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“Who’s taking you?” he asked.
I answered immediately without thought. “Zip.”
“Zip,” he said. “This is kind of new, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” I shrugged. “But it is what it is.”
“Have you gone to the sperm bank to freeze it?” Tyson asked. “It’s pretty easy. Just a couple of samples in a cup. They do all the work.”
I groaned.
“I hadn’t really thought about that,” I admitted. “Hoyt is such a bad doctor.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Hoyt countered. “I totally sent you home with a lot of paperwork. All of that was in the book. Did you happen to even look at any of it?”
No.
“Nope,” I answered. “I figured you’d tell me everything you wanted me to know.”
He grumbled something under his breath, then Hoyt pulled out his phone, sent out a text, then said, “I sent your information to the bank. They’re going to be calling you with the earliest possible appointment. Since your surgery is set for next Tuesday, they’ll work around it well.”
Great.
Awesome.
Perfect.
“Thanks,” I grumbled.
“None of this would’ve…”
And so it began.
CHAPTER 7
I guess I’m at the point where I have nothing left to lose. Except weight. I could lose a lot of that.
-Zip to Nash
ZIP
“You’re much better than Saranda.”
Saranda.
Why did that sound so familiar?
“Saranda, as in the model, Saranda?” I questioned.
“The one and only,” Cory, Nash’s older sister, said. “She and Nash dated for over six months before they broke it off last year.”
That sounded… awful.
Also, since I knew everything there was to know about Nash, him dating a supermodel was news to me. How had they hidden a six-month long relationship?
“Is that why he was such a Crabby Patty when we first met?” I questioned, my gaze automatically going to the direction of Nash, who was talking with his dad and brothers. “The breakup?”
The conversation looked intense, and I had the sudden urge to go over there and break the conversation up.
“Probably,” Aracelli said, her gaze on me. “How did y’all meet?”
I explained how we met, telling them about how he’d carried my sister down multiple flights of stairs.
“And he just left you there after he helped?” she asked.
I snorted. “Yes.”
She snorted. “That’s… my brother.”
“Anti-social dork,” one of them said. Tory. Rory. Whatever her name was, I still hadn’t learned it.
The only reason I knew Aracelli’s was that every last sibling she had liked to call her ‘Aracelli Grace Kelly’ and it had a nice ring to it.
“And when did y’all decide to make it official?” Maybe Rory asked.
“Cory,” Aracelli said.
I mentally snapped my fingers and said, “Cory!”
She looked at me with her eyebrows raised. “What?”
“I couldn’t remember your name. But I kept calling you ‘Maybe Rory’ in my head for the last probably twenty minutes.”
Cory not Rory snorted. “You’re bad with names or something?”
I thought about that question for a few long seconds before saying, “I mean, not bad, per se. But I think it’s more because I have ADHD, and when y’all introduced yourself, there were like eight thousand of you. And let’s just say that it takes a lot for me to learn stuff. The only reason I know hers is because everyone called her Aracelli Grace Kelly, and my brain went straight to ‘that rhymes’ and yeah… that’s where I’m at.”
“If it makes you feel better,” Aracelli said, “Cory goes by Cory ‘Can’t Drive’ Whorey.”
I blinked. Then blinked again.
Then I turned to Cory and said, “Is she serious?”
She nodded miserably. “I think Nash gave me that one, and it’s stuck ever since.”
I shook my head, then went back to our earlier conversation. “We decided to make it official a couple of weeks ago.”
Lies.
A whole pack of them.
But I wouldn’t force Nash to have to explain.
“The only thing Nash has ever called me besides Zip, or my full name, Zipporah, was Crazy Train,” I said. “He said that I act like I’m heading in a direction that’ll lead to catastrophic failure if I stay on my current life path.”
Both sisters paused, taking in my words. “Nash can be sort of cruel, since he’s so blunt.”
I shrugged. “He’s right. I have no clear direction. Other than the circus, and performing twice a week, I have no true path in my life. I have a degree in business, but I have absolutely no plans to utilize it. Any and all running of the circus is going to fall on Keene, my brother’s, shoulders. Plus, I have absolutely no desire to do the firing, hiring, and making sure that all of our books are straight. Then, there’s the whole ‘running a business’ thing in itself. I could probably go work for an actual company utilizing my degree, but that’s not something I really want to do either. I’ve been on my own, doing what I want to do, since before I can remember. The idea of having someone tell me what to do makes me break out in hives.”
