Our husbands and the rest of the children play outside since yesterday’s rainstorm confined everyone indoors. We’ll join them in a second, but first, we have to finish this pact. Last night, we all collectively shared a similar mode of feeling, and it only seems right to solidify this promise together.
Poppy’s maroon bohemian dress flows to her ankles and hides her bathing suit. We’re all in cover-ups, mine sheer and black. I already set my floppy hat aside. Now we stand in a circle between the kitchen counters.
Lily raises her hand. “Can’t we just spit on it?”
I glare. “There’s a reason why it’s called a blood oath and not a spit oath.”
“I’m game.” Daisy smiles wide, her blonde hair tangled and still wet after jumping in the lake. Water collects at her bare feet. My littlest sister turned thirty in February, but Lily still looks five years younger.
Willow pushes up her glasses. “Is this safe?”
“Probably not.” Poppy never raises her voice, not even when combatting me.
I give my oldest sister a cold look. “It’s sterile. I have matches, and we’ll clean the blade after someone uses it.” They hesitate, so I add, “Calloway sisters don’t welch.” Coconut barks in the background, pawing at the sliding glass door to come in.
We all turn our heads. Outside, Ryke scratches Coconut affectionately by her ears and then whistles for her to move further onto the deck. Then he notices us through the glass. His what the fuck expression drifts away with him.
“We’ve welched plenty of times on your blood oaths,” Lily notes, but that fact crinkles her brows like maybe they’ve been terrible sisters. Maybe in all the years I asked, they should at least give into this one moment to solidify something between us through blade and blood. “Okay…I’ll do it.”
Willow nods, bravery in her eyes. “Me too.”
“Why not?” Poppy smiles and looks to me. I press my lips together to keep from grinning eagerly. Bells are ringing. Confetti is falling. All the annoying sentimental things that I usually can’t stand—even birds with their brutally irritating chirps—I hear them and I only think, I love my sisters.
“I’ll go first.” Without flinching, I knick both of my palms with the kitchen knife, sliced deep enough that blood shows in the cut.
I clean off the knife, sterilize, then pass it to Daisy.
She’s been rocking excitedly on her feet, and she raises the knife in the air. “Rejoice!” Then she cuts her palms without trouble. Poppy goes next, and when it’s Willow’s turn, she winces a little. Daisy cheers her on until she finishes.
Last is Lily.
I clean off the knife. “You’ve given birth. You can survive a cut.”
Lily places her hand on her heart. “I’m not a warrior. I’m the village person who hides in their hut and waits for help.” I don’t think she always believes this. Maybe just in the face of these daring tasks opposite people like Daisy and me, she forgets all that she’s ever done.
My hands hover over her shoulders. “Lily. You’re a fucking warrior. You slay enemies left and right. You stomp on critics and you’ve risen from ash.” I narrow my eyes at her. “Say it.”
I’m much taller than her in heels, so she has to look up. “I’m a warrior?”
Dear God. “Say it like it’s true.”
“I’m a fucking warrior.” She nods slowly. “Yeah…” She nods faster.
“Yeah!” Daisy raises her fist in the air.
“Yeah!” Lily shouts like she gets it. “I’m a fucking warrior. Take that. Ha!” She tries to do a side-kick, but she whacks a cabinet. “Ow.”
Daisy laughs and gives her a thumbs-up.
“Hold out your hands,” I tell Lily.
She focuses and splays out her palms for me. I knick her skin less than I did mine, but enough that blood appears. She keeps her eyes tightened closed the entire time.
“Done.” I set the knife aside.
Lily opens one eye and relaxes at the sight of a small cut.
“What are you crazies doing?” Lo has cracked the sliding glass door, and our husbands are gathered on the porch, acting like they’re not watching and just grilling hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch.
They’re painfully obvious.
“Go away, Loren!” I call.
Lo waits for one of my sisters to explain, but no one is betraying this circle of sisterly secrecy and trust. “Don’t let her sacrifice you for a year’s worth of heels!”
That’s it.
I break ranks to shut up the naysayer.
“Go, Rose!” Daisy starts clapping.
My heels click-clack against the floorboards, and I yank the sliding door out of Loren’s grasp and shut it. His sharpened glare battles my piercing one, and I flick the lock before he can claim victory.
He flashes a half-smile, and his next words are muffled through the glass, “Harm my little ‘puff, and see what’s up, Angelica.”
“I’d sooner rip out your heart than I would yank a hair off my sister’s head.” Then I spin around and enter the circle.
All my sisters are smiling.
“What?”
“You’re badass,” Daisy is the first to say.
“So are you.” I’m quick to encourage her.
“Not in that way.” Daisy smiles. “I’m really glad you’re my sister.”
My eyes are burning. Tears are coming and we haven’t even finished this.
Lily nods in agreement. “We’d all be worse off without you.”
“You’d be fine,” I say.
“No…I don’t think we would’ve.” Lily awkwardly tries to lean her weight on the counter, but it’s too far away. “You’re our Emma Frost.”
I’m not entirely sure what that means. I know of the comic book character, but I don’t know much about her except that she means a lot to Lily.
That’s enough for my heart to grow. “Enough with the sappiness. We have an oath to finish.” I clasp hands with Lily, then she clasps Poppy, who grabs hold of Willow, to Daisy, and finally Daisy and I close the circle.
“We’re here today, to make a promise,” I say. “We promise to always be there for one another, to support each other’s choices, to be the tides that wash away negativity and foes.” I look around at all the girls, and they nod, remembering how we all stayed up until three in the morning, just talking. We might have families of our own, but when we can be together, it’s like no time has passed at all. “However long we live, however hard life becomes, we’ll never lose sight of this sisterhood.”
We raise our clasped hands, and my sisters and Willow make a second and third and so forth motions, and as I stare between them, I’m truly grateful for these women in my life.
They’re each so different from me, but I wouldn’t want them to be the same. I love them for all their oddities and for all their strengths.
*
We joined our husbands on the deck outside and they will not shut up about our bandaged palms.
“I fucking hope you all used Neosporin,” Ryke says while flipping a burger on the grill. Daisy sits on the railing of the deck and shucks corn, Coconut lounging beneath her with constant tail wags, content.
Connor helps grill, a perfect distance away to avoid grease splatter on his bare chest.
Ryke is a messy cook. And I can’t believe he’s the one bringing up Neosporin. As though he’s a model for cleanliness.
Lo sips a Fizz Life, sitting on the deck’s picnic table next to Lily. Both are physically clingy. Even in the heat, they’re hugging onto each other like it’s more unnatural if they separate.
“Does it hurt, love?” Lo keeps asking Lily, grimacing at her palm that is barely cut. Down below towards the grass, their dog, Gotham, is chasing butterflies, his ears flapping.
Sam passes Poppy a margarita. “How did Rose rope you into this?”
“You think I persuaded her?” I cut in, busy trying to re-knot a string to my sheer cover-up. “I can’t even convince Poppy to get a bikini wax with me.”
“I like it all natural.” Poppy waves towards her vagina.
Lo says, “Things I didn’t think I’d ever know: Poppy has a bush.” He gives her a half-smile.
Poppy combats him with a replica of his half-smile.
“Poppy, when’d you get so feisty?”
She sips her margarita. “I’ve always been this way. You just never notice.”