Fuel the Fire

“Is it quiet to you in here?” I ask.

“No, darling,” he says.

“What do you hear?” I take another sip, and I reach my hand out so Jane can play with my bracelet on my wrist. She immediately takes interest in it.

“Alarm clocks beeping during school days, in multiple rooms,” Connor tells me. “They keep ringing at different intervals.”

I smile, imagining teenagers pressing the snooze button. “Who wakes them up, me or you?”

“We take turns.” Of course we do.

“What else?”

“The slam of bathroom doors and the turn of faucets. Music from bedrooms and laughter—always laughter.”

I rest my chin on his shoulder. “I must be laughing at your smile.”

He immediately breaks into a full-blown grin.

“I wasn’t joking, Richard.” I glower.

“You don’t laugh when I smile, you do this.” He pinches my chin so that my head rises off his shoulder. I’m carving my name in his forehead with daggered eyes. “You do know what a ‘laugh’ is?”

I give him a look of zero amusement. “I’m going to cut off your tongue.”

His grin spreads. “Then the house will be literally and figuratively quiet.”

I face-palm him, and he kisses my hand…and then he kisses me

she approaches Ryke.

“Whoa thar, pirate,” she says with half-laughter, half-tears, unable to contain her sadness like she usually can. She covers her face with her hands to hide it.

Ryke hugs her to his chest and kisses the top of her head. Daisy rubs her face and then whistles. Coconut leaps off the couch and sprints to her side.

“She’s not dying,” Loren reminds Lily. “And I can put in a pop tart for you.”

“It’s not the same thing.” Lily sniffs, hesitantly leaving my side. “You like pop tarts, and you’d eat mine.”

He sighs, wishing he could fix her sadness, knowing he can’t. The best he does is tuck Moffy to his chest and then Lily springs onto his back, wrapping her legs around his waist. They head through the archway and towards the door like that.

“What if I miss a period?” Lily suddenly asks me. The room quiets, and all the men exchange worry. “Hypothetically,” she adds, turning bright red. “Do I call you or do I drive down here or do I—”

“You come see me.” I hold her hand, and then I hold Daisy’s, who has been suspiciously quiet ever since we entered the house. She’s not smiling like she was on the golf cart.

“And what if…what if I’m having a bad day and I need you to walk into my room…and you do that thing where you open the curtains really fast and all the light floods in…” She bursts into tears.

It triggers Daisy, who begins to cry too.

And now I’m fucking crying. “Anyone can open your blinds.”

“Not like you do.” Lily’s waterworks won’t cease. Why did I ask for this? My eyes burn terribly, and no matter how many large inhales I take, a weight sinks on my chest. This isn’t goodbye, Rose.

Daisy adds tearfully, “I’m going to miss the sound of your heels in the morning.”

“And when you always put pop tarts in the toaster for us, even when you hate pop tarts,” Lily cries.

We’re all a mess. I squeeze their hands, but it only intensifies what remains between us, an underlying goodbye even if it’s not a permanent, fixed one. This is goodbye of our lives in one house together.

“I love you both,” I tell them strongly, “and I’ll always be here if you need me.”

“When,” Daisy corrects. “When we need you.”

Tears spill down my cheeks, and they hug me at the same time. I’m the oldest of them, but I consider Daisy and Lily wholly equal to myself, the sweeter and more lovable sides of a Calloway sister, while I’m the fierce quarter.

When we break apart, we all turn towards the men, all of them looking a little choked up.

“Can you walk a little louder next time?” Lo asks with a half-smile, his right hand still in a black cast. “Thanks.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t talk about anal sex behind our backs,” I retort, able to deduce the subject of their conversation.

“Fine, I’ll talk about it to your face,” Lo challenges. “I hear you like it in the ass.” He raises his can of Fizz Life to me. “Cheers.”

I narrow my eyes at my husband. “Richard.”

He looks as guiltless as Loren. “Rose,” he says and then sips his wine with a smile.

“Your hickey is showing,” I tell her and fix my hair in the tiniest rearview mirror I’ve ever seen.

“It’s a wolf bite.” She chomps with her teeth and then smiles wider, a clear red mark on her neck. Besides the hickey, she wears Ryke’s baseball cap backwards and a muscle shirt that says, Whoa thar, pirate. I want ye treasure.

“As long as you’re happy with it, I’m happy,”

There are rare people who will fuel the fire inside of you, who will awaken a dormant passion, who will challenge you, who will push you and better you. She alone is my rarity.

“I’m always whomever or whatever people need me to be,” I say strongly, “but you were the only one who needed me to be me.”

She nods with tears brimming her eyes. “I can hear your heart beating.”

My lips pull higher, and I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “It beats in equal time with yours.” I kiss the hollow of her neck and whisper, “Toujours.”

Always.

“I just want Jane to have a sister. We could have two kids and I’d be happy or we could have ten, as long as there are two girls somewhere.”

We can’t plan the exact number, not when there are too many unforeseeable roadblocks, but we can try to achieve this.

Two Cobalt girls.

Sisters.

“Then as soon as you have another girl, our girl”—I have to preface—“we’ll stop and that’ll be the size of our family.” I wait for this proclamation to sink into her features, and Rose’s eyes widen. She almost rocks backwards, but I clutch her hip, keeping her near.

“Richard Connor Cobalt, you’re leaving this up to fate.” Her smile lights her eyes, filled with amusement. I’m more than satisfied to leave the number of our kids to science, and yes, to chance.

“Your fate will be kind to me,” I tell her. “I can make anyone grow to love me in time.”

Rose rolls her eyes. “Your fate is my fate.” I believe it. “And they don’t love you, Connor. They love the person you give them.” She pauses and says, “I love you. I’m proud of you. And I can’t imagine being anywhere but by your side.”

“There is no more doubt,” I say. “Whatever missteps our children take or mistakes we may make, their lives will be filled with love and passion—and our children, ours, will suck the marrow out of life and paint this gray fucking world with color.” I stare deeply into those fierce yellow-green eyes, my heart drumming in sync with hers. “Our children will be unforgettable like us. You wait and see.”

Rose’s hand rises up to my shoulder. “This is the place where we’ve both gone mad.” She turns her head just a fraction, to the lily pads idle in the water. “Who on Earth would want to procreate with you? Eight times?” She meets my burgeoning, conceited grin. “I must be insane.”

She’s saying a resounding, earth-shifting yes.

There has to be one exception. Always.

And this is it. “We can break our rules for our children,” I tell her. “We’ve been under the notion that having more children would be selfish, but look around us, Rose, look at her and tell me what part of this world is so unbearable that we shouldn’t give another child life?”

Rose watches Jane lean close to the purple wisteria, big blue eyes flooded with childlike wonder, and then our daughter points curiously at the fauna canopied above us. She babbles a string of noises that sounds like, what is this?

“It’s a dream taking flight, Jane,” I say the words to Rose, seizing her attention and gaze.