Addicted After All

by Krista Ritchie

  Of course, Rose came up with an alternative: a “private” course, taught by her and Connor since they’ve both earned their certificates last week. I’m less nervous of tripping up in front of them.

  “How is twenty-three so far?” Ryke asks me, making conversation as we wait for the others. I lean my butt on the loveseat armrest, adjacent to his couch. I try really hard not to think about his underwear or the junk that goes in them.

  “Huh?” My eyes flicker to his package like a nervous tic.

  If he noticed, he brushes it off. “Twenty-three. How’s it been?”

  I’ll be twenty-four in three months, after I have Maximoff, so it’s not such a random question.

  All the websites online say that twenty-three is the worst year in your twenties. Twelve months of identity crisis and “what the fuck am I doing with my life” realizations.

  In the past year I’ve hit some major road bumps, including forgetting my birth control. But I love this year the most. I have conquered immeasurable fears. Public places don’t scare me as much. The articles and headlines don’t make me want to touch myself. The world feels smaller and more manageable. And the best part, I can be me and not feel so ashamed by it. My crazy (controlled) sex life and all.

  How has twenty-three been? “Better,” I tell Ryke. “How was it for you?”

  He rubs at the chalk on his palm. “It fucking sucked.” He doesn’t elaborate. I wonder if it’s because he couldn’t be with Daisy back then or because he was on bad terms with his brother. Probably both.

  “Did you finish folding?” Rose cuts in. “I need my black shorts for tomorrow.”

  My cheeks heat at this. Laundry has now cursed me into a new shade of red. My life has taken a sad turn. Rose’s glare intensifies my swelter.

  “What in that is sexual?” she chastises like I’ve offended her ability to talk to me without causing me to flush.

  “Uhh…” I trail off. I can’t exactly admit that I touched Ryke’s boxer-briefs. Can I? It’s his fault they were in our pile to begin with.

  “What did she say?” Lo’s voice stirs me awake, and I pop up from the armrest, happy to see him but not so happy to be on this conversation still. His black crew-neck outlines his fit, lean body, but it’s his well-styled light brown hair, cut shorter on the sides, that attracts me like a panda bear discovering bamboo for the first time.

  I think I’m drooling.

  His eyes flit from my head to my stomach to my toes, assessing that I am all in one bright, tomato-red piece. “Lil?”

  “Lo,” I reply back.

  His brows rise and then he grinds his teeth, his jaw twitching. God, I love that, and my body responds, my toes curling a bit. I smile and inwardly cheer with pom-poms and high-fives. Nothing is better than being turned on by Loren Hale.

  “Rose asked if Lily was finished folding,” Ryke rats me out.

  I gawk and point an accusatory finger at him. “It’s your fault! You’re sneaking your underwear into our laundry pile. Ha!”

  Ryke rolls his eyes. “This is about my underwear?”

  “So you’re not denying it.” Double ha!

  “I’m not fucking denying it,” he admits. “Do you have an underwear fetish now?” His tone is serious.

  “No…” I say, roasting further.

  Lo stands behind me and presses his hands playfully to my ears. “Don’t say the word fetish, it turns Connor on.”

  I smile, and Connor wears a billion-dollar grin. “Words are my favorite sex toy,” he says and then walks over to his wife.

  I take a deep breath, not feeling so much like the abnormal sex-crazed monster now.

  Ryke nods to me. “What’s the deal, Lily?” He’s trying to understand more parts of my addiction, especially since I opened up to him at Hale Co., so it’s only right that I clarify.

  “I touched your underwear.” I scrunch my nose. That’s good enough of an explanation, right?

  It clicks for him. “It’s a piece of cloth, not my fucking cock.”

  Please stop talking about your cock, Ryke. I spin around, wanting to leave before my body turns into Brutus, the ultimate betrayer. I turn right into Lo’s hard chest. Perfect. I love it here.

  Lo rests his hands on my shoulders, hugging me closer to him. Even better.

  “What’d I do wrong?” Ryke asks, concern in his voice.

  “Maybe don’t mention your cock in front of my girlfriend,” Lo says dryly.

  I can practically feel him grimace. “Got it.”

  Connor chimes in, “Are you sure, Ryke? Those were really complex instructions. I can always transcribe them for you.”

  I peek from my Loren Hale cocoon to spot Ryke flipping off Connor. I let out another breath, glad to have overcome this little hurdle. I could’ve given Ryke another week-long silent treatment instead of sticking it out.

  “What…did you do to your hair?” Rose suddenly asks, seeing Daisy first and everyone quiets.

  { 27 }

  LILY CALLOWAY

  “Stop looking at me, please,” Daisy announces to the entire room. All the couches pushed aside, we stand on the cream rug in a circle. Her hair has taken the spotlight for the past ten minutes. I’m kinda grateful to have a distraction. I hold my plastic baby, carefully attempting to emulate Rose’s baby-cradling form. Sweat gathers under my boobs, which is a whole new feeling for me. I’ve never had big enough breasts for boob-sweat.

  “It’s hard not to,” Lo tells her, his doll cradled on his arm. “It’s just so bright. I’m almost blinded.”

  I elbow him in the side to stop. Normally he’d mock wince, but his focus is on Daisy. She groans and covers her eyes with one hand. I notice how she holds her doll by the wrist, the plastic torso dangling.

  “I know, I know. It’s really bad,” Daisy says.

  Ryke tucks his doll underneath his armpit. Literally, he just shoved the baby’s face in there. Only Rose seems to be paying attention to Ryke’s placement, her eyes slowly narrowing to pinpoints. He’s busy messing Daisy’s hair with a playful hand. She exhales a breath.

  Her medium-length locks are dyed yellow. Like a highlighter. I’m with Lo on this one, it’s bright. Over the past few months, Daisy has changed her hair to every color under the sun, some highlights, some a full-dye job, some pretty, others ugly. All the while, she took the change with enthusiasm and excitement. This is the first time I’ve seen her visibly upset over the hue.

  “What color were you trying to dye it?” Connor asks, his doll cradled a little differently than Rose—the head more supported. I hone in on this detail and shift my doll to a better position. I glance at Ryke.

  He’s still suffocating his baby.

  “Blonde,” Daisy admits.

  “You wanted to return to blonde?” Rose asks with a frown, not mentioning how Daisy may damage her hair if she keeps dyeing it so much.

  Ryke’s hand has dropped to the small of Daisy’s back, more caringly, but his face has hardened to that familiar stone.

  “Yeah, I don’t know.” Daisy grips her doll, dressed in a pink onesie, more securely underneath the arms. “Please let’s do this CPR class.”

  “Can we not call it a class?” I ask, my arms trembling a little with nerves. “I just graduated, and classes and I aren’t the best of friends.” I have bombed more college courses than the average person, but maybe I can blame Princeton for being unnaturally hard.

  “CPR training then,” Connor amends.

  “Ryke has already smothered his kid,” Lo jokes, nodding to his brother across our circle.

  Ryke just realizes that he has his doll in a blue onesie tucked in his pit. He holds him in one hand by the waist, like a football. “Why do we have to fucking do this again?” Ryke asks, motioning between himself and Daisy. “You all probably won’t let us babysit your kid anyway.”

  “If you plan on holding him like that I’m not going to,” Lo tells his brother.

  Ryke adjusts the doll again, and I end up smiling at the way he’s crad
ling the baby, like Lo. They’re both being as gentle as they can be, taking it more seriously. I thought Lo was going to throw jabs at Rose the whole time, but he’s being considerate and looks kinda sexy with a baby in his arms.

  “I just can’t see any of you leaving your kid with me,” Ryke suddenly admits.

  Connor stares right at Ryke, and they meet each other’s eyes. “You’d be surprised about what I’d let you do,” Connor tells him.

  Rose doesn’t even disagree. I try to wipe the mental image of Ryke handling the doll with less care. Now that he pays more attention, it seems like he’d be okay with Maximoff.

  Ryke looks to Lo like you don’t want me near your baby, right?

  “It’s your choice, man,” Lo says. “You don’t want to be a part of my kid’s life. That’s fine.” The edge in his voice doesn’t match his words.

  Ryke scowls. “You know I do.”

  “Then that’s why you’re here.”

  Daisy bounces on her feet, hugging the doll to her chest. “I’d love to babysit whenever you need me.” She looks to Rose. “You’d let me watch your girl, right?” Her lopsided smile makes the room glow. Her hair helps.

  Daisy might as well have kissed Rose’s heels. Our older sister is beaming, so happy that someone else is playing into the idea that she’s having a girl. Personally, I’d love for Rose to have a daughter. Just to see her happy. I think all of us want that. Well, except Lo. He wants her to have a boy in spite.

  I expect Rose to flower Daisy with compliments and yes, of course, you can watch her words. Instead, she says, “If you pass.”

  Lo lets out a short laugh. “Are you going to make everyone who wants to touch your baby fill out a hundred-page questionnaire?”

  “Maybe.” She fixes her hair to one side of her shoulder while Connor studies Rose with more concern, sidling closer to her. He whispers in her ear and she nods to him. The bad thing about nerd stars: they’re so high up that it’s hard to hear or see unless you exist in space with them.

  I’m not smart enough to even breach the Earth’s atmosphere, so I just try to watch from down below.

  “I actually have something for you Rose…” Lo says, detaching from my side. This can’t be good. He sets his boy doll on the table and heads to the hall closet.

  “If it doesn’t come in a jewelry box, you can keep it,” Rose snaps.

  “I’m not keeping this.” Lo rummages around for a couple seconds before returning with a flat box wrapped in green, pink, and blue paper. I wear a confused expression, not involved in this plan. Lo must’ve bought that on his way home from work or something.

  Rose zeroes in on the colors. “I told everyone no baby gifts.” She didn’t want a baby shower. I think it would’ve overwhelmed her anyway, all the baby things and people staring at her stomach. I’m having one closer to my due date, but it’s not a big event or anything. Just family.

  “Which is why I decided to get you one,” Lo says, topping it off with a half-smile. He walks over and shoves the box at her.

  She stares at him blankly. “I hate you.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” he tells her. “Just open it before you start hexing me.”

  She huffs and tears the paper gently while Lo returns to my side. I’m more nervous.

  I stand on my toes and whisper to him, “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know. It didn’t seem like something that important.”

  But I can see that it matters to him.

  “You can rip the paper,” Lo tells her.

  Rose shoots him a look and continues neatly opening the box. When she lifts the lid and brushes the tissue paper aside, her face softens and her lips part.

  I frown further. “What is it?”

  Rose holds up a bundle of pastel green onesies and shows off the top one: orange tabby cats printed all over the green cotton. It’s so cute and—

  “Unisex,” Lo mentions. “Just in case you have a boy.” He doesn’t add that the cats are just like Sadie, who Connor has already given to Frederick, his therapist, to take care of for a while. Rose was visibly upset the entire day that Sadie left, her eyes reddened like she’d been crying.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Rose murmurs, her eyes traversing along the fabric.

  “Thanks, Lo, you’re so sweet,” he tells her. “I could hug you but I haven’t oiled my rusted joints this morning.”

  She glares and delicately sets the onesies back in the box. “And now I hate you again.”

  Lo mockingly touches his heart. “I’ll cherish that hate forever.”

  I clear my throat, making sure that none of the bickering goes too far. Lo drops his gaze on me and then brushes his hand against my hip before retrieving his doll. The embrace sends shockwaves down my spine, and he stands very, very close to me.

  “We should start,” Connor says, checking his watch.

  Rose places a hand on her lower back, like it hurts, but she stays upright with the rest of us. Connor watches her more cautiously but never draws attention to her.

  “So what’s the scenario?” Lo asks Connor. “The baby is choking on a button or a penny?”

  My eyes widen in horror. “What?”

  Lo strokes my head. “It’s pretend, love.”

  “I thought we established that pretend things with us become real?” Have we just jinxed ourselves without realizing?

  “No scenarios,” Rose pipes in. “It’s bad luck.”

  Connor looks affronted by the mention of luck, but he doesn’t rile Rose, most likely because she’s in some sort of pain. “You can do this sitting down, darling.”

  She nods and settles in the Queen Anne, pushed by the wall. The doll rests snuggly on her lap.

  Connor has his eyes on her for an extended moment before he turns to us. “First, you want to check the baby’s consciousness.”

  This sounds hard. “How do we do that?” My doll is certainly unconscious, definitely not alive.

  “You tap the baby gently.” Connor demonstrates by tapping the baby’s shoulder and the bottom of her foot. “Magdala. Magdala. Can you hear me?”

  Rose scoffs from her chair. “I got rid of my middle name because I hated it, not so we can name our child Magdala.”

  “Rose Calloway Cobalt,” Connor says her full name, ditching Magdala and replacing it with Calloway. No hyphenation. She’s been Cobalt since she married Connor. “Like Lo said, this is pretend. I can name our pretend daughter whatever I want.”

  She rolls her eyes dramatically and waves him on. “Please, continue. I hope our pretend daughter pukes on your shoulder.”

  Connor grins, and before he opens his mouth to respond, I redirect the conversation. “Back to the training,” I announce. This is important to me. I really do want to know the information before Maximoff arrives. “We tap the baby and call out its name. Then what?”

  “If the baby is unresponsive, you call 911. And then you place him or her on a hard flat surface.” He motions to the coffee table in the middle of the circle. “And you start CPR.” Connor takes us through the steps: thirty chest compressions with our fingers, opening the airway, and administering rescue breaths. I file all the information into the important—don’t ever forget folder in my head.

  My heart beats loudly in my chest. Okay, I can do this. I internally nod, boosting some of my self-confidence. I can’t be declared a bad mom until I do something wrong. So Celebrity Crush and their polls can suck it.

  I blow out a breath, and then I lightly tap Bert’s foot. “Bert? Bert?” I say. “Can you hear me?”

  “Bert?” Lo laughs at my name choice.

  My brows pinch. “What’s your baby’s name?” Bert is awesome. He’s already a winner. I can feel it.

  Lo holds his doll to his ear, as though listening to him speak. He’s teasing me, and I find myself hooking a finger through Lo’s belt loop, holding Bert in the crook of my arm. “Knew it,” Lo says with a nod, bringing his baby back down.

&
nbsp; “What’s his name?” I already feel myself smiling.

  “Ernie,” he says, and my heart swells. And then he taps his baby’s arm. “Ernie, buddy? Can you hear me?”

  The doorbell rings, and I jump in fright. “Who is it?” I ask.

  Everyone shakes their heads like they didn’t invite someone over today.

  Connor sets his doll on the table and then disappears in the foyer to answer the door. The room is layered with tense silence. Since we’re all here, the person outside is most likely a bearer of bad news. Why else would they stop by?

  { 28 }

  LILY CALLOWAY

  “Do you need a hand with that?” I hear Connor say.

  “No, I have it.”

  I recognize the second manly voice: Sam Stokes. And in a second, both guys emerge in the living room, Sam carrying a box with Fizzle’s logo on the side. He’s in a suit like he’s been at work all Saturday afternoon.

  “Hey,” he greets, but his gaze lands on Ryke, heading over to him. “The shipment came in today, and we’ll need to talk later about the unveiling.” He sets the box at Ryke’s feet and squats down to open it. I remember Ryke mentioning that my dad wanted his help, but he shrugged it off and said it wasn’t going to pan out.

  So his face is darkened with confusion.

  I find myself patting my doll’s butt in comfort, like Bert is alive. My cheeks heat, hoping no one noticed.

  “He really wants to go through with this?” Ryke asks Sam. “It’s a fucking bad idea.”

  “It’s not,” Sam says, trying to cut through the taped package by ripping at it. He struggles as he talks. “We did multiple focus groups, and more people were drawn to the product when you were the face of it.”

  “I was dropped by multiple fucking brands,” Ryke reminds him. “My image isn’t good, and I shouldn’t be representing any kind of drink.” Huh. My dad is creating a new drink?