“What the hell are they doing?” Carter muttered, watching the scene in front of us.
It wasn’t that they were drunk like last time. Two of the women had a pink rash spreading from their mouths to their noses and down their chins. Three of them were excitedly pulling eyelashes off and then pressing them back onto their arms and legs.
And Heidi and Naomi were using their hands to talk to the kids, which sounded innocent enough—until you saw the eyelashes stuck to them. However, the strangest one was Jacinda, who was fanning her face frantically with a flattened delivery box.
“At least life’s never boring,” DB pointed out, moving past me to where Tabby was sitting with Sheena, laughing at Jacinda.
Giving the dogs head scratches as I passed them, I stopped next to Cody, who was watching them from the doorway. “What’s going on?”
“I only got back twenty minutes ago, but they did something called the cinnamon oil challenge. Then they decided to test out some magnetic lashes a company sent them.”
That explained some of it.
“Why do Sayla and Bex have red around their mouths?”
“Too much cinnamon oil. Bex apparently showed up after they’d started and said she’d heard it was meant to go on neat. Her and Sayla got a Q-Tip and smeared the oil neat on their lips.”
Jesus.
Neither woman looked like they were in pain, but they kept holding baggies of ice against the area.
“You have a good day, bud?”
When Cody looked up at me, I noticed a lot of the pain he’d been holding onto that’d been evident in his eyes was gone. I wouldn’t lie and say he was fine, but he was moving past the bullshit now and walking into the future. It was Neil’s issue now, and karma always found a way to make sure people like that got what they deserved.
“Yeah, we just spent it swimming at Arian’s house. He’s got a slip ‘n slide, a big slide that goes into his pool, and a diving board, so it was fun.”
Glancing around the yard, I noted Cody could have the same stuff here.
“Think your mom will let us put some of that in here?”
Cody’s eyes widened for a moment, but then he nodded slowly. “I think she might. She’s scared of slip ‘n slides because Uncle Roque broke his arm when he was a kid on one, but the other stuff she’d allow ‘cause she’s cool.”
“Then we’ll have a look at doing it then.”
It wasn’t that I was spoiling him, per se, when I did stuff like this. It was that I wanted him to be happy at home with his mom, realize how worthy he was of shit, and also for him to laugh and smile as much as he could.
“Thanks, Alex,” he whispered quietly.
I was just in time to pull him out of the way as Jacinda ran past us into the kitchen.
“Oh, Aunt Jacinda put cinnamon powder on top of the oil, so she’s in a whole world of discomfort right now.”
That explained it.
Chuckling, I rested my arm around his shoulders, noticing a difference in his height in a short space of time, and moved us toward where his mom was.
We’d only just reached her when Jacinda yelled, “What in the all blue balls hell is this?”
Because she was holding up a bag of coffee, Evie’s answer wasn’t complicated. “That would be coffee, Jacinda. It’s this stuff you put in a machine and press a button—”
“Don’t you be smart with me, Edwards,” she snapped, or at least tried to, given that her lips were swollen and she had a slight lisp for some reason. “Who puts their coffee in the freezer? What kind of spaceship were you raised on?”
“Is it just me who’s living for when she says words with an ‘s’ in them?” Cody whispered to me, making me laugh.
“Do we know why she’s got a lisp?”
“Something to do with the cinnamon.”
Around us, people started raising their hands, making Jacinda’s eyes bulge. “You all put coffee in your freezer? Why would you ruin it like that? Why?”
“It keeps it fresher for longer,” Tabby called back to her. “Where do you keep yours?”
Ignoring the question, Jacinda stormed forward and dropped the offensive bag of coffee on her chair. “It most certainly does not keep it fresher for longer. What it does is ruin the coffee. Don’t any of you guys look things up on the internet?”
“My parents do it,” Evie said defensively. “It’s what they were taught to do.”
Everyone made noises of agreement with her except for DB. Yeah, I didn’t put my coffee in the freezer because Jacinda wasn’t wrong with what she was saying.
“Ever put something with garlic in it in the fridge with no cover on? Then when you go to get, say, your cream cheese or something out of it, it tastes like the garlic?”