I was so focused on what I was talking about that I started pouring creamer in Elodie’s sippy cup instead of my coffee. Sofa. King. Great.
Dumping it in my cup, I tossed hers in the sink to wash up afterward and got a fresh one out. This time I got it right, and she ended up with her juice and not creamer.
“No, honey, I don’t think so. Like what?”
“Were the pictures on the wall at weird angles or anything?”
There was a pause while she thought about it. “No, I remember checking a couple in case they’d shifted. It happens to ours sometimes, they just start to drop slightly, and it’s a pain in the ass when you realize. In some countries, they actually tilt the frames slightly to stop bad spirits resting on them, you know.”
I’d definitely had some bad spirits on mine then. “Did the boys come upstairs to mess with me?”
“By moving your frames? Oh, hell no. None of us has forgotten the night Major got pissed at you and rearranged your CDs. I don’t even think the ER doctor has forgotten that night seeing as how you kept attacking him even when they were stitching his eyebrow up.” On a technicality, that injury wasn’t my fault. I’d thrown one of the CDs in question at his head, he’d deflected it in the wrong direction i.e. towards his head, and it had cut his eyebrow up. It’s not like it was even an issue seeing as how he said the chicks totally dug the split eyebrow look. “They don’t go upstairs, Katykins, so I don’t think they did.”
That was true. After that mishap, my new house rules were that none of my siblings could go near my room – which in this house was extended to the whole upstairs level – without express permission from me. It didn’t matter if the house was on fire or I was being attacked by a Yeti – none of them was allowed upstairs unless I said so, and that included screaming it.
“That’s weird,” I muttered, placing the bagel down in front of Elodie. “Maybe we had a tremor or something?”
“Oh, shoot, your dad needs a hand with something so I’ve got to go. I’ll see you later when we come to pick up the baby,” she blurted and then hung up.
Picking my cup up and moving to sit next to Elodie at the table, I checked online to see if there was any record of even a small tremor in the area and found nothing. Tapping my phone on the table, I watched Elodie tear the bagel apart and throw chunks of it to Duke who was in doggy heaven having her around. Every time she ate, she threw him food. At this rate, he’d be as wide as he was tall. In fact, now that I thought of it, where was Duke last night? Normally he slept in the hallway or in my room, and I didn’t remember seeing him when I got up.
This was turning into a strange morning for me, so I relied on the power of coffee to help me figure it out and focused on drinking what I had. Just as I finished my first cup and was getting up to get the next one – because seriously, who just has one cup of coffee – my phone beeped with a text.
Ebru: Girl, you’ve totally annihilated the GYMP. There was a plan, and you’ve left it in the dust. Total pro ho! What you wearing tonight?
Me: What do you mean?
Ebru: Your Jarrod date. If he talks dirty to you in that deep voice, can you record it for me? I swear I’ll love you for life.
It took a hot second to filter through all the other shit I had whirling around my brain, but when it finally made sense, I almost dropped my phone in the sink.
Oh jumping through shit on a pogo stick – I had a date with Jarrod tonight.
Jarrod“You,” Maya snapped as she stormed across the lot in front of the garage. “You fucked up the GYMP.”
A quick glance behind me told me that Ren was the one who’d fucked up with a gimp, so I asked, “What gimp did he fuck?”
“The G, Y, M, P. The Get Yo’ Man Plan that we came up with so Katy could get you,” she said, stopping with her hands on her hips.
I will not deny the fact that I grinned wider than I’ve ever grinned in my life. Swear to shit, the Cheshire Cat had nothing on what I did hearing this. “She had a plan to get me?”
“Well d’uh. And now you’ve gone totally off script, and she’s not following it at all. How am I gonna get y’all together if you can’t follow simple directions?”