Maeve: Lydia’s here! Will you come to girls night on Friday? Not to pressure you, but PLEASSEEEEE?
Scarlett: Way to keep it cool, Maeve. LOL. You know, no pressure or anything.
What the hell, right? I wasn’t doing anything else except playing on my phone and watching the news with my dad. It wasn’t like my social calendar was exactly full.
Me: Yeah. I’ll be there.
I rolled my window down and threw the last of my muffin onto the asphalt before heading over to SD Ink for another fun-filled day working with the charming, charismatic Sebastian Devereux. Lone seagull would be back, and when she did, at least she would have something to eat.
6
Lydia
The house was mostly dark when I walked up to it. Slight flickering was coming from the windows. Maeve did say it was Friday night, right? At her and Wyatt’s place?
I knocked on the door and waited. A pajama clad, red-haired monster opened the door, her face slathered with green goo.
“Hey, Lydia,” Scarlett said through a clenched jaw, barely moving her lips at all.
“Elphaba,” I greeted her, following her into the house.
“I didn’t think you were going to come,” Maeve said, getting up from the floor to welcome me. “I hope you don’t mind that we got started without you. We have more of the face mask mix in the bathroom. Can I get you something to drink?”
Considering she told us to be here for 7:00 p.m. and it was now almost 8:00 p.m., I couldn’t blame them for thinking I was a no-show.
Sebastian ended up finishing a back tattoo that was this entire city-in-the-sky-type thing. It was beautiful; I couldn’t pull myself away from watching him create this art pieceetched onto skin. He really was super talented—not that I would be telling him that—and I didn’t understand how someone who looked that good—he didn’t need that mentioned either; he was arrogant enough as it was—and had that much artistic vision hadn’t found his target demographic to blow his tattoo shop up.
“Thanks. Do you have gin?” I asked.
“Apple wine provided by Claire, apple juice provided by me, and nonalcoholic beer provided by Scarlett. My mother babysits the girls on Tuesdays, so we don’t keep hard liquor in the house,” Maeve explained.
I had completely forgot that Maeve came from a troubled childhood. I’d known her growing up, although we were never friends. Goody-two-shoes Maeve Graham, who was quiet and studious and smart but always looked like her clothes had been plucked off the streets, compared to feisty Lydia Wilder in her all-black outfits and piss-poor attitude, despite having the love and safety every child deserves. Yeah, we weren’t exactly friends back then.
“Shit. I should have brought something.”
“Oh my gosh, no. We have more than enough. I mean, unless you hate all of those options…”
I followed Maeve to the kitchen, although it was essentially an open floor plan. “A nonalcoholic beer works for me,” I told her. I turned to Scarlett where she was lying on the living room floor like they had made some grown-up version of a fort with pillows and blankets scattered around. “Do you mind if I steal one?”
“Go right ahead.”
I grabbed a can from the carton on the breakfast bar and popped the top.
“Come on,” Maeve said. “I’ll show you where everything is.” She grabbed my hand and led me into the small bathroom next to the kitchen. A bedroom sat across from the bathroom, and I snagged a look as I was dragged by it. Light pink walls, two white dressers, two wooden cribs. I shook my head at the thought of Wyatt as a dad.
“Are Jane and Veda with Wyatt right now?” I asked.
“Yeah. I think he was taking them to Wes’s.”
“He really doesn’t mind babysitting them, does he?” Every time I had seen or talked to Wyatt in the past year and a half, all he talked about was his girls—Maeve, Jane, and Veda. He seemed like a great dad, living up to the example set by our own father.
Maeve’s brow furrowed in the reflection in the mirror. Claire and Scarlett both started laughing, apparently having gotten off the floor and followed us to the bathroom.
“He’s not babysitting. He’s their dad,” Maeve said.
“And no one loves those girls more than Wyatt,” Claire said with a chuckle.
“Hey,” Maeve complained.
