She’s had just as much wine to drink as I have, it’s not like she’s sober enough to do anything that bad.

Chapter 11

– Handy –

Molly

“I can’t believe I took a red-eye flight home for this shit,” Ava complains, shaking her head at me in disappointment as she perches on the edge of our mother’s desk at Seduction and Snacks.

“Hey, I told you on the phone last night what was going on. It’s not my fault you felt the need to get the first flight out,” I argue.

Today was my first official day at the headquarters of our family business in the test kitchen. I had a glorious day working alone in the huge industrial kitchen while I got busy tweaking some of the old recipes, and then Ava had to come in and ruin my good mood by dragging me away from my happy place and into mom’s empty office on the other side of the building while she was out running errands.

“Charlotte tore me a new asshole for spilling the beans to Mom and Dad so I figured coming home early in your time of need was the least I could do,” she informs me. “I still can’t believe she’s making you do this shit for her, and I can’t believe you actually agreed to it.”

I was so busy trying to decipher a bunch of weird, random text messages Marco sent last night that when my cell phone rang, I quickly answered it without checking caller I.D., hoping it was him. Ava screamed at me for fifteen minutes about getting pregnant and how she had to find out from Tyler instead of me. When I finally managed to shut her up and tell her the truth, she said she was coming home and hung up before I could say anything else.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time, and did you not hear me when I told you everything she agreed to give me?” I ask.

“Who cares about that shit? Tell me more about this hot teacher of yours that’s standing in as the baby daddy,” she says with a wicked smile. “Charlotte said his name is Mo or something.”

Rolling my eyes, I push myself up from the chair in the middle of the room and start to pace. “His name is Marco, not Mo, and he’s not my teacher. Not anymore at least, you know, since I graduated.”

I pause, wondering if she’ll acknowledge my big accomplishment since no one else seems to have remembered now that they have my fake baby on the brain. I’m trying not to let it get to me that no one in my family has said a word about how all of my hard work for the last two years has successfully come to an end. Even today, my first official day of work, which was temporarily scheduled six months ago barring I passed my final, went unnoticed. When I announced I was going to work this morning and waited for it to click in with my mother, all she did was hand me a prenatal vitamin and told me not to take it on an empty stomach.

“Mmmmmm, Marco,” she purrs. “Me likey. He already sounds hot, tell me more.”

Feeling stupid for thinking Ava of all people would be the one to congratulate me, I continue pacing.

“All guys name their penis, so don’t be embarrassed about that. Although Humpy the Wonder Penis is a little much,” she muses, causing me to stop pacing.

“Where the hell did you get my cell phone?!” I yell, trying to take it from her, but she moves quickly and smacks my hand away.

“I grabbed it from the kitchen counter before I dragged you in here,” she laughs, continuing to read the string of weird texts I got from Marco last night. “You should know better than to leave your phone lying around for just anyone to take.”

I haven’t even had a chance to try and decipher those texts, and now Ava is going to make it worse.

“Humpy likes to wear green dresses and bananas are delicious,” she reads one of the texts out loud. “Yikes, how much time did you say he spent alone with Uncle Drew?”

I finally manage to overpower her and snatch my phone out of her hands. “Your boyfriend dresses up like a horse, your opinion is invalid!”

She hops off of her desk and puts her hands on her hips. “It’s not a horse, it’s as PONY, show some respect!”

There are so many things I could say right now, but I decide to keep them to myself because spending any amount of time thinking about what Ava and her Brony boyfriend do when they’re alone makes me was to dunk my head in a tub full of bleach.

“I see what you’re doing by trying to turn this around on me,” she says casually, dropping her hands from her hips to lean back against the edge of the desk. “You’re avoiding the real issue.”

I scoff. “Really? I’m pretending to be pregnant because our sister is too afraid to tell her fiancé the truth. I’m fucking up my life, so she can live happily ever after. How is that avoiding ANY subject?”

She waves me off with a flap of her hand.

“Pshaw, b-o-r-i-n-g,” she says in a sing-song voice. “I’m much more interested on you being a pregnant virgin. Let’s discuss that.”

“Oh, my GOD, is nothing sacred in this family?!” I shout in irritation.

And here I thought Charlotte and I finally had a moment in the doctor’s office. She probably called Ava five seconds after we left.

“Sacred? You’re kidding, right?” she laughs. “Uncle Drew puts a picture of his balls on their Christmas card every year, and forever ruined Taco Tuesday night at mom and dad’s when he told us Aunt Jenny’s vagina can hold two taco shells without spilling the contents. The sacred ship sailed long before we were born.”

I cringe, remembering there are much worse things to have floating around in my brain aside from Ava and her pony-loving boyfriend.

“I think we need to discuss when you plan on telling this Marco guy that you haven’t lost your virginity,” she smirks.

I feel my face heat with embarrassment as she stares at me. Forget the whole fake pregnancy thing. That is a piece of cake compared to this torture.

“And don’t bother trying to make up some lie about how he’s just a guy and it’s no big deal,” she warns me. “Charlotte already told me how cute you two are together and how you’ve been all girly and emo that he hasn’t called since he met the family.”

My mouth drops open in indignation. “I have NOT been girly and emo!”

“So you haven’t been checking your phone every two minutes and kept yourself locked in your bedroom playing the soundtrack from The Virgin Suicides on repeat?” she asks with a knowing smile.

First Charlotte and now my mother. Forget moving across town, I’m moving to Mexico.

“It’s a good soundtrack!” I argue lamely.

“From a movie about five sisters who commit suicide!” she replies. “I repeat, girly and emo.”

I groan, throwing my hands up in the air.

“Fine! I really like the guy, and he said he really likes me too which I guess is obvious considering that he agreed to do something so crazy to help me out, but then all the idiots we’re related to got ahold of him and he traded in his macho sports car for a mom van, came home smelling like pee and threw up hotdogs for the next two days where I only heard from him twice until last night when he kept sending me texts about bananas wearing dresses, and I’m pretty sure our family ruined him permanently and I’ll never see him again,” I ramble so fast I barely comprehend what is coming out of my mouth.

Fortunately, Ava speaks fluent rambling nonsense and nods her head in understanding.

“Yeah, Charlotte told me about the bag of dicks thing, too. Bravo to Marco for finally putting an end to that argument so we don’t have to listen to it at yet another Thanksgiving dinner,” she says. “He’s not completely ignoring you, so obviously they didn’t scare him away for good. The poor guy had to deal with a lot in one day, so cut him some slack. He took his own life in his hands, and you didn’t even put out when it was over. That guy is a saint.”