“I know!”
“And I can’t not perform with my ex-husband’s future wife sitting there judging me.”
“I know!” Blossom wailed.
“Everybody calm down,” Nick ordered.
The Basil-Thorn women turned their gazes on him, and he held up his palms. “Before you kill me. Hear me out. What if Elanora gets her seance, but it gets interrupted?”
“By what? A swarm of locusts and a farting dog?” Riley asked.
Someone pounded on the front door. “For Pete’s sake, Roger. The door is unlocked,” Blossom snarled, whipping it open.
The skinny, nosy next-door neighbor stomped inside waving official-looking documents.
“You went too far this time, Thorns!”
Riley bounded to her feet and made Nick fear for the neighbor’s life.
“Not now, Chelsea!” Riley snarled, grabbing the woman by the shoulders and shoving her back out the door. “Go ruin some other neighbor’s life for ten fucking minutes. How about Mr. Abbott? I hear he’s going through radiation treatments. Maybe you should complain to him about the parking habits of his home health aides.”
“We have regulationsfor a reason,” Chelsea snipped. She had a head of blonde helmet hair and was dressed in a pink blouse and white pants.
“Youviolated those regulations by using too much water to keep your stupid grass green! So turn your hoity-toity tight ass around andget off my property,” Blossom shouted.
“You should probably go,” Nick advised, stepping into the terrifying territory also known as the physical space between three very upset women.
“You haven’t heard the last of me,” Chelsea howled.
“You sound like a Marvel movie villain,” Blossom shrieked, peering over Nick’s shoulder.
He slammed the door shut and threw the deadbolt just in case.
Both women took several deep, cleansing breaths.
“I apologize for my outburst,” Blossom said finally after accessing some kind of internal well of Zen. “What were you saying about an interruption, Nick?”
“How about a power outage?”
“Oh, comeon!” Blossom snapped, apparently having lost touch with the well of Zen. “I say this with love, but we’ll be lighting about a hundred candles. We don’t need electricity, you handsome idiot.”
“Mom,” Riley chastised.
Blossom winced. “I’m very sorry. I’m a little stressed out.”
“I understand,” Nick said. “But you know what you do need?”
Riley reached for the bottle again, and he held it out of reach.
“What? What do we need?” Blossom demanded. “Enough alcohol to drink ourselves stupid?”
“Yes, but more importantly,air conditioning.”
Riley stopped reaching for the bottle.
“A hot August night, all those people crammed inside around open flames with no air conditioning?” Nick painted them a picture.
“I take back the idiot comment,” Blossom said. “You’re a diabolical dimpled genius.”
