Some Kind of Perfect (Calloway Sisters 5)

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 Cha

rlie 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.

I do what I never do.

I abandon my heels.

I free myself and go barefoot across the hill to this terribly disgusting muddy area near the tree line. “What are you doing?” I have never birthed a child more unpredictable than this one.

Ben rolls in the mud, giggles, and tries to remove all his clothes. I sense Connor reaching my side about the same time that our youngest boy frees himself of his pants.

“Are you sure he’s ours?” I ask Connor without tearing my gaze off Ben. His big blue eyes shimmer with an inordinate amount of light, the rest of him covered in mud.