“Mine?” Is this a trick question?
Justine bristles. I failed the mommy mind game. She whips towards me. “I don’t think any cookies should be touching your counters.”
“Justine,” Daisy says, beating everyone to speak. “We’re doing the cookies at my sister’s house. And you can go to hell.”
My eyes pop out. Whaaa…?
Daisy crosses her arms and acts like the protective older sister, the role reversal something that happens between us. But never has she come to my defense by telling a mom to go to hell. It’s so unlike Daisy.
Even Justine gapes in shock, unsure of how to respond. Whispers float around the room.
I smile at Daisy.
She smiles back.
Hushed, I tell her, “I feel like I could throw out some middle fingers in a weird champion-like dance.” I feel it, but executing it takes a different kind of courage.
Daisy wags her brows. “Let’s totally do that outside.”
We smile more.
2024
“I never understood how much I had lost my voice until I started using it.”
- Daisy Meadows, We Are Calloway (Season 6 Episode 07 – Motorcycles & Crosswords)
{ 36 }
January 2024
The Hale House
Philadelphia
LILY HALE
I carry a sleeping four-year-old Luna up the flight of stairs. Proud of my arm strength. Good job, arms. Green glitter is tangled in Luna’s brown hair. I’m sure she’ll fuss when we both try to pick it out in the morning. She still wears a pair of 2024 sunglasses and New Year’s Eve stickers all over her alien-printed PJs.
When I reach her room, I gently rest Luna on the mattress and slide off the sunglasses. I pull up her white comforter and tuck her into bed.
Luna’s room is an explosion of personality: alien-stuffed plushies, plastic blowup chairs (green, of course), multi-colored carpet, and a lava lamp. Sometimes I just catch her watching the colors and glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.
“Night, Luna,” I whisper and kiss her head before tiptoeing to the hall. I shut the door closed.
I yawn when I enter my dimly-lit bedroom. “Luna’s passed out.” I plop on the bed with my arms and legs splayed.
This is what a pancake must feel like.
Lo sheds his shirt. “Moffy too. He’ll be upset he didn’t make it to midnight this year.”
“We can tell him he didn’t miss anything exciting.” I roll on my stomach and reach for the baby monitor by the clock. Xander is fast asleep in his crib. He turned one on Christmas. It was the start of us trying to make his birthday memorable, despite having to share it with a holiday.
Lo pulls off his socks. “So my sister told me the name of her baby tonight.”
I perk up and set the monitor back. “What’s her name?” The Abbey baby isn’t due yet, but we all know she’s having a girl. “Is it based on a video game character? Is it Zelda?” I kneel on the mattress, my thoughts wild at all the possibilities. They’re into pop culture like us, so the options are endless. My eyes grow big. “Are they naming her Hermione?! I might die.”
“Don’t die, love.” Lo drops his pants, the bulge in his boxer-briefs calling out to me.
“…it’d be a happy death,” I say dazedly. His cock. In me. “…I’d die out of…love.”
Lo crawls onto the bed, and I try to shimmy down towards him, so he can crawl on top of me. I even wiggle out of my pants, now down to my panties and muscle shirt. He sees the needy suggestion in my eyes, but he’s not taking the bait yet.
Focus off his cock.
It’s so hard.
I flush at the double meaning.
“Are you going to give me any hints?” I wonder.
“Vada Lauren Abbey,” he tells me the name. “Vada for—”
“My Girl,” I finish. The lead character of that 90s film is named Vada. Garrison reblogs a lot of My Girl gifs and makes them for Willow, but both Lo and I first saw that movie when we were about eight or nine. It fits them better than all of my suggestions, even Hermione. “And Lauren, as in—”
“Me,” he finishes this time.
My eyes well. “Lo.”
“Yeah, I know.” He nods. “It’s a horrible middle name.” His sarcasm is so apparent, especially as his smile grows, overwhelmed by being a namesake.
I wipe a fallen tear. “Is it spelled the same?”
“She asked me if she should do the L-O-R-E-N version, and I told her to go traditional. I figure I have thirty-three years of bad karma stored up in that name. Best way to dodge it is by going L-A-U-R-E-N.”
I nod. “Smart thinking.” As the topic of conversation fades, my mind reroutes to what’s knelt in front of me.
Loren Hale in black boxer-briefs. Loren Hale with cheekbones that cut like ice. Loren Hale with a six-pack and muscular thighs. Why his thighs turn me on, my nefarious brain cannot compute. It just sees them and his biceps and those cheekbones and chants, closer, closer, closer.
Lo leans forward, finally, and his hands fall onto either side of my head. He hovers above me. I try to tug him down so his weight adds pressure against my body.
He never lowers.
So I ask, “Lo, are we going to have New Year’s Day sex?” I’m honed in on his rising lips and the dimples in his cheeks. I sense him studying my body for a second, but I can tell he’s horny (maybe not as much as me) by his hardness and the flex of his muscles.
Then his lips dip down to mine but veer off to the base of my neck. “Yes,” he says into a kiss. Yes!
My pulse hammers, skin tingling by my neck. I lie flat on our bed but I’ve already split my legs around his body. I’ve already grabbed onto his shoulders. If I could do a pull-up, I’d already be against him.
Reasons to work out.
It’s so enticing, but not as enticing as not working out.
“The first sex in 2024,” I muse. “This is a big deal. Give me a second. I have to think how we’re going to do this.” I squeeze my eyes shut because his body, his face, his eyebrows and hair are all distracting. “Anal? Or maybe on top? OhmyGod, maybe we should do it standing up? No, on the floor! No, in the bathtub!”
My mind actually races between positions, so fast that I bite my thumb nail. I’ve opened my eyes, but I stare off into a faraway sex land called Lily Hale’s Dirty Mind.
“Lil, calm down.”
“Huh.”
He pinches my cheek.
“Hey!” I rub my cheek. So mean.
“Calm down,” he repeats, his face blanketed with seriousness.
“I am calm. Calm but excited.” I try a pull-up on his body. Nope, not happening. I wait for the thud on the mattress, but I quickly realize that I never lifted myself off the bed to begin with. Weakling, that’s me.
“If it’s a big deal for you, then I’ll make it the best sex of the goddamn year, but I want you to enjoy it without being compulsive, yeah?”
I’m about to wholeheartedly agree, but his movements distract me. His left hand has left the mattress, and his fingers lightly skim the sliver of skin above my cotton panties. I follow his carnal gaze, and my travel leads me to my white muscle shirt, the fabric askew. My boob is exposed, nipple hardened.
I spend so much time ogling him that I forget what I even look like. And how much he’s attracted to me. Which I can see is a whole lot.
My hand drops off his shoulder and onto my hipbone. I stop myself from inching lower. Don’t be compulsive. I think about his previous declaration.
“Can we scratch the best sex of the year?” I ask. “Because if that’s true then all the rest of the sex this year will be not-the-best, and I won’t have anything to look forward to.”
His amber eyes abruptly tear off my nipple and set daggered onto my face. “Lily Hale, are you telling me you wouldn’t look forward to fucking me?”
Now that he phrases it like that…
“Absolutely not. Scratch everything I just said. I’m not picky. Best sex. Okay sex. Awesome sex. Any kind of sex is what I look forward to—as long as it’s with you.” I try to nod resolutely, but it’s harder lying down.
“Okay sex?” He frowns and nearly sits up. No, come back! I tug at the band of his boxer-briefs, and he lowers to his previous position. Yes! “When have we had okay sex?”