Page 162 of The Plan

They go back and forth a few times before her mom lets out a sigh. “How is it living with my daughter, Sire?” My head snapsdown to the phone, and I feel my brows raise. This is the first time she’s directly asked me something, and in English.

“It’s really good, I love living with her.” I pause for a brief second. “She doesn’t know how to dry herself after a shower, though, so she leaves a trail of water all the way to the room.” I hear her snicker, and then I add, “I slipped two days ago, and last night she left a wet trail again, so I slipped… again.”

I swear I hear her mom muffle a laugh, but Vidia doesn’t even try to hide her laugh. If the roles were reversed—actually, no. The roleswouldn’t bereversed because I wouldn’t do that shit after the first time she fell. I wouldn’t even let her fall the first time. She watched me bust my fucking ass and didn’t even attempt to help or warn me that the floor was wet. Little shit.

“Are you okay?”

I smile at the phone again, and when I glance at Vid, she looks so hopeful. “Yeah, I’m fine. I only—”

“She needs to leave more water next time.” My. Jaw. Drops. She sounds just like Hazel. I one hundred percent believe it now that they all grew up together. Vidia is hysterical in front of me, so I choose to believe her mom is joking.

“Okay, I really do have to go. I have a game soon.”

“Buena suerte!” I smile proudly for remembering that, and Vid gives me a high five.

Her mom thanks me before going on. “V told me you guys are packing the rest of your things today?” I confirm and expect her to say something passive-aggressive like before, but to my surprise, she doesn’t. “Don’t let her carry any of the heavy things. She was complaining about leg pains.” My eyes snap up to Vidia, and when she shoves my arm, I have to bite my tongue not to laugh.

When we say bye to her mom, I’m beaming at Vid. “She loves me.”

“That went really well, but I’m almost positive she was just pretending to be nice because I told her she was hurting my feelings by being rude to you.” My shoulders slouch, but she only shrugs. “At least you made her laugh. That sounded real.”

“Is this actually making you sad?”

She lets out a sigh before shrugging again. “I just need to give her time. I know she’s just being a protective mom and stuff. She was a lot meaner to girls I stopped being friends with in high school, so this is honestly not bad.” I nod in response, and she hops off her seat with a smile.

“I’m off from work today. Wanna turn in your key to—”

“Yes.”

She laughs at the excitement in my voice, and we get ready so I can be fully moved in.

Vidia

“Stop trying to lift theheavy shit.” Sire takes one of the boxes from my arm. “You have leg pains,” he mocks, and I squint my eyes at him.

“It’s not that heavy.”

He drops it back in my arms, and when I almost drop it, he quickly catches it with a laugh. Okay, it’s heavy. I stare at him with a small smile as he laughs. After a few beats, I break my gaze away from him and look around his room. He has a fewsmall nick-nacks that still need to be packed, so I walk over to them. “Where’d you get this from?” I picked up an egg-shaped snow globe with an easter bunny in it.

“Sage gave it to me.” He comes from behind me and takes it. He shakes it and keeps his eyes on it as he watches the snow fall around the bunny. “It was the first Christmas I spent with them, and since they weren’t expecting me to be there, I only had a few gifts compared to the mountain of gifts the twins had. She felt bad and gave me it.”

I smile at how thoughtful Sage is. I’m sure he has hundreds of stories where she does small things like that. “That sounds like Sage.”

He smiles and shakes the snow globe again. “Yeah. Halfway through opening gifts, I guess she noticed I wasn’t opening anything and ran upstairs, claiming she forgot one more for me.” He snickers at the memory. “I knew she already had this because I spent Easter with them that year and remember her getting it.” I can’t help but laugh. I love that Sage always does that, tries to make everyone around her feel better.

“I thanked her anyway and of course acted like it was the coolest gift ever, but I really did appreciate it. She ended up letting me open the rest of her gifts, but they were all girly clothes, so she forced August to let me open his.” He has a warm smile on his face and is staring at the snow globe like all the memories from that Christmas are trapped in it.

“How old were you?” He shrugs and wraps the snow globe in bubble wrap.

“I don’t know, eight, maybe nine.” He places the wrapped snow globe into a box.

“Why were you spending Christmas with them?” I know he wasn’t invited since he just said they weren’t expecting him.

“Fiona… my—”

“I know.” I nod, reminding him I know she’s his bio mom. He only ever told me about her that one time, besides in college, I mean, but I’m glad he’s opening up about her again.

“She was passed out that entire weekend. I spent Christmas Eve next door with Lis, then Christmas day with the twins.”

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