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Today, I’ve fallen in deeper love with these people.
No matter which direction we fucking move, we’ll all still be there.
[ 4 ]
July 2018
The Cobalt Estate
Philadelphia
CONNOR COBALT
I wait outside Jane’s bedroom door with my arm propped against the wall. From inside, dishware clinks. Gently, I push the door further open, granting me a better view.
Velveteen pale pink chairs surround a tiny round table, teacups and saucers spread over floral placemats. My three-year-old daughter nimbly skips around her guests, most of which are inanimate. Her favorite: a stuffed lion. Seated in the most robust and ornate chair of all six.
I never played pretend like this.
Not as a child.
Never as an adult.
Yet, I feel my lips rise.
Jane pours what looks like milk in a teacup. On the other side, her squirmy eleven-month-old twin brothers babble inarticulately, but they seem to play along. Inspecting their saucers and placemats with curious yellow-green eyes.
Hair in a sleek pony, Rose bends between both boys and fills a sugar bowl with Cheerios. Fire never extinguishes from her gaze.
My grin expands tenfold.
Beckett tugs on his mother’s black dress, one that just barely hides her collarbone, one that hugs her frame perfectly, like a dust jacket fit on a newly printed hardback.
Beckett asks her a question that neither of us would be able to piece apart, but Rose regards him with understanding.
“Of course. I’ll take up your requests with the hostess.” She kisses the top of his head, his brown hair much darker and curlier than Charlie’s.
Then Rose brushes her hands together and places them on her hips, eyeing the state of the table. Every place setting is symmetrical and identical to the next.
Her gaze suddenly lifts to mine.
I don’t move. I don’t cower. As her glare fastens onto mine, I only grin wider. Hello, Rose.
Go to hell, Richard, her eyes say.
Shoulders strict and chin raised, she marches around our child’s table. Even with her heels soundless on the carpet, I can still feel the hostility with each purposeful step.
She stops, grips the door like a weapon, and drills the hottest and coldest glare into me. Rose Calloway Cobalt has always been a series of contradictions.
I adore this one just as much as every other. “Rose,” I say smoothly.
She bypasses the perfunctory Richard and snaps, “You were given one direction and you failed.” She growls at the sight of my burgeoning grin. “I said you failed, Richard. Be angry.”
“I’m amused,” I say in a hushed voice so Jane can’t hear. “And a smile usually accompanies amusement, not anger.”
She huffs, her shoulders falling and eyes roaming my white button-down and composure. “Then you’re amused at your daughter’s loss. She wanted to surprise you with the tea party, but you’ve decided to go rogue and spy on us.” Rose lets go of the door, just to cross her arms. “I’d punish you for this.”
“You’d punish me?” I arch a brow. “Have you been reading Coballoway fan fiction?”
She rolls her eyes dramatically. Lily sent us links to fan fiction based off of Princesses of Philly. Willow first sent them to Daisy, then Daisy sent them to Lily, and Lily sent them to everyone.
I skimmed some, and I completely stopped reading when I crossed the title Royal Love: Scott Van Wright & Rose Van Wright. In the writer’s defense, this was published online long before Scott publically went to jail.
Regardless, anytime you attach “Van Wright” to my wife, it instantly becomes my least favorite fiction.
“You don’t think I can punish you?” Rose burns hot and leans close, just to say with a great deal of seriousness, “I’d cut off your tongue with a dull serrated knife, and I’d finish you off in a rusty guillotine.” She lifts her manicured nail at my eye. “Don’t fuck with me or my babies—”
“Our babies,” I correct her.
She skims me head-to-toe, her disdain only present to mask her love. I feel it in every glare. “I can’t believe I allowed my DNA to mix with yours and create multiple little monsters. What was I thinking?”
Standing tall above her, I reach out, my hand curving around the crook of her waist. She relaxes at my touch, and her chest collapses. I draw Rose closer, until her legs brush my legs. In a whisper, I say, “You were thinking ‘I’m undeniably, indisputably in love with the most brilliant and the most handsome man on Ear—”
Rose puts her palm over my lips. “I hate you.” She feels my grin grow beneath her hand and she growls, dropping it.
“You love me.” I study her full lips but mostly the blaze in her eyes. I’m about to express just how much I reciprocate those feelings, but then a toddler abruptly cuts off our exchange.
“Daddy? Is that you?” Jane asks. I have a major height advantage over Rose, but I angle myself out of Jane’s view. In a quick second, I catch sight of her teal tutu behind Rose’s slender legs, and then Rose slams the door in my face.
“He’s still waiting for you,” Rose tells our daughter, her voice clear through the wood. “You can introduce him. Or you can exile him from the tea party.”
My lips curve up again. You would love that option; wouldn’t you, Rose?
Jane gasps. “I can’t exile, Daddy.”
Did you hear that, Rose? I picture her torrid glare and the roll of her eyes.
“What about temporary banishment?” she asks Jane.
“No banishment.” At three, her words are incredibly easier to understand compared to Jane at two or one, but it’s not as though she enunciates “banishment” perfectly. It’s partially garbled, and she only knows the word because we’ve used it before, just like exile.
Jane also adds, “Daddy’s never been to a tea party.”
Never one with toys as the guests, but Rose doesn’t correct her and neither would I.
“Then you better hurry and i
ntroduce him. Even if Daddy says he’ll wait forever for you, no one has the ability to stand in a hallway for eternity.” Her voice is frost, but every syllable heats my body.
“Introdoozing Daddy!” she announces. “Come in, Daddy!”
I open the door with the raise of my brows, mortaring on surprise like a mask I’ve worn before. I sweep her pale pink room, her toddler bed, armoire and regal chandelier before landing on the tea party arrangement and her eager blue eyes.
“Tu es de toute beauté, mon cœur.” Such beauty, my heart.
Jane’s face lights, and she touches her black cat-ear headband, ensuring that it hasn’t fallen. Then without pause, she grabs hold of my hand and leads me further inside. With a partial smile peeking, Rose walks to her chair beside Beckett.
She catches me staring and reverts to a glare. Rose mouths, rusty guillotine and mimes slashing my neck. Then she triumphantly takes a seat, crossing her ankles.
I say hushed to Rose, “I’d believe your hyperboles more if they didn’t involve eighteenth-century machinery.”
Rose unties her hair and combs her fingers through the strands. “Guillotines were still used long after the French Revolution.”
She’s not wrong.
Jane stops me by two empty chairs and looks up with bold blue eyes. “What’s a googoniny?”
Rose tries hard not to laugh, hand pressed to her mouth, but she ends up snorting.
I can’t hide my smile. “Googoniny isn’t a word.” What I’m about to say next would make some parents balk or flame red. “It’s guillotine, and it’s a device used for executions.”
She has no clue what “execution” means, and before she asks, I take a seat in one of the free chairs.
“No!” she yells and grips my arm so I stand.
Rose is smitten at my misstep.
Matter-of-factly, Jane says, “That’s Sadie’s chair.”
I look to Rose. “You knew this seat was taken?”
“Yes.” She collects her hair on one shoulder, and I eye the base of her neck. Rose reaches over and spoons Cheerios onto Charlie and Beckett’s saucers.
