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“You haven’t even asked for an intervention pumpkin cheesecake bar yet.” Aunt Dawn frowns.
Oh, for fuck’s sake….
“I wasn’t exactly invited to my own intervention… in my own home.” I sigh, moving into the kitchen to lean against the edge of the counter.
Aunt Dawn pours me a much-needed cup of coffee, smiling at me when she hands it over. “No one is invited to their own intervention, silly. But we made an exception, and I sent you an Evite last night. I have to say, I’m a little disappointed you didn’t RSVP by the deadline of midnight. We were all standing around, watching the pumpkin go up, and it just put a damper on the whole thing.”
“I didn’t have my phone. Because I wasin jail,” I remind her, counting to ten before I lose my temper and setting my coffee mug down on the counter before I hurl it across the room. I’m the peace-keeper. The one who always remains calm in the face of absolute insanity, no matter how much it sucks. Someone in this family needs to be the voice of reason, and since I always seem to be the only adult in attendance, that someone is always me.
“Kenny, you have got to change the cell phone policy in the holding facility.” Momtsksat him.
Aunt Dawn takes her seat again at the table, and they all start complaining about emergencies happening to inmates and the dire need for them to have phones. Kenny silently sips his coffee and shakes his head, probably wishing he was anywhere but here.
Join the club, buddy.
Just like always, I feel like the third wheel… technically the fifth, if we’re being all mathy. I am the only brunette with brown eyes in a sea of blondes with blue eyes, my aunt included. But it’s not just our hair and eye colors that always makes me feel like the odd woman out in this family. Penny and Ginger were born one day apart, and even though they’re cousins and not sisters, the two of them have always shared a twin-like bond.
My mom and my aunt are the same way. They were best friends since kindergarten who married brothers, lived on the same street, raised their families together, and buried their husbands together. The bond they share is what most girlfriends dream about and strive for when they’re younger, planning the future. Well, minus the whole dead-husbands who shit all over their wedding vows thing. That’s kind of a bummer when you’re living the dream.
Even though I share the same distrust for the male species as the rest of the women in my family, I’m not as ragey about it, and I realize not all men are created equal in the lying, cheating, betrayal department. That doesn’t mean I’m going to do something stupid like fall in love, but I wouldn’t burn everything to the ground if someone I cared about wanted to.
“I’m out of coffee, and the puppy kept me up all night. No one speak until I’ve had caffeine, or you will all die. Here, I met Abby out on your sidewalk getting ready to deliver these to you.”
I have just enough time to catch the familiar orange bakery box that’s held out to me then let go in midair before it drops to the ground, as my friend and neighbor, Callie, storms right through my front door without knocking, quickly passing me on her way over to my coffee pot on the counter.
No one says a word while we watch her grab one of my Halloween mugs from the holder in my coffee nook, wearing a pair of cotton pajama pants, a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over her mess of red hair that’s spilling out of it, and what looks to be her husband’s five-sizes-too-big boots on her feet as she thumps around my kitchen. Callie fills her mug to the brim with black coffee and then has to lean over and slurp a little out of it before she can pick it up.
“Okay, you may now speak.” Callie nods, slowly turning around to face everyone as she takes a careful sip of coffee, her eyelids no longer as droopy as they were when she first entered. “What are we discussing?”
Callie is one of the people I care about who managed to find love without being screwed over, and I’m very happy for her. Even if she often tries to push her happily-ever-after agenda on me. My friend married her childhood sweetheart, Marcus. Callie and Marcus are the only reason I still believe in love. Not for myself, obviously, but the two of them have proven it can work for other people. Since we live across the street from each other, knocking has become a thing of the past.
“That right there,” Penny mutters in answer to Callie’s question, pointing a finger in my direction as I stare down into the bakery box I just opened, unable to wipe the huge smile off my face. “That’s why we’re having an intervention. Because it’s only October 1st, and she already has fucking hearts in her eyes!”
I roll my eyes that are in no way filled with hearts. Even though I’m looking down at a box filled to the brim with pumpkin funnel cakes that Ford must have convinced the Harvest Grove bakery, Boo Bites, to make and deliver to me after he left his house while I was still sleeping. It makes my annoyance with him for disappearing this morning quickly vanish.
“He ruins everything. Year after year, he comes to Harvest Grove, tries to put a stop to all our fun, and you start ignoring us. Then you get hearts in your eyes, staying out doing God knows what with him all night long and not here to make us breakfast at your own intervention,” Ginger complains, while everyone else nods in agreement, including Kenny.
“Seriously?” I mutter to him as I set the bakery box down on the counter, which just makes Kenny shrug and then smile up at Aunt Dawn when she gets up to top off his coffee mug.
“Ford doesn’t ruin anything. We celebrated his homecoming eating Chinese food, watchingMostly Ghostly, and putting together my severed heads, just like every year,” I inform them, my arm sweeping out toward my entry table and the box I brought home with me.
“And then you watched him sleep and doodledSidney Prescottin a notebook the rest of the night,” Callie leans over and whispers in my ear with a snort, which earns her an elbow jab to the ribs.
That particular frivolity happenedonetime the first year Ford was in town. The doodling, not the sleep-watching. That’s creepy even forme.Callie caught me by sneaking up behind me during a lull in customers at the bar and looking over my shoulder to see what I was doing, and she will never let me live it down. It is not a big deal that I thought the universe was trying to tell me something when this broody, hot guy came to town, and his last name was Prescott. It’s no big thing that for like, a tiny blip in time in the grand scheme of things, I was downright giddy that if we got married, my name would be Sidney Prescott. Just like the greatest heroine of all Halloween movies inScream. The woman who always manages to defy death, while literally everyone around her runs right into it. Kind of like me.
The knowledge that I thought about marriage for any amount of time, no matter how small, would send this family right into a tailspin that would most likely result in bloodshed, third degree burns, and/or dismemberment. This is something I will take to my grave, and if Callie knows what’s good for her, she will also take it to hers, like a good friend.
“Can we speed up this intervention? I’d like to take a nap before my shift at the bar starts.” I make a hurry-up motion with my hand before crossing my arms in front of me.
“Quit your job,” my mother starts the intervention. “You can’t continue working for a man who ruins October.”
I cover up a yawn with one of my hands instead of arguing. I’ve worked at Wicked Pub and Grub, the only bar in town, since I was in high school. Long before Ford took over running it. Since it’s the only thing that keeps Ford coming back year after year, it will continue getting my support and hard work.
“No more sleeping at his place!” Ginger orders next.
All I do is blink at her. I stayed at Ford’s last night because we didn’t get finished with the movie and succulents until three in the morning. Technically, I only really slept there for a few hours, and that’s only because Ford threatened to tie me to a chair if I tried to walk home alone in the middle of the night, when he was too exhausted from traveling to accompany me. Just like he always does when I find myself at his place late and start nodding off. It’s easier to curl up on his couch than argue with him.
“No more accepting bribes from the enemy!” Penny demands.
