“I swear I don’t watch the sexy videos of you on the Sweet Cheeks TikTok, just like I don’t watch the videos on your own TikTok account. I just watch the preview on the main page of the Sweet Cheeks account. When I see a glimpse of you, I know you’ll be in the video, so I don’t watch it. Promise.”
“Great,” I mutter as I shove the pints of ice cream into the freezer.
“Hey, leave one out.”
I frown at her. “You were just complaining that you didn’t want this ice cream.”
She shakes her head and shoves her wavy black hair out of her face. “I did not. I said I thought you’d bring me Sweet Cheeks ice cream, which I much prefer. I never said I don’t still want the ice cream.”
I roll my eyes and hand her a random pint. She rips off the lid and starts licking the top of the ice cream.
“Can’t you wait two seconds for a spoon?” I fetch one from a nearby drawer and hand it to my cousin. She plops down on a barstool at her kitchen island.
She scoffs and shoves a spoonful of Cherry Garcia into her mouth. “Did you seriously just tell your pregnant and ravenous cousin to wait for food?”
She sticks her tongue out at me. The frustration inside of me melts, and I chuckle.
“You are insufferable when you’re pregnant, you know that?”
She nods, grinning. “Yup. My tiny body is growing a massive baby. Soon I’m going to have to push it out of my vagina. I’m allowed to be insufferable.”
I groan. “Jesus.”
“Why don’t you make yourself useful and eat the leftoverpansitthat Peter cooked yesterday?” she says before inhaling more ice cream.
I pull the Tupperware container out of the fridge, dish up a plate, and heat it in the microwave. “You’re sharing leftoverpansitwith me? Has hell frozen over?”
Pansithas been Millie’s favorite food since we were kids. Anytime there were leftovers, she always laid claim to them. If anyone tried to eat them before she got to it, she’d unleash hell.
“Pregnancy hormones,” she says around a mouthful of ice cream. “I can’t stand the taste of pork right now. Third trimester is all sorts of fun.”
I nod and dig into the leftovers.
“So how come Sweet Cheeks hasn’t uploaded a video in a while?” Millie asks.
I shove a massive forkful ofpansitinto my mouth and take my time chewing. I’m only a year older than Millie and her twin brother Austin. My siblings and I grew up next door to them here in Lakewood. Our moms are sisters, which means that our families spent almost every day together for most of our childhoods. Even now that we’re grown and she’s married and living across town from me, we still see each other at least once a week. We’re as close as siblings, and she can read me like a book. She’s always been able to. Sure, I can brush off her questions or feed her some lie, but she’ll see right through it.
“We’re having some creative differences,” I finally mutter.
She arches her eyebrow so high, it almost hits her hairline. “What did you do?”
I roll my eyes. “Nothing. Like I said, creative differences.”
“Do you honestly expect me to believe that?”
I think back to when I told Millie about my deal with Becca and Sweet Cheeks, how I’m helping her create sexy content to boost her social media following and her business. I kept it brief, but like always, my nosey and intuitive cousin knows when more is going on.
“So I was scrolling through Sweet Cheeks’ earlier posts on TikTok,” she says as she scrapes her spoon against the cardboard cup. “I saw some blonde girl. That must be Becca, right?”
“Mmmhmm,” I say while chewing.
“She’s just your type.”
I frown at her when I finish chewing and swallowing. “What exactly is my type?”
“Hot,” Millie says without missing a beat.
I laugh despite the frustration caused by my nosey cousin.
