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Ares grinned. “Briefly, as in when she nut-punched that guy.”
Saylor covered her face as a blush overtook it.
“I’ll never live that down as long as I’m alive,” she muttered.
I tugged on her ponytail and walked to my dad, offering my hand.
“Heard you had a hostage call a little before shift end,” I said. “I thought for sure you weren’t going to make it.”
Dad grinned.
“Actually, I handed that job off officially as of today,” he answered. “No more negotiations for me. I’m also being replaced as the spokesman for KPD, too. I’m now backup if I’m ever needed. You’re looking at a man that no longer has to live by the sound of his pager.”
“They’re not pagers anymore, Dad,” Ares said as she offered Saylor a glass of wine. “They’re phone calls. Or alerts through an app.”
“Whatever,” he muttered. “Drink your wine and shut up before I remember that you ate all my cookies today.”
“I didn’t eat all of your cookies,” Ares denied. “Mom did.”
“Hey!” Mom said. “I didn’t eat them all, either. Aspen had some, too!”
“Don’t blame that on me, Memphis!” Aspen, my aunt, challenged with her own half-filled glass of wine. “I was just eating one because you handed it to me.”
“And it begins,” Dad muttered. “Where the hell is Drew?”
“In the living room talking to my husband,” Piper said as she came into the room. “Apparently it’s quieter out there.”
Without another word, Dad took another full beer from the fridge and left, leaving only the girls and me watching him go.
“You didn’t even save me one cookie, Mom?” I batted my eyes owlishly at her.
My mother’s mouth twitched, then she walked to the cabinet where she kept her wine and extracted one single cookie.
My mother’s cookies were to die for, literally. There was a point in time where Ares, Rune, and I had fought to the death over them. I was fairly sure I’d actually been executed by Ares once while she was on her period when I’d tried to eat the last one. Luckily my mother was always there to revive me.
Splitting the cookie in half, I winked at Saylor and handed it to her before also getting a beer and exiting the room.
I left silence in my wake.
***
Saylor
“Wow,” Ares said, causing my eyes to move to her. “I never would’ve guessed had I not just seen the evidence.”
I took a bite of the cookie, and Memphis started to speak.
“There was this one time,” Memphis began. “That there was one cookie left.” She started to laugh. “Ares was about sixteen. Lock eighteen. He was being shipped off to the military the next day.” Her eyes saddened. “I made him cookies for the last time, and he shared them with Ares and Rune. Ares was in a really shitty mood because she’d failed her driver’s test, hadn’t gotten her driver’s license like she’d wanted, and couldn’t go out with her friends that night as a consequence. Well, she could go out, but she couldn’t drive them like everyone had planned.”
“Thanks for sharing this embarrassing story, Mother,” Ares said dryly.
My eyes flicked to her.
She didn’t look embarrassed, she looked amused.
Her hair was pulled up into a messy bun on top of her head, and tendrils of it were falling down into her face and tickling her ears.
I wished I could perfect the messy bun look like her.
