“Okay. Okay. I’m texting Jerry. He’ll do the whole apartment parking lot. He doesn’t mind. He’s worried about you.”
“You settled.”
“What?”
“For Jerry. You settled. I don’t want to settle. I want love.”
“Oh my god, Begonia. I did not settle for Jerry.”
“But you complain about him all the time. And the last time he took you on a date was months ago, and it was popcorn and hotdogs in your basement while you hid from the kids.”
“Um, hello, that was a good date.” She rubs her belly, which I can feel behind my head. “Too good, unfortunately. And I’m sorry I complain about him too much. It’s not him. Exactly. It’s raising two and a half minions and being overwhelmed and settling into—no, not settling, not like that—but just having routines and being so busy and forgetting to appreciate all the reasons I fell in love with him in the first place. Like, he gives me foot rubs every night. And he takes the kids to the park every Saturday morning so I can have one morning of bingeing adult TV while I drink my coffee hot. And do you remember when the preschool moms all rose up last year to protest Dani saying fuck? Jerry was the first one to tell me that our kids will be just fine, because they won’t be afraid of profanity and they’ll understand how and when to use it and that people are different and see things differently, and he went to the preschool meeting for me and read a list of cuss words and their etymology and talked about how when you stigmatize something, that makes it worse than it is all on its own. And he doesn’t blink when I drink pickle smoothies or have ice cream dribble down my shirt, and he buys me tampons. I know he’s not, like, a billionaire who can take me to Europe on a moment’s notice—which I notice the billionaire who shall not be named didn’t do for you, by the way, despite teasing you incessantly about it—or get me tickets to a movie premiere or send me luxury chocolates every day, but he’s my prince charming, even when I forget how much he does.”
I twist my head to stare up at her for a brief moment, then squeeze my eyes shut.
She loves him.
She doesn’t think she settled.
And that’s what’s important. Especially since neither one of us can have a guy like Hayes.
Or who he pretended he was.
“I thought he loved me,” I whisper to my sister. “Underneath it all, I thought he was falling in love with me.”
Someone else knocks at my door, making Marshmallow growl low in his throat.
I wince. “And now Mom’s here.”
“If she says the Chad word, I’ll threaten to never let her see her grandbabies again, and I swear on my loyalty to you above everyone else, I’ll mean it.”
Marshmallow growls again.
“Begonia?” Mom calls. “Sweetie, open the door. Mommy’s here to fix it all.”
I whimper.
Hyacinth growls louder than Marshmallow.
The lock clicks, the hinges squeak, and more than one set of footsteps makes my small entryway floor creak. “Honey, don’t worry,” Mom calls. “I brought Chad, and he forgives you. Let’s put this all behind us now, shall we?”
Hyacinth and I lock eyes.
I dive for Marshmallow, and I get lightheaded all over again. Maybe skipping breakfast for the past two days wasn’t the greatest idea.
“I’m going to murder them both,” Hyacinth says.
I don’t dive for her.
The authorities won’t put her down if she bites one of them. And I’m pretty sure she won’t bite.
Or murder them for real.
And she has that no-fucks-left-to-give third pregnancy glow.
“Begon—erp.”
“Out,” Hy snarls. “Out, out, out. Mother, you’re dead to me. Chad, you’ll be dead for real if you don’t march your loser ass out of this apartment and stay the fuck away. You don’t get to realize what you lost after it’s gone. You get to wallow in misery for the rest of your freaking forever. No, Mother, dead to me. Go. Go. Before I call Keisha Kourtney and ask her to take Begonia somewhere safe where none of us can ever bother her again, and that means none of us will ever see her again too. Do you understand?”
Keisha.
I miss Keisha.
But I don’t have the right to call her anymore.
That part of my life? That adventure?
It’s over.
And I’m not up for any more right now.
34
Hayes
She fucking betrayed me.
I’m sitting at my desk, staring at the paper hand-delivered by my father this morning, gaping in utter shock.