“Mm-hm.” She leaned in, kissed Sun on the cheek, then bounced out, yelling back, “I get the first shower!”
Sun grabbed her head before it fell off, and sat up, horrified. “I’m going to kill her.”
“You can’t kill her for being a mini-Sunshine.”
She looked at the lump beside her. “That child is nothing like me. I would never have done something that evil to my mother.”
“Oh, please.” He rolled over and sat up. “Ninth grade. Chainsaw. Ketchup. A package of hot dogs.”
“No, no,” she said, trying to sit up as well, but the world spun. “That was totally different.”
“Your mother had nightmares for months.”
He had a point. “I can’t believe this happened.”
“Which part?”
“All of it. And now Auri? She’s totally going to tell my mom.”
“I’m not a snitch, Mom!” Auri yelled from her room.
Sun grabbed her head again and fought the Earth tilting on its axis to look over at Quincy. “Are you okay?”
He shrugged a wide shoulder. “I have a great constitution. I can drink for days.” The second the words left his mouth, he bent over the side of the bed and emptied the contents of his stomach into the trash can there.
That time, Sun did follow suit. Minus the trash can.
An hour later, Auri emerged from her room like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon as she headed for the coffeepot. “Is he gone?” she asked, perky as a Disney princess on Adderall.
The little shit looked stunning in a mint-green summer blouse and black leggings.
Sun squeezed her eyes shut. She had never even brought a man home to meet Auri. It was always just the two of them, no matter how serious she’d gotten. And now this?
Way to mom, Sunshine.
“Yes, he left, sweetheart,” she said over her shoulder as she headed back to her room. That most magic of elixirs known as Alka-Seltzer had done the trick. That combined with a hot shower and a little black coffee, and Sun was as good as new. Almost. Most of the cobwebs had been shaken off, at least.
One thing the elixir didn’t shake off was the dream she’d had about Levi. Her dreams had been so vivid lately, and this one was no exception.
Before she could ask Auri to come into her room—she had to explain—she heard the front door open. A scream quickly followed.
“Mom!”
Sun ran into the living room to see Auri stepping back, cowering from Elaine Freyr. She stepped around her daughter and gasped before grabbing Auri and folding her into her arms.
“What is wrong with you girls?” her mother asked. “Ruby Moore sent over a basket of muffins.”
A huge basket. A basket that made the one they got four months ago look like a Barbie DreamHouse prop.
“I’m scared, Mom.”
Sun smoothed her daughter’s hair, and whispered, “Me too, hon. Me too.”
Elaine glanced down and studied the basket in her hands, her expression suddenly wary. As it should’ve been. “Are you girls punking me?”
Auri giggled, giving up the game. “How do you even know what that means, Grandma?” She tiptoed over for a kiss from the woman.
Sun headed for the microwave to reheat her coffee before heading out.
“Ruby said to make sure you two got a few before that husband of mine finishes them off, so I thought I was doing you a favor.”
“Don’t do me any more,” Sun said.
“She’s so nice,” Auri said. “I wonder what horrible thing is going to happen, though.”
Elaine took a look at her surroundings. The overturned table. The broken glass. The bra on the back of the sofa. She chose to ignore them. “What do you mean?”
“Mom,” Sun said, dubious. “You have to know Ruby’s muffins are cursed. The whole town knows.”
Elaine sighed. “You cannot honestly believe that ridiculous rumor.”
“Yes, we can,” Sun and Auri said at the same time.
“Because they are cursed, Grandma. Chastity Bertram’s mother slipped a disc after she got one. And Beatrice Morales’s cousin broke both her legs and both her arms exactly twenty-seven minutes after one showed up on her doorstep.” Auri picked up her backpack, then thought again. “Of course, that only happened because she and her little brother were fighting over it and he pushed her down the stairs.”
“Good heavens.” She set the basket on the snack bar. “Why was Quincy’s cruiser parked in the drive so early this morning?”
Sun sucked in a soft breath mid-sip and spent the next three minutes coughing up a spleen.
“I would tell you, Grandma,” Auri said, heading out the door. “But snitches get stitches and wind up in ditches.”
Elaine looked at Sun. “What does that even mean?”
“It means,” Sun said, her voice strained, “I raised my daughter right.” She gave her mother a quick peck on the cheek, then left the woman standing in her kitchen, shaking her head. That happened a lot.
“How are things going?” Sun asked Auri as she drove her to school. It was a short trip, so she didn’t have a lot of time.
“Okay,” she said with a shrug. “Team Lynelle still talks behind my back.”
That fact sliced through Sun’s heart every time she thought about it. “Honey, don’t worry about people who talk behind your back. They’re behind you for a reason.”
Auri’s mouth fell open. “That’s really good. Did you just make that up?”
“No. Fortune cookie.”
“Ah.”
“Honey—”
“I know what you’re going to say.” She held up a hand to stop her. “It’s okay, Mom. According to the girls at school, Quincy’s a major hottie.”
She couldn’t argue that. “Want to talk about it?”
“About you and Quincy?” she asked with a snort.
Sun pulled into the drop-off area and waited to move forward. “I know how it looked, hon.”
“It looked to me like you have no room to talk,” Auri said, a satisfied smirk on her face.
That got Sun’s attention. “Really? In what way?”
“You had a boy in your room. I had a boy in my room. I say let bygones be bygones.”
Sun turned to wave at Principal Jacobs, mostly to squelch a wayward grin. “I’d like to start by saying you have a very valid argument.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Thank you.”
“I’d like to say that,” she corrected, “but I won’t, because you don’t.”
Auri frowned. “Why? It seems logical to me. And Cruz and I weren’t even naked.”
Sun pinched the bridge of her nose. “Okay, first off, nothing happened.”
“Nay-ked,” she reiterated.
“I know.” Sun lost points in that area, but she needed Auri to know the truth. She eased forward and was about to piss off a lot of other parents, because she had no intention of leaving Auri with the idea that she and Quincy had gone all the way.
Then again, that had been the original plan. She cringed at the thought. She risked the friendship of the most important man in her life besides her dad. She wasn’t including Levi since he wasn’t actually in her life. But seriously, how stupid could she be? “I just want to make sure you understand nothing happened.”