Love and Lists (Chocoholics 1)

I hear the front door open and a few seconds later my mom walks into the living room.

“Why does it smell like sex in here? Ava, shouldn’t you be at work?” she asks with her hands on her hips.

“I’m on my lunch break,” Ava says casually.

Mom looks at her watch. “It’s four o’clock.”

“Snack break?” Ava replies with a shrug.

“AVA!”

“Um, I’m sick,” she says, adding in a cough for good measure.

“I swear to Christ if you left work to come home and have sex in my house, I will stop paying your cell phone bill,” Mom threatens.

“Oooooh, not the cell phone bill!” I reply in mock seriousness. “Careful, Ava. Mom’s got her stern face on.”

Ava and I both giggle while Mom stands there tapping her foot angrily.

“You two are both adults, so I have no problem saying this to you right now. You’re a bunch of dicks.”

“Mom, you said that to us when we were eight,” I remind her.

“Well, now I really mean it. Charlotte, how’s the job search coming along?” she asks as she takes her shoes off and moves into the room to sit in the chair across from us.

“Lousy. No one is hiring,” I complain.

“You know you can always come and work for Seduction and Snacks,” she reminds me.

My mom has been asking me to work for her ever since I was old enough to know what sex toys were. A part of me would love to go into the family business. I love my family and it would be awesome to work with them. The only thing holding me back right now is Gavin. It’s bad enough that our families are close and we see each other a lot. If whatever this is between us completely implodes, not only would I have to see him at family get-togethers, I’d have to work side-by-side with him every day. What if he marries Brooklyn and I have to watch her coming into the office every day for a quickie? I can’t work under those conditions. It would be best if I just find a job elsewhere.

“Mom, I can’t work at Seduction and Snacks,” I tell her.

“Why? What’s so bad about working there? Do you have vibrator anxiety? I thought we went over this on your eighteenth birthday when I bought you that starter kit,” Mom says with concern in her voice.

Both an upside AND a downside to having a mother who owns a sex toy store: she always wants to talk to you about sex and buys you vibrators for every holiday. And usually whips them out at the dinner table when you have guests over.

“Mom, I am not afraid of vibrators. If I’m not mistaken, you used to put a vibrator under my crib mattress to get me to sleep when I was a baby. You’re lucky I don’t turn narcoleptic every time I hear one buzzing.”

“Well, if that’s not the problem, what is? Seduction and Snacks is a very good company to work for. There are so many options for you to choose from with a degree in Communications,” she tells me.

“I think you should be more concerned with the fact that you and Dad forked over ninety-thousand dollars in tuition for this f**kernutter to get a degree in talking when she can’t even manage to say three little words to a certain someone.” Ava crosses her arms over her chest and looks at me smugly.

“AVA!”

“WHAT?!” Mom and I both shout at the same time.

“Oh for f**k’s sake, Charlotte. This is getting annoying. Mom, Charlotte is in love with Gavin,” Ava states, crossing her arms in front of her.

“WHAT?!” Mom shouts again, looking back and forth between us with wide eyes.

“I am going to reach down your throat and rip out your ovaries, you fat cow!” I yell at her.

“Oh, I’m sorry, was that a secret?” Ava asks me, batting her eyelashes.

“AVA HAD SEX WITH TYLER!” I scream, pointing my finger at her.

“WHAT?!”

Either Mom’s head is about to explode or she’s having a stroke and can only speak one word. Whatever it is, I’m not about to let Ava win this shit. I’m small, but I’m scrappy. Even when we were little and she would get pissed at me and pull my hair, I always finished the fights and had her screaming for mom within seconds.

“You f**king HAG!” Ava screams at me. “Charlotte tried to give Gavin a pearl necklace!”

“Ava likes it when Tyler shouts My Little Pony names instead of hers!”

Before I can come up with another insult, Ava launches herself at me and grabs onto my hair. She yanks it hard and I scream in pain, reaching my own hand up and clutching onto a chunk of her dark brown locks. We’re smacking, pulling, biting, screaming, and kicking for only a few seconds before Mom dives on top of us, trying to pull us apart.

“GIRLS! That’s enough!” she yells, grabbing onto both of our arms as they flail all around, trying to gain purchase.

“Hey, sweet thing, I think I dropped my wallet under the-”

All three of us immediately stop screaming and fighting and turn our heads to the door as Tyler stands there with his bottom lip quivering.

“Mom AND daughters … I never thought this day would come. God does exist.”

Chapter 15 – You’re a Labia

“Seriously, Charlotte. You need to watch this. It’s goats screaming like humans,” Molly tells me in a fit of giggles as she stares at her iPhone.

Molly is nineteen and the youngest out of the three of us girls. Where Ava and I take after our dad with dark hair and dark eyes, Molly is the spitting image of my mom with her long blonde hair and spitfire personality.