Fucking really?
Lo is quick to respond. “He didn’t start crushing on Daisy when he was seven.” Cobalt kids believe they’re adults, so they literally scoff at Lo.
Then Tom and Eliot cup their hands to each other, whispering again. This time more blatantly in front of us.
“Fourthly,” Lo continues on and points right at Tom.
They stop whispering.
“If I see you at the deep-end and you’re under the water for longer than ten seconds, Uncle Ryke is going to jump in, save you and give you CPR. Not the cute little lifeguard, so think about that before you start recreating a scene from Sandlot.”
Eliot drums his lips in thought. “At what age would Tom be allowed to do it?”
“When I’m dead and buried.” Lo pulls his sunglasses down. “And if you start plotting my death, remember I have friends in hell.”
Eliot and Tom smile. They’ve always liked Lo.
“No fake-fucking-drowning, okay?” I ensure that they understand the important part.
“I won’t, Uncle Ryke,” Tom says, sincere enough.
Eliot looks between me and my brother. “Just so you know, you could be stopping an epic, whirlwind romance like Uncle Ryke and Aunt Daisy’s.”
Lo rests his hands behind his head, sunbathing. “My heart is crying.”
I lean back, my lips curving upwards as I see our lives, our fucking memories. These kids have no clue just how much Lo didn’t want me with Daisy. And how fucking much he truly loves us together now.
Eliot and Tom spring up and race towards the mushroom waterfall where Luna has been standing for about twenty minutes.
“Dad.” Sulli collapses on the empty chair beside me, soaking wet. Her drenched hair hangs over her black one-piece bathing suit. “Can you time Moffy and me? We want to race.” She rests her chin on her knee and tugs at her ankle bracelets.
“Sure.” I set my book aside and sit towards my young daughter. The previous talk of crushes fucking flares in my head. I’m trying to prepare for that day with Sulli.
Lily once asked me why I didn’t like thinking about Sulli dating.
She’s nine, and I want to stay in the moment for as long as fucking possible. I still don’t want her to grow up fast.
For a while, Lily and I talked about our girls and what sex means for them in this fucking world. She told me, “I sexualize men. You can’t just be afraid of men that sexualize women when I do practically the same thing, and I’m a woman.”
I told Lily the honest fucking truth. “You can’t physically overpower a fucking man the way that a man can overpower you.”
It doesn’t matter who’s thinking about sex. We all are.
It matters who’s in a position of dominance. Who has the chance to abuse that—and it’s mostly men. Bad fucking men. Rose never gave pepper spray to Lo, Connor, and me. Because she didn’t have to. Women are the ones who walk alone in fear at night.
“Hey, Sul?” I say. “What do you think about the lifeguard?”
Sulli reroutes her attention and blocks out the sun with her hand. “He’s okay.”
I rake my fingers through my hair. “Yeah?”
“He’s alert, I guess.” She pushes my shoulder as she stands. “Don’t worry, Dad. Moffy and I can watch out for the little kids. We’d beat the lifeguard to them anyway.”
I know she fucking would.
I stand and walk with her to the pool ladder. She didn’t understand my question, but that’s the fucking point. She’s nine. She’s young. She’s unconcerned about that.
I take the moment for what it is.
Sulli hops into the pool, and when her smile grows, causing mine to appear, I just fucking think, swimming is her true love.
[ 59 ]
July 2027
Disneyland
California
CONNOR COBALT
The six of us—Lo, Lily, Ryke, Daisy, Rose, and me—sit around an iron table on my suite’s patio. The sun just now begins to set. Inside, most of our children are tucked in bed, fast asleep after a weeklong tiring vacation.
And by tiring, I mean for everyone else. I’m nowhere near exhausted.
I slowly sip my red wine, my hand on Rose’s thigh. Sitting beside me, she takes measured gulps from her own glass. My lips rise to Rose. She sears me with a torrid glare that burns me inside. I grin wider, yearning to go home so I can fuck my wife.
“Focus, Richard,” she says, voice like frost.
We’re in the middle of a conversation about our oldest children, and the discussion only halted because Daisy remembered she bought churros for Lily and Lo. She’s felt better the past two days after a bout of food poisoning. Daisy left and brought them the dessert about two minutes ago.
Now Lo embraces his wife on his lap, arms around Lily, seated on the same iron chair while they dig into the box of churros.
Daisy and Ryke unsurprisingly ditch the many available chairs for the patio railing. Close enough to the table that Daisy reaches forward and sets down a can of Fizz Life, all while still balancing on the iron rail. Ryke keeps a hand on her knee, just in case she careens backwards.
My gaze strokes Rose’s caustic, piercing eyes. “You’ve forgotten that I can multitask better than the above-average individual.”
She gathers her glossy hair on her neck. “Maybe I just believe you’re average.”
“Then you wouldn’t be as intelligent as I believe you to be.”
Rose tries hard not to smile, our back-and-forth rousing us, but she remembers the severity of our previous conversation and abruptly tears her gaze off me. I grin into my wine, and she snaps her fingers at her sisters and their husbands.
“We have to make a decision before nightfall.”
The sky is orange, the sun lowering quickly.
“Christ, Queen Rose.” Lo glares. “Wait until I’ve eaten my churro. Just put down your broomstick and cast spells at your husband.”
Rose narrows her eyes. “Choke and die.”
Lo points his churro at Rose. “You’re wasting your spells. I’m already dead.”
Lily nearly chokes on her dessert.
Lo’s face falls, his humor trampled immediately. “Lil?” He pats her back.
She swallows, and Rose and Daisy push their glasses of water to their sister. Lily takes a big gulp and says to Lo, “You’re not dead. I thought we agreed that you just went to hell and now you’re back.”
I hear Ryke mutter, “So fucking weird.” He’s smiling with Daisy.
“I’m not dead, love. I promise.” Lo holds his wife tight in his arms.
I see the sunset as passage of time, and the longer we skirt around the issues, the more time we lose. Rose is right, so I resurface the topic too.
“Moffy, Jane, and Charlie will be in middle school,” I remind everyone, their bodies relatively at ease. I attribute it to my easy-tempered tone. The way I speak. The way I act as though whatever may happen, we will succeed. “We let them know as much about our histories as the general public. They deserve the answers from us, not strangers, not peers or school faculty.”
Rose and I wanted to tell the children sooner than this, and what happened with Lo and Moffy could’ve been different. I’m not a fortuneteller. I can’t predict whether the outcome would’ve been better, but I know if we don’t begin to open up now—as their curiosities rise—we’ll lose the chance.
Lily inspects her churro, thinking.
Lo swishes his ice water, jaw sharpened.
Daisy and Ryke stare between the sunset and us.
Rose rests her hand on top of mine—the one I keep on her thigh. As though to say we’re together in this battle, Richard. Undoubtedly, we are. I lace our fingers, and she tells them, “If they feel like we’re hiding from them, then they’l
l begin to hide from us.”
Lo shifts in his chair, edged. “They’re allowed to have privacy, even from us.”
Rose scowls. “I’m not talking about knowing everything. I don’t need to hear whether or not they ate lunch with so-and-so and what’s-his-fucking-face—I just need them to trust us. Say a cameraman harasses them, would you rather them tell us or keep it a secret?”
Ryke shakes his head. “I don’t fucking see how one equates to the other. So we don’t show the kids We Are Calloway, they could still tell us that a cameraman harassed them.” He outstretches his arm like come on.
He’s not right. He’s not wrong either. It just depends on certain variables and the child in question. “Some of them will feel like we didn’t share with them, so they won’t feel as forthcoming to share with us.”
“Which ones?” Lo asks, his shoulders more strict because he knows one of his children is in this mix.
“For right now, Maximoff and Charlie, but if we tell Moffy, we have to tell Jane.” He’d explain to her everything, and we’d rather just tell Jane ourselves.
We allow the children to watch their segments of We Are Calloway. They’ve never seen the episodes where Lily speaks about sex addiction or where Ryke, Lo, Daisy, and I talk about the Paris riot. My sex tapes with Rose are also discussed, but that particular in-depth episode focuses on consent. I’d rather them hear this than read an internet post about the sex tapes concentrating on Rose’s body and the size of my cock.
They know nothing about our turbulent histories with the media.
I want to open their minds wider. I want to illuminate the world in vast, bright colors, but Rose and I can’t do that without a unanimous decision. Our children are too close to each other, and what one may know, they may share and spread.
We’ve been at a standstill for years, but Moffy’s acknowledgment of Lily’s sex addiction has changed everything.
Ryke scratches his unshaven jaw. “There are some fucking things kids just shouldn’t know.” He lets out a long animalistic groan, knowing that we’ve already publicized intimate portions of our lives. We shouldn’t forbid our children from viewing what strangers will.