Trina points to me. “My girls.” She smiles at me shyly and I smile back, feeling warm inside.
“What if we did karaoke?” I suggest, and Trina claps her hands in delight.
Kristen’s mouth drops. “No offense, Lara Jean, but what the hell is going on here, Trina! You can’t have your future stepchildren at your bach. It’s just not right. We’re not gonna be able to celebrate the way you’re supposed to celebrate a bach. Like the old days—aka get naked wasted so you can live up your last moments as a single woman.”
Trina looks at me and shakes her head. “For the record, we never got ‘naked wasted.’?” To Kristen she says, “Kris, I don’t think of them as my future stepchildren. They’re just . . . the girls. But don’t worry. We’ll have fun. Margot’s in college, and Lara Jean’s practically in college. They can be exposed to a little sangria and chardonnay.”
“You do love your white wine,” I say, and Trina swats at my shoulder.
Kristen exhales loudly. “Well, what about the little one?”
“Kitty’s very mature for her age,” Trina says.
Kristen crosses her arms. “I’m putting my foot down. You can’t bring a child on a bachelorette. It isn’t right.”
“Kris!”
At this I feel like I have to speak up. “I’m going to side with Kristen on this one. We won’t be able to bring Kitty to karaoke. She’s too young. They won’t let an eleven-year-old in.”
“She’ll be so disappointed, though.”
“She’ll live,” I say.
Kristen sips on her rosé and says, “Disappointment is good for kids; it prepares them for the real world, where it’s not all about them and their feelings.”
Trina rolls her eyes. “If you’re putting your foot down on having Kitty at the bachelorette, I’m putting my foot down on penises. I mean it, Kris. No penis cake, no penis straws, no penis pasta. No penises, period.”
I blush. There’s such a thing as penis pasta?
“Fine.” Kristen pushes out her lower lip.
“All right, then. Can we move on to the actual wedding, please?”
I run and get my laptop and pull up my vision board, which is when Kitty decides to grace us with her presence. She’s been in the living room watching TV. “Where are we in the planning?” she wants to know.
Kristen eyes her before saying, “Let’s talk food.”
“What about food trucks?” I suggest. “Like, a waffle truck?”
Kristen purses her lips. “I was thinking barbecue. Trina loves barbecue.”
“Hmm,” I say. “But a lot of people do barbecue, don’t they? It’s kind of . . .”
“Played out?” Kitty suggests.
“I was going to say common.” But yeah.
“But Trina loves barbecue!”
“Can y’all please stop talking about me like I’m not here?” Trina says. “I do love barbecue. And can we do Mason jars?”
I’m expecting Kitty to denigrate Mason jars again, but she doesn’t say anything of the sort. She says, “What do we think about edible flowers in the drinks?” I’m pretty sure that was one of my ideas that she just stole.
Trina does a shimmy in her seat. “Yes! I love it!”
I’m quick to add, “We could do a nice punch bowl and float some flowers on top.”
Kristen gives me an approving look.
Bolstered, I grandly say, “And as for the cakes, we’ll need a wedding cake and a groom’s cake.”
“Do we really need two cakes?” Trina asks, chewing on her nail. “There won’t be that many people there.”
“This is the South; we have to have a groom’s cake. For yours I was thinking yellow cake with vanilla buttercream frosting.” Trina beams at me. That’s her favorite kind of cake, just plain. Not exactly exciting to bake, but it’s her favorite. “For Daddy’s, I was thinking . . . a Thin Mint cake! Chocolate cake with mint frosting, but with Thin Mints crumbled on top.” I have such a vision for this cake.
This time Kitty’s the one to give me an approving nod. I feel more in my element then I have in weeks.
17
KITTY’S MIXING NAIL-POLISH COLORS ON a paper plate while I’m looking up “celebrity updos” for Trina’s wedding hair. I’m lying on the couch, with pillows propped up behind me, and she is on the floor, with nail-polish bottles all around her. Suddenly she asks me, “Have you ever thought about, like, what if Daddy and Trina have a baby and it looks like Daddy?”
Kitty thinks of all sorts of things that would never have occurred to me. I hadn’t once thought of that—that they might have a baby or that this pretend baby wouldn’t look like us. The baby would be all Daddy and Trina. No one would have to wonder whose child he was or calculate who belongs to who. They’d just assume.
“But they’re both so old,” I say.
“Trina’s forty-three. You can get pregnant at forty-three. Maddie’s mom just had a baby and she’s forty-three.”
“True . . .”
“What if it’s a boy?”
Daddy with a son. It’s a startling thought. He’s not exactly sporty, not in a traditional male sense. I mean, he likes to go biking and he plays doubles tennis in the spring. But I’m sure there are things he’d want to do with a son that he doesn’t do with us because no one’s interested. Fishing, maybe? Football he doesn’t care about. Trina cares more than he does.
When my mom was pregnant with Kitty, Margot wanted another sister but I wanted a boy. The Song girls and their baby brother. It would be nice to get that baby brother after all. Especially since I won’t be at home and have to hear it crying in the middle of the night. I’ll just get to buy the baby little shearling booties and sweaters with red foxes or bunnies.
“If they named him Tate, we could call him Tater Tot,” I muse.
Two red blotches appear on Kitty’s cheeks, and just like that, she looks as young as I always picture her in my head: a little kid. “I don’t want them to have another baby. If they have a baby, I’ll be in the middle. I’ll be nothing.”
“Hey!” I object. “I’m in the middle now!”
“Margot’s oldest and smartest, and you’re the prettiest.” I’m the prettiest?? Kitty thinks I’m the prettiest? I try not to look too happy, because she’s still talking. “I’m only the youngest. If they have a baby, I won’t even be that.”
I put down my computer. “Kitty, you’re a lot more than the youngest Song girl. You’re the wild Song girl. The mean one. The spiky one.” Kitty’s pursing her lips, trying not to smile at this. I add, “And no matter what, Trina loves you; she’ll always love you, even if she did have a baby which I don’t think she will.” I stop. “Wait, did you mean it when you said I was the prettiest?”
“No, I take it back. I’ll probably be the prettiest by the time I get to high school. You can be the nicest.” I leap off the couch and grab her by the shoulders like I’m going to shake her, and she giggles.
“I don’t want to be the nicest,” I say.
“You are, though.” She says it not like an insult, but not exactly like a compliment. “What do you wish you had of mine?”
“Your nerve.”