She gives me a come-on look. “I love you, Dawson, but you are a ho.”
“Yous ahoooooo,” Charlotte sings in her best Ludacris voice around her Reese’s.
“Ho!” Jennings and Louis sing.
Ashlyn snorts as I will myself not to do the same. They are such dorks. “She is hesitant because she’s been hurt. I just gotta get her to see I won’t do that.”
“But won’t you?” Ashlyn asks, and she doesn’t have malice in her voice. It’s just genuine concern. “I mean, you’ve never been in a relationship or even?—”
“I share entirely too much with you people.”
They all beam like kids getting praise. “Um, we’re family,” Charlotte says with a shrug, now reaching for the Skittles. I have to keep loads of candy stocked around this girl. How she keeps her slim body on nothing but sugar is beyond me.
“I am aware that I have only ever been committed to my sports, but that’s because there is only one Ambrosia Mercer.” I give Ashlyn a dark look. “How’s it going with Phillipe?”
My cousin flushes redder than a tomato in the sun. “There is nothing going on. I have spoken to his agent, and that’s all.”
Louis side-eyes her. “I heard he’s called you and slid into your DMs.”
Ashlyn is stoic. “I will neither confirm nor deny that, especially when this regards a client.”
I snort as Louis grins. “Aww, does Ashlyn have a crush on the big ol’ goalie? I’ve seen his?—”
“Don’t make me jealous right now,” Jennings interjects, and because I’m a shit-stirrer, I grin.
“He makes the phrase ‘hung like a horse’ seem like a joke.”
Jennings punches me in the arm, making me laugh harder as Charlotte gives a little wiggle. “Hey, girl. Get ittttt. I’d climb him like a redwood tree.”
As Ashlyn flushes even redder, Jennings starts to sing Taylor Swift’s “Wood,” and of course, my brother joins in. Ashlyn ignores everyone. “This is inappropriate, and besides, the comment at hand…” She looks across at me with her eyes a bit glassy, a look that seems almost proud. But that can’t be right, Ashlyn isn’t proud of anyone. “Our Dawson is growing up.”
“About time,” Jennings mutters.
Charlotte beams. “I never saw it coming.”
“Weird, really,” Louis says. “I have seen girls practically sell their souls to suck his dick and they weren’t enough to make him look twice, but this girl has told him to leave her alone, flicked his nose, and told him he isn’t her type, yet he doesn’t give up.”
I scoff as Jennings adds, “Yes, but he kissed her.”
The girls look at me with wide eyes, and both squeal, “You kissed her?”
“Like, on the mouth?”
I give my brother’s boyfriend a look, and he shrugs. “What? You did. I wrote down the date.”
“You don’t kiss girls,” Ashlyn says, as if I don’t know that.
“Y’all are too obsessed with my love life,” I mutter.
“You’re making us make flowers!”
“I have 900 paper cuts!”
“No good candy was supplied!”
“I truly thought you forgot how to kiss!”
I need new cousins.
