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It’s like I’m sixteen again.
Twelve years ago on my birthday, Kayla’s parents asked if they could adopt me.
I didn’t know what happy tears were until that day. It was the best day of my life.
Followed closely by the worst. A few days later Kayla’s parents were hit by a car while crossing the street in midtown. They died on impact.
A great-aunt took her in while I went back into foster care. I tried to keep in touch, but she ignored my calls and letters. Years had passed before Kayla called. She was crying. And she was pregnant.
As much as it hurt to hear how scared Kayla was, I jumped at the chance to have a sister again. To have a family.
Thankfully, with most of the commission I made saved up from Moore’s, and the inheritance Kayla received from her aunt, we were able to afford rent in a small one-bedroom in a dodgy part of town that Kayla and I could share.
And as much as I hated myself for it, I loved every minute of Kayla living with me again, even though she spent most of her time in the apartment depressed and tearful.
Then the baby arrived. My niece.
I was there, in the hospital room, when Mary came into the world. I heard her first cry. Changed her first diaper while Kayla stared vacantly out the small hospital window. Probably traumatized from going through childbirth at twenty.
Though I’d always thought of Kayla as my younger sister, something about a baby makes the feelings concrete. The three of us were a real family.
At least, until Kayla met Jack and she and Mary moved out a few months ago.
Ding.
Chase:
Code Penis?
Pushing my non-Code Penis related thoughts aside, I text Chase:
Be there in five.
* * *
‘The penis party is screwed.’ Chase flops on the love seat in the sitting area of his office, grunting when Mike Hunt jumps on his lap. It never fails to make me want to pat myself on the back whenever I come to Chase’s office. As a favor to Bell, after Chase surprised her with a whirlwind Elvis road trip right in the middle of construction, I completed the redesign of Chase and Thomas’s offices – turning their father’s monstrosity of old money and archaic and criminal business practices into two modern spaces.
The time I spent anxiously working with interior designers and architects – things I had never done before – feels well worth it whenever I’m surrounded by the finished product.
Chase shifts, resting his loafers on the coffee table in front of us, making me frown. ‘Say again?’ Sliding the straps off my shoulders, I swing my backpack around to retrieve my tablet. With a few taps on my stylus, the wedding file I created for bridesmaid duties is opened and ready. ‘Screwed?’
‘Yes.’ Chase absently pets his cat, the feline’s pale skin shifting over his bony frame.
He purrs, but swats at Chase’s chin with his paw, as if telling him to pay better attention.
Mike Hunt is not a cute cat, but he’s got a great personality.
‘Stop it, Mikey.’ Chase places Mike beside him on the couch. Mike climbs back into his lap. ‘Bell left for Houston after lunch.’
‘What?’ I drop into one of the nearby chairs, my bag dropping to the floor at my feet. ‘But the bachelorette party is tomorrow.’ I think of all the penis party favors Chase, Leslie and I have purchased to decorate the speakeasy bar in SoHo that we’d rented for the party.
‘I know.’ He rubs his face with both hands. Mike swats at him again. ‘But it isn’t like I can tell her to blow off her work emergency. The party is supposed to be a surprise.’
A surprise Bell was adamant she didn’t want. She’d explicitly told Leslie and me, her two bridesmaids, that she did not want a bachelorette party. Especially one the night before the flight to Vegas. She didn’t want to be hungover on the plane.
Hence, why Chase, just as adamant that Bell did want a party but was too shy to ask for it, decided to throw a ‘low-key penis party’ two days before the flight.
‘Maybe this is a good thing.’ I try and sound upbeat in the face of my boss’s forlorn expression. ‘I’m sure she’ll be happy with the spa day you planned for her on arrival.’ I pause. ‘She can still do that, right?’
