Some Kind of Perfect (Calloway Sisters #4.5) (74 page)

“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.”

After I finish tying my cover-up, I catch Connor
grinning
at me. I muster the hottest glare, and then reroute my gaze to torment him a little more.

Garrison and Willow sit close together on a patio couch beneath a tan umbrella. Their two-year-old daughter, brown pigtails and blue-green eyes hidden behind toddler sunglasses, sucks on a banana-flavored popsicle between her parents. Vada is more cooperative than
every
baby I’ve ever had. She will hum theme songs to video games and minds her own business on international flights.

I don’t think their baby is human. Vada is obviously some sort of deity. Like a Greek goddess. Like Athena—only I’d think Athena would have better sense than to transform into a little two-year-old.

Willow helps Vada hold the popsicle stick, and Garrison watches his wife and daughter with fondness. He whispers something to Willow, and then he kisses her cheek before kissing her lips.

I whip my head back to Connor. His attention is on the grill, not me, and I try to stifle my disappointment.
You did the same to him.
I did, but most commonly, he’s the one who chases after me.

My focus diverges anyway.

Splashes escalate from down below, and I can even hear combined exclamations from Moffy and Jane, the eleven-year-olds.

“Go, Sulli!” Jane shouts. “Overthrow our adversaries!”

“You got this, Beckett!” Moffy cheers. “Come on! Come on!”

In the shallow parts of the lake, Jane has Sullivan on her shoulders while Moffy has Beckett on his. The two eight-year-olds wrestle, attempting to knock one another off in a classic game called
chicken.

We all fall hushed on the deck, observing the children for a moment. I nearly smile, sensing the years that have passed, seeing what our futures have become. This morning Connor said to me, “The lake house puts our lives in vivid perspective.” I didn’t quite grasp the full meaning until now.

Without background noise—the tabloids, cameramen, and our jobs—we’re left strong together, with simple moments that drum ferociously through us all.

Jane takes one hand off Sullivan’s leg and tries to push Moffy.

He dodges Jane and laughs, “What was that, Janie? Can’t get me!”

“Don’t be so sure, Moffy! Just you…ohhh…no.” Jane starts falling backwards with Sullivan, but Sullivan careens her weight forward and clasps Beckett’s shoulders, keeping them in the game.

I can’t pick an allegiance to either team. Jane and Beckett are my children, and my heart is with them both equally.

“Jesus Christ.” Lo grabs his megaphone and switches it on. “MOVE AWAY FROM THE DOCK!” They’re not close enough that they’d hit their heads. I never thought Loren Hale would be the most anal, but I did think he would be as overprotective as he is.

I quickly scan the backyard for all my gremlins. Eliot, Tom, and Luna are on the hammocks, strung between maple trees by the water. Three-year-old Xander and my four-year-old Ben play with Legos on the hill, right beside the red Adirondack chairs and an incredibly silly basset hound, leaping after air particles now.

I swing my head left and right. “Where’s Charlie?”

Connor sets down the spatula, his phone already in his hand. He calls our son, putting the speaker to his ear. My back arches, prepared to stomp around the entire house in search for our son. It wouldn’t be the first time. Yesterday, I found Charlie on the
roof
of all places. I truly wondered if he was my child until he pompously jabbered about physics and scientific theories like he discovered them himself.

He is a Cobalt, through and through.

“He’s not answering,” Connor tells me, incredibly calm since this is a common event. It’s why we’ve given Charlie his own cellphone.

“CHARLIE!” I shout at the top of my lungs.

“There goes my left eardrum,” Lo says with edge.

I point my nail at him. “You used
that
.” The megaphone.

“My voice doesn’t sound like cats are being slaughtered.”

I produce a hostile glare, and right when I go to rip the megaphone from Lo’s hands—about to use it myself—the sliding glass door opens.

Charlie, who looks more and more like Connor every day, barely acknowledges us before skipping down the steps and heading towards the dock. I love him so entirely, like all my children, that my hatred towards his disappearing acts diminishes to just a handful of worry.

“Is he okay?” Daisy asks, passing shucked corn to Ryke for him to grill.

“He’s mentally bored,” Connor says. “I’ll play chess with him later.”

Charlie sits at the edge of the dock. Maria, now eighteen, tans on a yellow inner-tube nearby, her Ray Bans blocking the sun. When I sweep all the children again, my jaw unhinges, and I take
off
down the steps.

He did not.

Oh yes he did.

“Ben Pirrip!” I shout, my heels sinking into the damp grass. I get stuck on the way to my four-year-old who has walked off the quilt, left Xander and the Legos, and found himself a
giant
sinking hole of mud.