Page 71 of The Sun Will Rise
“Amie, your child might be insane.”
“Might be?”
“Fair point.” Paloma smirks as Amie laughs, a smile on her face as she watches her daughter squealing with delight. Pup’s enormous tongue licks her fingers as she feeds him a treat. “Anyway. I still can’t believe Missfuck the patriarchyover here actually settled down. With a man!”
“Chances of it being a woman were slim to none, Lo,” Amie smirks. “Sorry to burst your bubble.”
A tiny laugh bubbles up my throat. “You know you’d be my first choice, Sweet Thing.” I reach over to pull Lo into a sideways hug.
“Miss Independent Woman, Miss I Don’t Need No Man…”
“We have to toast this with margs, you know,” Amie declares. “Leave the men and the kids at home. Wet the baby’s head, so to speak.”
Paloma snickers. “That’s funny, ‘cause he is practically a baby.”
“God, Roo,” Amie laughs. “I should’ve known of all of us, you’d be the cougar.”
I curl my fingers into claws and feign a swipe at her, laughing all the while.
“Wait a minute though.” Paloma sobers a little. “How youngishe? Did I miss that?”
I mumble quietly, face dropped towards my knees.
“Sorry, what was that?” Amie cups her ear and leans in.
“He’s twenty-seven.”
Paloma shrieks.
“He’s twenty-eight in October.”
“He’s—” Paloma cuts herself off before lowering her voice and continuing. “Has he even hit puberty?!”
“Yes.” I roll my eyes. “He has very much hit puberty. And puberty wasverykind.”
Amie smirks, following my gaze to where Everett and Cam are chatting over the grill. Paloma follows, nodding appreciatively with a quiet whistle.
“Hedoeswear those jeans well.”
“Even better when he doesn’t wear them at all.”
“Good god, are Katy and I this sickening?” Amie rolls her eyes. Paloma and I glance at each other before answering together.
“Yes.”
The three of us laugh for just a minute until the air fills with a yip from Pup and a squeal from Maisy. All three of us snap our heads towards the sound to find Maisy sitting on Jay’s shoulders as he ambles over to Cam and Everett at the grill. Katy flops down beside us, breathless.
“My God, that girl could bottle that energy and sell it.”
“Fucking tell me about it,” Amie grumbles, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Never fucking stops.”
“I’m exhausted. I think she’s exhausted Pup, too.”
“She’ll exhaust the fucking cockroaches,” Amie agrees. Jay is stood behind Cam now, with Maisy stretching her arms around his head to reach Cam, who seems to be pretending he has no idea where she is. Shrieks of delight mingle with the sound of sizzling from the grill, and it strikes me that this is the perfect kind of late afternoon spent with my family—the kind I’ve missed with my nose buried in contracts for the last decade. I reach out my hands to my best friends.
“I love you girls, you know that, right?”
“We know, Roo.” Katy squeezes the fingers of my left hand while Paloma holds my right. Amie rubs my arm, shuffling in front of me to close our circle. “We love you back. Always.”
