"It's going to be fine," Mariana reassured as she grasped the doorknob, twisting it and letting them into the big house. "We're here!" she called as she stepped in, pulling her girlfriend by the hand. There was no reply, and no one came running to greet them. She tried again, "Mama?!"

"Kitchen!" a voice called back from around the corner. Mariana glanced back at Casey.

"Ready?" she inquired, a teasing smirk on her face.

"Will I ever be?" Casey returned, raising one eyebrow.

"No," Mariana agreed, winking and giving her a kiss. "Let's go. Mama's a good place to start."

"That's Lena, right?" Casey clarified, and Mariana nodded.

The two girls proceeded into the kitchen, where Lena was hovering over a hot stove, stirring something that sizzled and smelled deliciously of garlic.

"Hi Mama!" Mariana let go of Casey's hand and crossed the room to give her mom a hug. Lena kissed her cheek and smiled warmly at Casey.

"And you must be Casey," she said, holding out one hand, palm up, as though to offer a hug without pressuring. Casey simply nodded and smiled shyly, still hovering in the doorway. "It's a pleasure to meet you. Stef's out back with Jude, Callie, Tony, and the baby. Brandon's on his way with Sammy, but no Lauren. Jesús still hasn't answered any of Mom's calls."

Mariana laughed. "Jesús never answers phone calls, you have to text him. No one calls anyone anymore, Mama. But he'll be here. He was asking us for a ride over. You know he doesn't pass up free food." Lena shook her head.

"Go say hi to everyone else, and introduce Casey. I promise they won't bite," she added with due seriousness. Mariana took Casey's hand again and pulled her to the back door, through which one could see an older blonde woman, two brown-haired young men, a girl who matched one of the boys, and a baby lying on her back in the grass, bare feet kicking up at the sunshine. Before opening the door, Mariana pointed with her free hand and named each character for her girlfriend's benefit - Stef, also known as Mom; Jude, the younger brother; Tony, sister Callie's fiancé; Callie, the sister; and Elizabeth, Callie and Tony's infant.

"Mariana!" cried Jude, leaping up from his crouched spot beside the baby. Even at 19, he was full of the kind of pure, innocent enthusiasm and love that had won the entire Adams Foster family over when they first met him seven years prior. He came over and hugged his sister, who returned the embrace and then came closer to the rest of the group, Casey following tentatively behind.

"Mom, Callie, Jude, Tony, this is Casey," Mariana introduced. Casey gave a half-smile and a wave, accompanied by a quiet, "Hi." Stef got to her feet with a little less agility than she'd possessed a few years ago and hugged her daughter before offering the guest a sturdy handshake.

"Welcome," she said, patting Casey on the shoulder.

"It's downright cruel of Mari to make you meet us all at once," said Callie, twisting around to look up at Casey but not rising from her seat beside her daughter. Casey smiled at that.

Tony agreed, adding, "I didn't have to do this. I got to ease into it, just the moms first. Not that that's much better - Stef's the hardest one to pass anyway." He flashed his own wide smile at Casey, who grinned back. Stef just leaned down and bopped him on the head.

"Don't scare her off before I have the chance," she chided. Casey felt herself relaxing into the gentle family banter, feeling perfectly at home with this outgoing group of near strangers. Her own family, though much smaller, was similarly jocular.

"Don't worry, I'm pretty brave," she chimed in, flashing the smile that had caught Mariana's heart the first time she saw it in class. Tied with that aggressive intellect, well, Mari had been a goner from the start...

"We keep saying that word, 'intersectionality,' without ever crediting its creator. Kimberlé Crenshaw was a Black woman activist and scholar, and she coined the term in order to talk about the unique oppression that Black women experience at the intersection of racism and sexism. If we're going to use her language, and we should, we should also acknowledge that it's hers." The outspoken young woman hadn't waited to be called on, simply raising her hand and talking as she did so, interrupting the professor's lecture. Mariana, seated off to the side of the small seminar classroom, looked up from her doodling. This cross-cultural gender analysis class was just a GE for her, and though she found the information interesting, she was much too caught up in planning the coding for her senior thesis to really engage. But she'd had her eye on this girl since the first day of class two weeks before - skin not too much lighter than Mariana's own, hair a light brown that revealed a purple underside when up in a ponytail, sitting front and center and struggling to keep from talking constantly. She carried herself with a confident sort of grace, wore perfectly winged black eyeliner nearly every day, and seemed to draw Mariana's gaze magnetically. Mari had had crushes on girls before, of course - there was Tia from the dance team, obviously, and before she'd really realized her sexuality she'd definitely been confused about Emma, and since starting college she'd kissed tons of girls at parties and things, but she'd never had this kind of aggressive heart-flutter-y feelings. She felt almost absurd the way her cheeks colored up whenever this Casey smiled at her, or how her normally self-assured countenance crumbled whenever she tried to talk to her, even just to say hi.

After class, Mariana was packing up her backpack when she felt eyes on her. She looked up, already blushing uncharacteristically, somehow knowing it was that Casey. And, of course, it was.

"Hey," Casey said, speaking quickly and with a nervous edge to her voice, "wouldyoumaybewanttogooutsometime?" It took a couple of seconds for Mariana to register what her classmate had said.

"Uh, yeah, sure, totally," she replied, trying to sound nonchalant. "Maybe, uh, we could get coffee?"

"Tuesday?" Casey suggested.

"11:00?"

"Sounds perfect." And with that established, the two girls parted, each shaking a little with excitement and anxiety, and both immediately pulling out their phones to text their best friends.

Playing with baby Elizabeth and when she arrived Brandon's stepdaughter Sammy, who was four, kept the clan busy until Lena called them all to dinner. Neither the kitchen nor the dining room could really comfortably hold the entire family, which had grown so much since they'd first bought the house, just two moms and a boy. So they took advantage of the sunshine, spreading out across the backyard with plates on their laps, naturally falling into conversational groups. Typically people moseyed around the yard, moving from person to person, catching up with whomever they had seen the least recently, the children being highly coveted and their parents glad for a break. But tonight all eyes were on Mariana and Casey, who felt the attention acutely but tried not to show it. Callie, Jesús, and Stef all jostled to make sure Casey passed their test for a suitable suitor. Brandon, Jude, and Lena expressed friendly interest in Casey's studies, family life, and passions without being as overzealous as the other half of their family. Sammy, in a phase with no understanding of stranger danger, immediately claimed the new person as her best friend and, after stuffing her food into her mouth, became engrossed in Casey's hair, delighted by the purple. Elizabeth merely dozed and gurgled and occasionally cried, as babies tend to do, and Tony stuck to Callie's side but stayed quiet.

Casey was impressed by the level of diversity this family presented. Two moms, one white and one biracial, a white son with an Asian kid, a white daughter with a Latino husband and a biracial baby, Latino twins, and another white son. Mariana had told her that Jude, the youngest, was gay, and that both her moms identified as lesbian. Brandon was Stef's biological son, but his own daughter, Sammy, was, Casey assumed, adopted. The infant seemed to be Callie and Tony's biological child, but who knew, at this point? Her own family of mom, dad, brother, sister, dog seemed incredibly uninteresting in comparison. The personalities, too, were as diverse as the appearances. Stef was loud and funny, as was Jesús, whom she'd met at school and knew fairly well. Lena was quiet but warm, mirrored by Brandon. Callie started off rather reserved, but seemed to open up throughout the night, as did Jude, though he was quieter than his sister. It was all fairly dizzying for Casey to comprehend, but she soon stopped thinking about who was related to whom and how, and just thought of them as her girlfriend's family - big, boisterous, and very fun.

After dessert and a small glass of wine for everyone but Jude, the kids, and Callie, who was breastfeeding, the party broke up. Callie and Tony packed up the baby and went home for an early bedtime. Brandon did the same, though Sammy resisted and had to be dragged away from her grandmothers, aunts, and uncles. Jesús packed up several Tupperware containers of leftovers and took off as mysteriously as he'd come. That left only Stef, Lena, and Jude, the three occupants of the house they were at, and Mariana and Casey.

"Well, we ought to head out," Mariana said at last, standing up and stretching. They'd moseyed into the living room as people had peeled away, dusk had fallen, and the air had cooled. "Gnight, moms."

"Thank you for having us," Casey added.

"Our pleasure," Lena said, at the same time as Stef responded, "Not a problem."

With kisses and hugs between the family members, and another firm handshake from Stef to Casey, the two girls set off.

"That was fun," Casey told Mariana as they climbed into Mari's car. "They're not as scary as you made them out to be."

"Well, good," Mariana replied, leaning over to kiss her girlfriend. "Because they're here to stay, and so are you, I hope."

"Definitely," Casey said with another small kiss.