Ryke drops his hand and cringes. His brown eyes rise to mine. “I f**king hate when people torment her.”
I know that now. “But if we move to another neighborhood it’s just going to be the same thing in a different setting.” We bring attention to ourselves wherever we are and that won’t change, not after Lily’s sex addiction was publicized, not after Princesses of Philly, and definitely not after the molestation rumors with my father.
The reality is this: Lily is pregnant. Rose is pregnant. Daisy is hanging onto her sanity. And the media is as caustic as ever—spreading rumors, trying to snap photos of Lily and Rose’s bodies, and harassing Daisy about her relationship with Ryke and his relationship with my girlfriend.
I’m not the smartest one of us. Or the strongest. But I f**king know everyone has a breaking point. And sometimes I wonder if our limits are going to be tested now that Ryke is with Daisy, now that I’m about to be a father, and Connor will have a child with Rose. These things stretch us further than before.
A misstep will feel fatal. Because it’s not just myself that I’m hurting. It’s Lil. It’s our kid. There’s literally no room for mistakes anymore.
I wish I could be full of conceited optimism, but to be honest, everything just scares the shit out of me.
2
LILY CALLOWAY
I kneel on the cold tile of Ryke and Daisy’s messy bathroom, rubbing my little sister’s back as she pukes in the toilet. “We should TP their front yard,” I say with a nod. They deserve it, for all the stupid shit they’ve done to our house this past week and then jumping out of nowhere and frightening us with paintball guns.
“Or we should rip out their ball sacs. Slowly,” Rose says in a cold, threatening voice. She paces the bathroom with a Japanese paper fan, wafting cool air on herself half the time and Daisy for the other. She stops every so often to fold a crumpled towel on the floor or readjust the green bath mat. She’s already reorganized the shampoo bottles and put away Daisy’s tampons and hairbrush.
It’s very weird, but I think I’m the most composed of the three of us right now. Sex isn’t even on the brain yet. I internally smile. I make sure to file the rare accomplishment with a few others.
“I’m not touching their…stuff,” I tell Rose, and just like that my face heats.
“Balls,” Rose emphasizes the word, shooting me a death glare on an epic scale. I blame her hormones on the intensity of those yellow-green eyes. They’re a lot scarier now. “Or testicles if that makes them any better for you.”
I shake my head over and over, my face flushing. I’ve already been dizzy all night, a pregnancy symptom, and the red rash is not helping my spinning head any. “That’s worse. And I don’t have a problem with them. I like balls.” I cringe. That sounds so bad. “I mean, I like them.” An image of Lo’s cock, hard and very erect, pops in my head, and my skin heats. No. No. No. I press my thighs tighter together.
Through Rose’s intense glare, I see glimmers of sisterly concern.
I’m like a tortoise, slow and steady. I’m not one-hundred percent able to talk about sex without flushing. I’m not sure if I ever will be that comfortable without feeling like someone’s going to hurl a dildo at my face.
That happened two weeks ago outside of Lucky’s Diner. Not fun. And I thought being pregnant would give me some sort of reprieve like: don’t throw sex toys at me and my unborn baby. Not so.
“Regardless of whether you like them or not, their balls need to go,” Rose says. She’s so pissed at these guys who keep pranking us. I am too, but I don’t have war maps and battlements planned in my head.
Daisy slumps down from the toilet, finally done puking. I flush the toilet and then press a cool washcloth to her forehead while she takes deep breaths.
We’re all quiet for a minute, except for the flap flap of Rose’s paper fan as she beats the air at Daisy. I have these painful flashbacks of what happened, and I’m more shaken up about my sister’s reaction to the paintball guns than the actual guys.
She was polishing my toenails with a bottle of Lucky Lucky Lavender while I read pregnancy stories aloud from a “mommy-to-be” magazine. My back was to the window, but she looked up, pure dead-panic in her eyes, wide like saucers.
And that’s when the bangs went off. I saw the blue and orange paint on the window pane like neon bird crap, and we both sprung to our feet together, the nail polish spilling on the rug.
When Ryke and Lo ran down to us and out the door, Daisy muttered something and then stumbled up the stairs. She was a ghost, her breath sharp as she choked for air. Like she was gasping on dry land. I helped her to her bathroom on the second floor and tried to calm her so she’d breathe normally.
This all lasted for maybe twenty minutes, and it’s only after she vomited that she’s settling, more at ease. Her white tank top with the words—kapow, baby—is soaked through from sweat. She’s not wearing a bra, which I understand. Neither am I. Free-boobing is the best. Plus, we’re both very tiny up top.
“Can you talk?” I ask her, pulling a strand of blonde hair off her face. When she returned from Costa Rica with Ryke, she dyed the multi-colored strands back to blonde and then changed the tips of her hair to pastel mint-green. She’s too cool for me, and she’s my little sister. I don’t even think she realizes the effect she has on a lot of people. When she smiles, usually everyone does too.
Maybe that’s why Daisy’s sadness hurts so much. It’s like watching a Care Bear cry.
“I overreacted,” she says in a morose voice, tears pooling.
My stomach knots. “I was there, Daisy, it was scary.” I pull her closer to me so she’s not clinging to the toilet bowl, and I wrap my arm around her waist. She’s wearing Ryke’s blue and red Penn baseball cap backwards, and she rests her head tiredly on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, wiping her eyes quickly. “I’m just disappointed in…myself.” Her voice shakes.
I give Rose a look to not interject. She’s not the most comforting human being in the world. And she knows this. So she mouths, fine, to me and stays out of it.
“I almost peed myself,” I tell Daisy.
She laughs softly and looks up at me.
“I’m serious. I know I peed at least a little bit.”
“It’s because you’re pregnant,” Daisy says with a weak smile. “You can’t hold your bladder.”
“No, it was definitely from fear. I’m not that pregnant yet.” Eighteen weeks and the baby bump is just noticeable. I’ve gained maybe five pounds or less, and my doctor wants me to eat more since I’m “underweight.” I think gangly is a nicer word than underweight.
Rose is twenty weeks along and a lot more pregnant looking than me. She has a round bump in her black Calloway Couture dress that molds her body. She’s been designing more maternity kind of clothes—just for herself. Lo called her vain last week, and she swatted him with her sketchbook.
I like that she’s making sure she feels comfortable. That’s important, especially when so many things are changing.
Daisy wipes the last of her tears with her sleeve, her other forearm wrapped in a bright yellow cast. No one was surprised that Costa Rica brought Daisy a bad compound fracture and a dislocated shoulder. When she has free reign of the wild, she goes hard.