I thought about this and realized, way late, that I hadn’t seen any of those bitches in ages.
And they definitely weren’t on tap to help her out the last year she’d been breaking her neck to save money for a house.
Right.
Now I was getting mad.
“Are you serious?” I demanded.
“Nobody likes a crying baby dragging on their Sunday mimosa-fueled brunch.”
I couldn’t argue that.
“And a couple of them even got embarrassed when I was breastfeeding.”
And I couldn’t champion that because, seriously, people needed to get over it. That wasn’t a big deal.
Anyway, we lived in Phoenix, and all year round, men would take to the sidewalks and run without a shirt on, and some of that flesh, I really didn’t want to see. But even if he was fit, it was almost worse. Like he was a showoff. Total yuck.
I wasn’t going to get into that.
What I could say, I did.
“So, they could find other things to do with you.”
“They didn’t.”
“Did you, uh…give it a go to try to find things to do with them?”
“They made an effort at first. Then they didn’t. So I did. Now, if I text, they might text back a week or so later.”
I couldn’t say I was a spot-on text returner. It might even be the next day, or two (sometimes even three) before I returned a non-urgent text.
But over a week?
Uncool.
“That is not cool,” I sniped.
“No,” she agreed. “And it wasn’t because I was leaning on them, like I did with Mom, Dad and you. None of them ever offered to babysit or even said they were interested. So I didn’t ask.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“I don’t know, Luna. What was I going to say? Poor, pitiful me, three babies, no friends, no money, no fun.”
“Yes, Dream. I’m your sister. I’m not going anywhere. Ever. So yes. One thousand percent you can tell me those things. But you aren’t pitiful. You know what path you wanted to be on and you’re on it. It might not be a path others want to take or even understand. But…fuck ’em.”
“Harmony wasn’t planned,” she whispered this admission.
But I knew this since she told Raye, and Raye told me. I’d just never talked to my sister about it.
“One kid is a lot, Luna. Two feels like you have four. Three feels like you have sixty.”
“Is it overwhelming you?”
“I love them to my soul. But…like I said, they’re a lot. I’m thirty-three. I like a mimosa brunch occasionally, but that isn’t my jam. I want a house with a yard so I can plant a garden and maybe get some chickens.”
I didn’t ask her what she’d do with chickens, since she was vegan, I just let her roll.
