Addicted After All (30 page)

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.

“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?

Sam stops fighting with the box and looks up at Ryke. “You’re masculine, athletic and you never quit, which is what we’re branding. If you don’t want to help, all you have to do is say so. Don’t waste my time.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Daisy chimes in. “Not for me.”

Sam catches sight of Daisy, and his eyes grow big at her hair. “That’s a…new color.”

“Neon I’m-Going-to-Blind-You Yellow,” Lo adds. “What’s terrifying is that some girl is probably going to copy her.”

I don’t elbow Lo again. Daisy is solely concentrated on Ryke, and I can read his expression pretty well. He wants to smooth things out with our parents, and she can’t stop him from doing it. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a Swiss army knife. Then he bends down and cuts open the box for Sam.

I near with Lo, too curious to stand back, and Ryke grabs one of the slim plastic bottles, translucent blue liquid inside. I understand the moment I read the silver label:
Ziff.
And below that is the flavor:
Blue Squall.

It’s a sports drink, the kind that can rival PepsiCo’s Gatorade and Coca-Cola’s Powerade. It’s the one arena Fizzle has failed at multiple times, and I suppose he’s hoping they can launch a new string of sports drinks with Ryke as the face.

“Ziff?” Ryke says with furrowed brows.

“It’s Fizz backwards, with two f’s.”

“I got that,” Ryke says and then uncaps the bottle. I’m guessing it’s blueberry flavored, more of a midnight color. We all watch Ryke put the bottle to his lips and take a swig. He instantly puts his bicep to his mouth, his face contorting in disgust.

Oh no.

Lo lets out a laugh. “Swallow it,” he says in jest, reaching into the box to grab a bottle for himself. I blush at those words.

Connor even collects a bottle. “It must be bad if Ryke can’t keep it down.”

“I’ve tried it. It’s decent,” Sam says.

Ryke finally swallows the liquid and takes a breath like he was drowning. “What the fuck is this shit?” He stares at the label and starts reading the ingredients. “It tastes like deer bile and piss.”

Connor arches a brow. “He’s tasted piss before.”

“And deer bile,” Lo chimes in with a grimace.

“Fucking A,
you two
try it.”

I’m glad I haven’t been included in this. I’m not going near anything that tastes like pee. No thank you.

Daisy rocks on her heels. “I’ll try it.” Of course my gutsy sister would. Ryke passes her his bottle, and she sips Ziff about the same time that Lo and Connor drink theirs.

Daisy spits it out almost instantly and rubs her tongue with her fingers. “Ugh, that’s bad.”

Connor and Lo are able to keep their drinks down, but I can tell Lo needs a chaser, his forehead wrinkling in distress. I’m about to retrieve him a water, but Rose stands up and nods to me like she’ll do it. She’s already eyeing the bit of Blue Squall on the rug that Daisy spewed.

“Sorry, Rose,” Daisy calls after her. “I can clean it…”

“It’s fine,” Rose says, already disappearing in the kitchen.

“I thought you said she swallows,” Lo tells his brother. Oh my God. This time, I punch him in the chest, away from his ribs. He looks remorseful and more unsettled, probably because he realizes it was about
Daisy.

Ryke runs a hand through his hair and glances hesitantly at Daisy, who has wide, large eyes. This is a
clear
indication that they discuss sex, and us, when we’re not with them. This means I no longer should feel guilty when me and my sisters do it too. I nod at this resolution.

Sam mumbles, “I’m going to pretend I never heard any of that.” He rises to his feet and nods to Connor. “It’s not that bad.”

“Ziff,” Connor recites, “it’s not that bad. Drink it.” I crinkle my nose. Yeah, that’s not going to sell anything.

Sam sighs in frustration and crosses his arms. “My hands are tied here. Even if it doesn’t taste that great to you, it has ranked well among our other flavors on board. Greg wants to launch with Blue Squall soon.”

We’re all quiet for a moment. And then Lo says, “You remember Mountain Berry Fizz?” He just brought up an apocalyptic moment in Fizzle’s history. I remember MBF very, very well.

“Don’t,” Sam says, raising his palm at Lo to shut it down.

“What’s Mountain Berry Fizz?” Ryke asks.

I add, “The worst Fizzle flavor to ever be created. The aftertaste was like window-cleaner.”

“Or bleach,” Lo says.

I nod quickly. “You couldn’t predict the awfulness after the sip settled in.” I realize I’m hugging onto Lo when Sam’s eyes flit all around me in a judgy or curious way, but I don’t care much. “It was pulled off the market after three months.”

Light bulb moment for Ryke. “Which is why I’ve never heard of it.” He stares at the bottle of Ziff. “How the fuck am I supposed to be the face of a product that I can’t even drink?”

Sam checks his phone and then says, “You’re going to have to drink it at the unveiling,
without
cringing. We’ve set up an event, open to the public, where you’ll drink Ziff and then climb.”

Ryke spreads his arms out. “Why the fuck are you just now telling me this?”

“Greg thought you’d agree to the terms, no matter what. If you want to earn his respect, you just need to suck it up and do it.”

Ryke says, “I have to drink
water
before I climb. About a fucking liter.”

“We’ll talk about the event later,” Sam shrugs it off and points to the box. “I’m leaving this with you so you can get used to the drink. I’ll let you all get back to…” His eyes ping to the baby dolls in our hands. “…whatever you were doing.”

No one even bothers telling him it’s CPR training. And as he departs, I whisper to Lo, “Does it really taste like deer bile?” That seems more abnormal and off-putting than bleach.

“No,” Lo whispers back. “It’s more like an iron, metal flavor. It’s not refreshing.”

My mouth falls a little. I picture blood, which tastes a bit like metal. This is a power drink for vampires. Mountain Berry Fizz 2.0 all over again. My heart goes out to Ryke. It feels like he’s being setup to fail.

This is the hardest part about having friends, watching another life unfold in a messier way than it should. And not being able to help. I have no magic spells or tools to fix this. No one ever says,
let awkward Lily Calloway come to the rescue!

I come, a lot. But it’s never satisfied anyone but me.

And maybe Lo.

If my superpower is sex, then…I’ve abused it. I suppose I might’ve been a quiet, lurky villain this whole time.

“Lil?” Lo breathes, his lips brushing my ear. Everyone has gone back to their dolls. “What’s wrong?”

“Is my superpower sex?” I ask him.

His face sharpens. “No.”

“Are you sure?” My eyes burn, emotions stirring.

He hugs me to his chest. My belly bump hits him first, making it harder to be so close. After a long moment, he whispers, “Sex is your kryptonite.”