thirteen-year-old’s loving grip.

                That was new.

                Jessica rose on both feet in unison, a graceful move practiced over several years of dance, and lithely followed after her mother into the glow of the kitchen.

                “I guess you’re spared my comeback for now,” Lisa giggled. She crouched in nearer, lowering her chin down to the surface of the coffee table such that her eye level only beat out Peter’s by a few inches. “Too bad.”

                “Yeah, too bad. I was ready to see you nail some questions about sixty-year-old pop singers and… I don’t know, deadly bacteria?”

                “Hey, I’m learning things in biology. I could get that second one, at least,” Lisa insisted. Her fiery locks wisped softly along the edge of the table. For support, her fingers gradually appeared over the cusp, gripping the surface so smoothly that Peter didn’t even feel a tremor.

                “I bet you could,” Peter smiled.

                Lisa’s nostrils flared at the gathering aroma of mozzarella and tomato. “Shall we?”

                “Heck, yeah,” he said. “Mom makes a mean pizza. I hope you’re ready to have every chain place ruined for the rest of your life.”

                “More than anything,” Lisa said. Her hand passed onto the table and rotated, palm-up, for her passenger.

                “Guess we better get a move-on…” Peter uttered wryly under his breath as he hopped into her pale hand. He spoke too quietly even for Erica to make out from her chair. “…before my shadow comes back to get me instead.”

                Lisa made an awkward grimace. Immediately the boy regretted his wording.

                “I don’t mean it like… um… I mean, I don’t want to sound like a jerk or-”

                “I get it,” Lisa whispered as she drew him up toward her chin. She glanced to the chair beyond as Erica, eyes glued to her screen, rolled over the arm of the chair and meandered toward the kitchen, where Jessica and Suzanne were slicing up the steaming pie. “It must feel a little… overbearing sometimes.”

                “Accurate,” Peter huffed.

                “It’ll be okay. She just wants you to know she cares,” Lisa continued. She arched up to her full, modest height with nary a waver in Peter’s cushy seat in her palm and sauntered toward the hallway.

                “C’mon, guys!” Jessica called out from the dining room just around the corner. “Peter, I put you next to Lisa…”

                “Well, that’s something,” Peter mumbled to Lisa.

                “…and I’m on your other side.”

                “Spoke too soon,” the boy said, earning another giggle from his carrier.

                The pair stepped up to the dining surface, where Lisa set Peter down on his cloth placemat, right before the well-polished doll’s table. A full square inch of the gooey, sauce-slathered meal was already heaped on his plate. His mouth watered.

                “Mom!” Jessica moaned as Suzanne returned to the room with a large bowl of tossed salad. The girl swiped up her knife and fork, bearing the two enormous glistening utensils down above her brother’s toy-sized place setting. “You didn’t cut Peter’s piece small enough! How’s he supposed to eat it when it’s that big?”

                “I just don’t know what I was thinking, honey,” Suzanne said.

                Peter settled into his chair right by Lisa’s softly folded hand. He watched his sister’s aggressive fingers sawing his food into a mess of melted strings and crumbs. Most of his carefully sliced portion was shredded beyond recognition, glued by steam and cheese to Jessica’s metal implements, each of which was taller than him by a handle. She sliced it in every direction. When she was finished at last, leaving a pile of crimson and white debris on his plate, she drew the fork up toward her lips and licked away the lingering mush still wrapped around the tines. She grinned at him as she gulped down about half of his entire dinner in one bite, the sauce steaming against the ripples of her tongue.

                “There,” the girl sighed, satisfied with her work as the rest of the family took their seats. “Way better, right? Now you don’t have to worry.”

                The freshman squeezed his whitening fists to the underside of the table where Jessica couldn’t see and looked with optimistic exasperation toward his date’s reassuring green eyes above. Lisa shrugged, her smile widening by a hair.

                Overbearing, indeed.