My moms would be perfect…
All I wanted was for them to listen to me and to tell me that everything was alright. I totally would have told them everything, except that they were pregnant again. Both of them.
I know that they liked to tell me I could come to them for everything, and I also remember Father and Daddy-Gee sitting with some of us older kids. He let us know that even though our moms didn’t like to talk about it, they did have health complications. They were technically “geriatric” pregnancies. Which was a weird thing to associate with one of my moms. Both of them still looked phenomenal. Absolutely stunning. They literally still looked like they could be models. Models who had gotten pregnant, but still.
But our dads let us know, while completely beating around the bush and getting red in the face while doing it, that it would be best not to stress our moms out right now. Daddy-Gee looked around furtively as if he was worried Mother would be summoned through the walls if he talked about her, beforemuttering something about preeclampsia. How she would never mention it, but she got headaches and had high blood pressure…
So yeah, I wasn’t going to call either of my moms right now.
I swear to God, after this current pregnancy was over, I was going to start personally slipping birth control into their morning coffee.
But anyway, I couldn’t talk to my moms right now, and Zane was starting to get on my nerves.
Luckily, I had an army of sisters.
I wasn’t about to talk to my older sister. Not that I don’t love Rebel—I do. But she’s obnoxiously happy with her pack and I didn’t need the kind of toxicity that came with talking to someone who was perfectly happy with their lot in life, when everything in my life was starting to fall apart.
I also didn’t want to talk to Cashmere—she was too sweet.
I didn’t want empathy. I didn’t want understanding right now. Cashmere would probably just go bake me a dozen snickerdoodle cookies with pink frosting to help me “get over” my ex. That would be absolutely disastrous for my wedding diet.
After everything I’d been through, I refused to put myself into a situation where I have to turn down the softest, fluffiest sugary perfection of Cashmere’s fresh-baked snickerdoodle cookies—that sounded like the absolute worst self-punishment.
What I needed was to talk to someone who was more of a middle child. Someone who… what was a nice way to say this? Screw it, I can’t think of a nice way to say it when I’m literally on the verge of spiraling. Okay, so one of my sisters is a little bit of a bitch.
Like… it’s not her fault. Chloe is nottryingto be a bitch. It’s just like, hard-wired into her personality.
Also, she isn’t like thebadsort of bitch. It’s not like she would try to sabotage me for her own gain, or do some mean-girl toxic bullshit. It was more like… I could count on Chloe to not letme get away with my own bullshit. She was the sort of girl who would call me out, even if it hurt my feelings… and everyone else’s feelings along the way.
Anyway, I called Chloe and she picked up on the third ring.
“I’m so glad you picked up the phone. I didn’t know who else to call. I don’t want to stress out our moms right now. The only one who knows about all of this is Zane, and honestly, he’s just pissing me off right now.” Okay. I was rambling. Off to a great start.
“Okay, what is going on?” Chloe’s voice sounded like she was scowling at me.
“Well, I’ve been going on a bunch of dates, and on every single one, everything has just been going horribly wrong.”
“Woah. Slow down. I feel like we are missing a good chunk of the story here. So you’re dating? A bunch of guys? Aren’t you engaged?”
“No, I’m not with Dylan anymore.” Odd. I’d been with him for so long, and already it felt weird to say his name. He was an ex to me. Not a name. It was like he had never existed at all and was just exed straight out of existence. “He cheated on me. I walked in on him when he was inside some other girl.”
“Oh my God, I am sorry. That fucking little asswipe.” Chloe went off on a very detailed rant about all the ways she would like to torment and torture my ex on my behalf. Which was very supportive and all, butnotwhy I’d called her.
“Yeah, forget about him. So obviously now that Dylan is out of the picture, I’ve been scrambling. Zane helped me set up a dating app, but you would not believe how awful it’s been going.”
“Why would you even need to do that? I mean, while I agree that the best way to get over a man is to get under another one, it sounds like this is stressing you out.”
“Because the wedding is in four months!” Even saying the number out loud was going to give me hives. I was rapidlyrunning out of time to make any last-minute adjustments to make this event run smoothly—and that wasn’t even talking about the worst wedding glitch, if I ended up walking to the altar all by myself.
“What wedding? You told me that you broke up with your fiance… you aren’t still planning on marrying that cheating little piece of—”
“Obviously not. That’s why I need to get somebody else.”
“So… let me get this straight. You are just trying to go on a bunch of dates until you find some guy that is good enough to marry you after just a few months?” Her voice went all calm and flat in a way that I did not trust at all.
“Yes! I’ve gone on dozens of dates and they’ve all been awful.”
“Has anyone told you that… maybe marrying someone you barely know isn’t a good idea?” Chloe was talking to me slowly, like she was saying this to an idiot. Or to a young child—which was basically the same thing.
