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Rose gestures to Christopher with her champagne glass. “My contract should say, Rose Calloway Cobalt is allowed to slit the throats of her adversaries without penalty. I also would like free dry cleaning in case blood stains my dresses.” She sips her champagne like a total badass. That’s my sister.
Lily clears her throat. “I’d like a taco bar.”
I laugh, and Rose gives her a strange look like she asked for something mediocre when she could’ve been given the sun and the moon and blazing stars.
To Lily, a taco bar is a great prize. Probably because it’s something that Loren Hale would love too.
“My conditions are more complicated,” Poppy says in the same tone as all of us. “I’d like world peace.” She then waves at him like a pageant queen.
We all explode in laughter, enough that a lot of heads turn to us.
Christopher nods a few times, not dense enough to miss the joke. “Alright, alright.” His gaze plants on mine. “You got me.”
As our laughter dies down, I stare past his shoulder, noticing all four guys watching us. Ryke nods to me and mouths, what the fuck?
I mouth back, I love you.
It makes him smile.
It makes me smile more.
“Is this a firm no then?” Christopher asks, hiding his disappointment if he has any.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s a definite, without-a-doubt, not-gonna-change-our-minds kind of no.”
While he digests this, his eyes slowly descend down my body, probably taking note of my strange attire. Even though I love my T-shirt and shorts, my mom has taken it like a slap in the face. I still hate upsetting her, even if she’s one of the hardest people to please.
I’d raid my closet upstairs but I emptied it when I moved out, and I don’t want to leave Ryke alone in something casual while I wear a formal dress.
“When’s the wedding?” Christopher asks, so zeroed in on me. I wish he’d open the dialogue to all of my sisters at once.
“We haven’t picked a date yet,” I answer honestly. With my fertility issues at the forefront, planning a wedding has taken a backseat. We’re not in a huge rush. Admittedly, we’re both a little worried about the drama a wedding will cause.
We even contemplated eloping, which seemed easier in theory. That discussion was shut down by his statement, “I want my brother there.” Then mine, “I want my sisters there as bridesmaids.”
“Will I be getting an invitation?” Christopher asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Will you be gifting me a unicorn that poops rainbows?”
He squints at me and tilts his head. “Are you flirting with me?”
Oh my God. My lips downturn, hoping no one else thinks this but him. I immediately distance myself and start to walk past him, just as Lily says, “She’s not coming onto you. That’s her personality.”
Rose adds a perfunctory, “Christopher Snot-Nosed Barnes.”
“Striking,” he corrects like they’re teenagers.
“No, I remember it being Snot-Nosed,” Poppy says.
I smile, glad to have these older sisters—the ones who always, always have my back. I make a quick escape from Christopher and pluck a chocolate-covered strawberry off a server’s tray. I bite all the chocolate off, headed towards the table full of bite-sized pastries.
As I unnoticeably slip between bodies, I catch parts of conversations between whomever my mom invited: socialites, celebrities, and journalists.
“I heard they’re both signing prenups. I give it a month before they divorce.”
The last piece of chocolate goes down rough. The naysayers aren’t a new force of opposition. We’ve always had more doubters than supporters, more than any of my sisters’ relationships.
I just can’t believe this opposition is here, at my engagement party. I think no matter where we go, no matter how far we travel, there will always be people that want us to fail, to fall—to stumble harder and more often.
Ryke would tell me that it doesn’t matter. That no matter how much people root against us, our own relentless belief in ourselves, in our love, trumps everything.
“I bet they don’t even make it to the altar.”
It stings—it stings so much that I recognize the harm in doubt and the tragedy in love that must confront it. Like Romeo. Like Juliet. Ryke can say it’s enduring love, but history has shown that forbidden romance never ends well. I just wonder what our ending will be. If the past will repeat itself.
I scoot behind a couple chatty women and take another bite into my strawberry.
“Kathy told me that he forbids her from getting plastic surgery.”
My shoulders stiffen, and I slow my pace, just to hear the rest. I’m about twenty feet from the pastry table, the harps and violins still playing strong but I strain my ears to overhear.
The other woman gapes. “That’s awful. Samantha said that doctors could try fading her scar if she went through surgery, but I had no idea that Ryke was controlling her decision.”
I almost choke on the strawberry. I swallow hard so it goes down.
“Apparently he doesn’t want other men to look at her.” What? “If he keeps her disfigured, then he has her all to himself.”
My chest explodes with more anger than I’ve felt in a long time, my neck hot. I decided to forgo surgery. Me. No one else. Why is this so hard to believe? That I have a voice. That I make my own choices.
I’m not a confrontational person, but a giant part of my soul is begging to tell these women the truth. To cause a scene and alert the media, to stand on a chair and shout, “I, Daisy Petunia Calloway, refused to go through surgery of my own accord! No one swayed me, and I am happy, truly happy, as I am!”
I can do it. I know I can do it, and just as I take a step towards the women, I’m cut off by a dink dink dink! The sound of a knife tapping a champagne glass.
It’s as though the universe is saying, take a seat, Daisy Petunia Calloway. It’s not your time to stand up. It’s not your time to shout.
I let out a tight breath, surrendering. I reach the pastry table while the room quiets and the music stops. I’m searching for anything chocolate when Ryke sidles next to me.
“Hey,” he whispers, his fingers brushing mine, our pinkies hooking before he clasps my whole hand.
Dink, dink, dink!
“I don’t see any chocolate,” I say dishearteningly, glancing over my shoulder. My mother stands in the middle of the room with a champagne flute and a knife. People begin to edge away from us so she has a direct view of Ryke and me.
He grabs a doily-lined petit four off a tier and then rotates to face my mother. His left hand falls to the small of my back, and I use the dessert as a distraction, eating the chocolate decorative bow from the vanilla frosting. The inside looks like a classic yellow cake.
“Firstly,” my mom begins, “I’d like to thank everyone for being here to celebrate my daughter’s engagement.” Then her focus pins on me. Her demeanor is strict, lips a dark shade of red, brown hair tightened in a bun, and brows penciled with high arches. Three strands of black and white pearls drape across her breastbone like pieces of her soul: good and bad.
I can’t predict how she’ll be today. If she’ll choose to be the mom who adores me, who’d give her life protecting me, the one who attended photo shoots while I was underage to keep me safe. Or if she’ll choose to be the mom who needs me, the one who pushed me too hard, who wanted a life for me that I didn’t choose, to parade my beauty and wealth.
Someone hands my mother a cordless microphone. She says to me, “I’m happy that I could successfully surprise one of my daughter’s with an engagement party.” With a rising smile, her gaze flits over my shorts and T-shirt, further emphasizing her point.
Surprise. That’s how she wants to play this off then. I had no clue about the party so I dressed casually.
It works; many people chuckle. How funny, a surprise engagement party! Mostly I’m reminded of how much my mom hates having egg on her fa
ce.
She adjusts her handhold on the microphone, almost to hide the emotion behind her eyes. “My fearless daughter,” she says to me. “I told your father that you’d be the most trouble—that you’d break free of us faster and sooner than your sisters. Maybe that’s why I held on tighter to you.”
The chocolate melts in my hand, too entranced by my mom’s sincerity to do much else but stare straight on. I hesitate like there’s a punchline coming, like something backhanded will sting my cheek.
“You could never sit still as a child,” she says, the room quiet, everyone grasping at her words. I am too. “You had this toy car, a pink convertible, and if your father and I weren’t looking, you’d run outside to drive it down the street. Even at four and five years old, you were ready to race away. And you never turned back, not then and not now.” She takes a breath. “There was a time where I tried to contain you from what I imagined was harm’s way, but you helped me realize that I can’t bottle lightning.”
Tears build in my eyes, and they reflect back in my mom’s.
She grazes over my features and stops on Ryke. Her neck seems to elongate, stringent and authoritative. “Greg and I often talked about what kind of man would suit Daisy, who could possibly be good enough for our youngest, most carefree daughter. The answer was always no one.”
People laugh again, but I’m stuck on the softness in my mother’s eyes, the vulnerability in her story. She rarely shares intimate pieces of our history with me, let alone aloud to her friends.
“Ryke Meadows.” My mom says his name stiffly, but I don’t hear any disdain that would’ve been there two years ago. “We’ve had our ups and downs.” She adjusts her grip on the microphone again.
I notice Ryke’s darkened stare, but he stays quiet, waiting with the rest of us to see which way this blows.
