“Maggie,” I whisper when I answer her call.
“Cora?” There’s a pause. “Why are you whispering?”
“It’s a long story,” I say, shaking my head even though she can’t see.
“Can you reduce it to a bite-sized story?” she says. “I’m intrigued, but Dale is fussing, so I won’t be able to talk long. I just wanted to check-in. We haven’t spoken in a while.”
I take a deep fortifying breath and try to come up with a way of explaining my ridiculous life without dwelling on all the minor details. “I’ve moved into my enemy’s house to live with five asshole soon-to-be stepbrothers who are now conducting a war of stupid pranks against me. I’m pacing while I try to work out how to retaliate.”
“Err…that was not what I expected you to say at all. Where’s your mom?”
“Antigua, with my enemy.”
“And who are the stepbrothers?”
I scowl just thinking about them, with their too-handsome faces and black hearts. “My enemy’s sons. I know…my life is like a Brazilian soap opera.”
“It really is,” she laughs.
“I came home to find two of them fucking on my bed, on my sheets.”
“Isn’t that incest?” she hisses with shock.
“Not fucking each other,” I laugh. “Fucking a girl. They were like a frigging centipede…all arms and legs and nakedness.”
“You realize you’re describing my sex life,” Maggie says wryly.
“Oh yeah,” I laugh as my cheeks flush hot. Even though I’ve been to her house and seen how Maggie lives her life, it still doesn’t seem like a thing that’s actually possible, so I forget what polyandry actually means for her in practice.
“So, you’re trying to come up with ways to get them back for being assholes?” Maggie says, bringing me out of my thoughts.
“Exactly. Are you good at pranks?”
She clears her throat, and a child whimpers from close to the receiver. “I’ve never had any need to play pranks. Only-child perks.”
“Exactly. Me too.”
“But I’m sure my guys would have a ton of ideas. Shall I ask them?”
“Sure. That would be awesome.”
Maggie’s voice becomes muffled as she speaks to someone in the background, and then she starts laughing at their response.
“Hide their shoes,” she says. “They’ll be so pissed when they can’t find them. They won’t be able to go out without footwear. It’ll be like the most annoying game of hide and seek.”
“I like it,” I say. “What else?”
There’s more mumbling in the background. “John says you can switch out the centers of the Oreos with toothpaste.”
“Good one,” I chuckle, finding it hard to reconcile the suggestion with the huge menacing man I know John to be.
“Put paint along their windshield wipers,” Maggie instructs. “Steal all the toilet paper. They won’t notice until it’s too late.”
“Ooooh, those are good.”
“Fill donuts with mayo.”
“Gross,” I snort.
“Hide the batteries from all the TV remotes. Make glitter-bomb water balloons. Hide all the spoons, or how about making some special brownies and leaving them in the kitchen.”
“Oh my God, Maggie. I seriously wouldn’t want to cross any of your husbands.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I’m worried that I’ve started giving them ideas.” A voice rumbles in the background. “Actually, scrap that. John has reminded me that they’re all grown men with better things to do than waste time on pranks.”
“I wish I was so lucky,” I muse.
“So, five soon-to-be stepbrothers? It sounds like you’re living one of those romance novels you like so much.”
“Err…no. Absolutely not. The men in my romance novels are decent human beings with hearts of gold. My stepbrothers have black rocks in their chests and daggers in their eyes.”
“They sound interesting,” Maggie muses as Dale cries in earnest. She asks John to take him so that she can continue talking to me.
“You remember how Justin was before he mellowed out?”
Maggie hums as we both recall her baby daddy’s bad attitude and selfishness. “That bad, huh?”
“Worse.”
She hums again as I stroke my hand over the smooth ceramic vase that was practice for a new technique. “Justin was an asshole, but he was sexy. Are they sexy, at least?”
They are, but the prospect of admitting it feels like I’m surrendering something important. Acknowledging their physical appeal negates their awful attitudes in a way, but Maggie’s my friend, and I’m not going to lie to her. She might visit one day, and then what?
“They’re good looking in that alpha rich-boy kind of way. All designer clothes and perfect teeth. Expertly styled hair and glowing skin.” I don’t tell her about the perfection of Danny’s body. The way his muscles move beneath his skin with all the sleekness and power of a big cat, or the way Tobias’s broad shoulders and huge biceps obliterate the world behind him like a wall. I don’t tell her about their thick thighs or stacked abs that lead like a ladder down to places I shouldn’t want to dwell on, even in my mind. Let’s just say, if dick size runs in families, they were blessed with scarily impressive genes. My pussy squeezes involuntarily, the traitorous bitch.