Page 81 of Everything After (Everything Trilogy)

ALFIE

As it turned out, before Jack and Mya left, they’d helped us with Vicky, to navigate almost effortlessly through that first week of parenthood.

Jack was a mine of information on parenting hacks that made life so much easier than if we’d had to find those things out for ourselves.

Mya even taught Lily how to express breast milk when her breasts became engorged.

We laughed when Lily became so productive that our freezer began to fill up with supplies of breastmilk.

“What do we do about Rick, Lennie and Coral?” I asked Lily, after I’d gotten text messages from them for the fifth day running. We hadn’t told anyone else that Lily had had the baby, and the hospital NDAs appeared to have kept everyone quiet, so as far anyone knew, Lily was still pregnant.

“We should tell all our friends before we announce it in the press. I know I’d hate it if I’d found out someone close to me was that discourteous,” Lily mumbled.

I saw from the frown on her face she was reluctant to face Lennie again, but they had been close friends, and it needed to be done.

“Invite them to dinner,” she said in a decisive tone.

“You’re not cooking,” I insisted.

“No, we’ll bring a private chef in. It’s about time we had one anyway. I want to do a special diet and exercise so hiring someone would benefit all of us in the long run,” Lily advised.

“Are you sure it isn’t too early to put yourself under pressure like that?”

“There’s never a best time to socialize when you have kids,” she countered.

I stared her down for a few seconds until it became clear she was determined to go ahead with her plan. “How soon are you thinking of doing it?”

“When they’re free. I have nothing on the calendar right now, neither do you,” she replied while she got comfortable on the bed, and I handed Charlie to her.

“Alright, I’ll call… Rick,” I decided. “I’m going to get you a drink while you’re breastfeeding. I’ll be right back.” While I ran down the stairs, I pulled out my cell phone and called Rick’s number.

“Alfie,” Rick muttered flatly when he answered.

“Rick,” I said in the same deadpan way he’d greeted me. I opened the fridge and took a bottle of water out.

“Christ, is Lily okay?” he asked when I hadn’t said anything else.

I stopped when I realized he sounded alarmed. “Yeah, Lily’s fine… as is Charlie our son.”

“Fuck me, she had the baby already?” he asked, sounding excited now.

“Yeah… just over a week ago now,” I admitted. When I was met with radio silence, I suspected he felt offended, so I sighed. “Lily just needed some time.”

“A week? She needed time, and now she suddenly doesn’t?” Rick queried, sounding offended we hadn’t told him sooner.

“Don’t be like that. If it hadn’t been for Lennie—”

“I’m not Lennie,” he snapped. “She’s my friend too,” he muttered.

“I know. Look, it was her idea not to announce it just yet. She had Jack here to visit—”

“Ah, Golden Boy. That must have pissed you off, having him around. Was he at the birth too? Did he cut the cord?”

I sighed. His response was no more than I deserved since Rick had been left in the dark. “Actually, he and Mya were great. They helped us get settled. Now that we are, Lily asked me to invite y’all to dinner.”

“I know who set y’all up to that influencer,” Rick stated.

“Who?” I asked, surprised because my legal team had been trying for months to find out which one of our friends had broken our confidence.

“Sienna.”

“Sienna?” I screeched in disbelief.

“Yup. She and Cody started seeing each other… casual-like, after your party. She’d heard or seen… I don’t know which, but she tried to coax Cody into expanding the context of what had gone down between y’all. To his credit, Cody said nothing.”

“Get to the point,” I ground out.

“Sienna contacted that influencer guy by DM after she saw him talk up another blind item piece on TikTok. She figured he’d help her get to the truth. She didn’t want to have something with Cody if there was some secret history between him and Lily.”

“What the actual fuck,” I spat.

“I said the same thing,” he said, chuckling. “I thought she was your friend.”

“So did I.”

“Since then, there’s been all kinds of fuckery going on with XrAid.

Lennie and Cody are at each other’s throats.

Lennie’s blaming Cody for Lily walking. Cody’s blaming Lennie for how he reacted to Lily’s pregnancy.

It’s a hot mess. The band’s in disarray, dude.

They put out the album with a female backing singer singing all Lily’s parts.

The door isn’t closed for her with the band, you hear what I’m saying? ”

“Are you coming to dinner?” I asked, not willing to comment on anything band related he’d said, until I’d relayed all the information to Lily.

“I got Tuesday, Friday and Sunday free with the others, any of those suit you?”

“Friday sounds perfect,” I remarked.

“Alright then, we’ll be there… 6:30 p.m., right before nightfall, okay?”

“Yeah, sounds good. Talk to you then.”

“Did you get through to Rick?” Lily asked once I’d concluded the call and gone back to her with some water. Charlie was fussing, but not hungry anymore, so I took him from her to burp him. “What did he say?”

“They’re coming Friday. Is that okay?” I asked while I placed our son over my shoulder and gently rubbed his back.

A flash of nerves registered in her beautiful emerald eyes before she nodded. “Sounds good. Can you find us a chef?”

“Sure. Would you mind if I headed to the mainland for an hour or two. I want to drop in on Kara. I think she got the keys to her new place yesterday.”

The ‘keys for Kara’ excuse wasn’t a lie.

The place she’d originally chosen had been taken back off the market.

It had taken some time to find somewhere close to Poppy’s school that was in an exclusive, gated community.

Once we’d secured it, there was some concern about a rock star owning it from the HOA, so I’d had to sign a waiver that I wouldn’t be living in it.

Right then, Charlie’s bowels exploded against my hand, shit squirting from the little diaper he wore and all over my clean black T-shirt.

“Shit,” I muttered, as I lifted him off me and held him at arm’s length.

“Yes, shit. Isn’t Daddy clever?” Lily remarked playfully.

“I swear this kid did that on purpose,” I muttered.

I bit back a grin and directed my serious question to him.

“Did you poop on me because I said I was going out?” Charlie gave me a constipated smile, went a strange mauve color and squeezed out another explosive crap, overfilling his diaper even more.

“I guess baby wipes aren’t going to cut it this time, huh?” Lily mumbled. My heart clenched when she pouted, and I figured how tired she must be. Lily insisted on being awake for all the night feeds, for the first couple of months at least.

“Take a nap. I’ll sort Charlie out. Then I’ll ask Vicky to take him to the patio for a while. The fresh air will do him good while he sleeps.”

Apart from the shit, bathing Charlie was a joy. The way the little guy gazed blindly up at me melted my heart every time.

“What are you going to be? A rock star like your mom and dad? Let me tell you something,” I said, animatedly.

Charlie’s eyes widened. His stare was intense while he pursed his lips, like he was waiting for me to spill a secret.

“Dude, I don’t care what you do, so long as you’re happy.

But I am going to teach you to respect women…

that’s how you get a good one—like your mom. ”

My heart leapt because Charlie laughed, a gummy, silent laugh. He stiffened and threw his head back, making his whole little body jerk. Alright, it was probably gas, but it was timely to what I had said.

“Yeah, I can tell you’ll want to be a ladies’ man.

But you gotta respect them. Sure, you can sow your oats, but dude, remember those women will have dads just like me.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I said, as I lifted him out of the water and wrapped him in a towel.

“Now don’t you dare pee on me, young man. I’ve got an errand to run.”

“Dare I say to keep your cool?” Oscar suggested, as he pulled up at the curb outside Sienna’s place.

“Dare I say I’ll do my best, but…”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Oscar warned. His eyes scanned the narrow street where the houses were packed close together. “The walls have ears, an’ all that.”

I nodded. “Thanks for the reminder. If I’m not out in ten, come get me,” I ordered. I climbed out and almost closed the door when he added, “Will I need to bring a body bag?”

I chuckled although there was nothing humorous in my visit. The girl had almost lost me my wife with her meddling ways and spite.

To her credit, Sienna’s face paled when she opened the door before she quickly recovered her composure.

“Alfie, it’s good to see you. No sign of the baby yet?”

Oscar’s warning played back in my head, so I gave her my best fake smile, and prayed she didn’t notice.

“No baby,” I muttered.

“Are you here to see Kara? She messaged that she got the keys, right?” she asked.

“Not here for Kara,” I stated flatly.

The smile she was wearing froze on her face before she quickly recovered again. If I never learned anything else about Sienna, it was her nervous tell.

“Then what do I owe the pleasure?” she asked, sounding sweet.

“No pleasure,” I said, darkly.

Anxiety caused her head to jerk as the blood drained from her face. “From that reaction I guess you know why I’m here.”

The jerky way she shook her head warned me she was stalling for time to think up an excuse. “I-I… well, I guess I wanted to extract the truth,” she mumbled.

“Extract? What the fuck, Sienna? What truth? Are we talking about the same thing,” I asked to fuck with her.

“About Lily and Cody. I heard the argument between you and Cody.”

“All of it? Do you know what went on before I challenged him that day?”

“It didn’t take much to know what you were accusing him of,” she suggested.

“Didn’t it?” I challenged as I tried to keep my temper in check. “What do you think you know?”

“Same as you, that Lily and Cody had an affair.”

“And you know this from that argument in my home? The home that Lily welcomed you into even though she’s wary of you. Come to think of it, why is she cautious in the first place?”

Sienna shrugged. “I know what I heard. You told Cody to keep his hands off your wife,” she replied, ignoring my point about Lily.

“Yes, on stage, Sienna. I’d gotten tired of him pawing my wife in the name of performing. Did you ask Cody about the argument?”

“No,” she frowned, looking guilty.

“Why not? He owed you nothing. He might have told you the truth.”

“He asked me out a few times and we hit it off. I wanted to make sure that the thing between him and Lily was done before I became tangled in a relationship.”

“So, you thought contacting this influencer and putting that rumor out there, it would do what? Scare Lily off? Break up their fictional affair?”

Kara came into the house and dropped her car keys on the console table. “What’s going on? I can hear you two outside in the street.”

“Are you going to tell her, or shall I?” I asked, nodding toward Kara.

Sienna cast a nervous glance toward Kara and then back to me, but she stayed silent.

“Alright, I’ll tell her. That shit about Cody and Lily having an affair. Guess who started it?”

Kara’s eyes darkened and she stared Sienna down. “You? Sienna? Why the hell would you do something like that?”

“I’ll leave her to explain. Meanwhile, you’re going to be outed for this.

Do you realize people are still questioning who the daddy is?

” Sienna stood quietly and appeared too shocked to cry.

“I’d sue you, but it would mean Gary’s house would be taken away.

If it wasn’t for your brother…” I huffed out a breath as the doorbell rang.

Kara went to answer, and Oscar appeared at the door. “Boss?”

“Take my cell phone and call Joanne, tell her to send the press to this address,” I said, handing my device over to him.

“Wait. Don’t do this,” Sienna begged.

“No. I won’t allow people to think my wife has been less than faithful toward me for another minute. You’re going to tell the press what you did or I’m taking this house.”

“You can’t—” she began to protest.

“Watch me,” I threatened in a menacing tone. Sienna grabbed her coat and tried to leave the house, but Kara stood in front of her.

“Stop, Sienna. You can’t run away from this. I’m so disappointed in you. Alfie’s been good to me. I’m alive because of him. How could you do this to him. Gary would be ashamed of you.”

“I-I—”

Kara held up her hand. “I don’t want to hear it.”

Oscar reappeared at the door. “Done,” he informed me, handing me my phone back.

“Stay here with Kara, I’m just going to call Lily.”

When I told my wife who had been responsible for starting the rumor about her and Cody, I was met with silence on the end of the line.

“Lily? Did you hear me?”

“Yeah,” she said quietly.

“Just… yeah?” I asked, expecting at least a small rant of injustice from her.

“I guess, I should have known,” she muttered.

“Known what?”

“You know she’s not my favorite person, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know why I was suspicious of her?”

“Not that again,” I remarked, thinking Lily was going to bring up my relationship with Sienna again.

“What again? You have no idea what I was about to say.”

“Okay, sorry. What did you want to say?”

“She once warned me to watch out because one day she’d destroy our marriage. She said I’d never see it coming, and she was right. I didn’t suspect her for a minute in all of this.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this? When did this happen?” I asked frowning.

“At your sister’s wedding. She… She cornered me in a bathroom that evening.”

The rage I’d been containing spilled over and I punched a dent in my car’s rear door. Fortunately, that incident occurred seconds before two media guy’s I had run ins with over the years walked down the road toward me.

“Hi, Alfie. This is a surprise. You wanted to speak to us?” the smaller, less offensive of the two paparazzi men asked.

My gaze shifted between the two and settled on the bald-headed, beady-eyed photographer, who I knew for a fact had previously sold ambiguous images of me. “I do. I have a true story for you. Get your recording equipment ready because I’m about to set the record straight about something.”