Page 66 of Hot Tea & Bird Calls

Celene’s phone vibrated with a text.

Fuck, this turned on, she’d love it if Skye reached out with updates on the project. Maybe it’d lead to some fake relationship phone sex.

Instead, she rolled her eyes at:

Elise – 9:58 pm

I’m outside your building. Let me in!!

Your car’s out here.

Don’t hide!!!!

Minutes later, Celene unlatched her front door’s metal chain, and Elise blustered in, sunglasses propped on her mermaid hair and her skin two shades richer. Post-honeymoon Elise.

“I will not be ignored,” Elise said, spinning to face Celene. Her foundation no longer matched her neck. “You’re dating Skye Florentine. I remember her from down the street, oh fate of fates.”

Celene reluctantly offered a beverage since Elise collapsed onto the couch, wrist to her brow in dramatized ecstasy. The motion slapped her sunglasses to the woodgrain floor. Celene watched them clatter, asking, “I take it Aruba exceeded your expectations?”

“It did, it did!” Elise swept her arms in more euphoric gasping, eyes shuttering for effect. Her wide-legged slacks flapped with each kick. “Pristine beaches, no rain. A honeymoon bungalow to die for. I’d been ovulating, Celene. Big J may haveimpregnated your baby sister.” She peeked an eye open in time to catch Celene fake-retch from the neighboring chair. “We even made love in the ocean.”

People paid money to listen to Elise’s voice in audiobooks? On purpose? Forhours? Forcing down a swallow of kombucha, Celene issued a flat, “Great. Please leave.”

Elise sprang upright. Crossing a leg, eyes unhinged. “I shared. Now your turn.”

“You shared against my will.”

“Let me in, girl, let me in.” She wobbled her hands in front of her, her rings gleaming. “You and Skye. Did your eyes meet and you fell for her? Is she a babe? Everybody—Mom, Dad, Big J, Shanice—wants to know.”

Celene pointed, reminding Elise to use the coaster next to her glass. “Everybody wants to know if Skye’s attractive? Distasteful.”

“You’re getting this whole single sequence wrong. First, you get over your ex—done. Second, you find yourself—done. Third is supposed to be indiscriminate hookups.” Tossing that concept to the sky, she said, “You skipped that. Fine. Now, you’re trying again at love. I’m elated. Is my elation unclear?”

“Nothing’s clearer.”

Elise stared, then. For a full minute. Celene wouldn’t cave, though. While their situation benefited her, using Skye as ammo for family gossip was despicable.

“You’re icing us out.” Elise shook her glass, the kombucha sediment bouncing within the murky liquid. “You’re icingmeout.”

Celene thought back to the reception, how they hadn’t shared the touching moments Elise seemed to have handed out so freely to everyone else, if the online photos were anything to go by. She pressed her lips together, irritated that it still bothered her. “So be it. I’m sorry you wasted a trip here.”

“Wait.” A groove formed on Elise’s forehead. “Something else is on my mind.”

Something was always on Elise’s mind. Celene gestured for her to spill already.

“Should I take on the Vale house?” She blurted more out when Celene’s shoulders tensed high. “Big J and I have a future. So do Don and Bri. Dad, too, for Theo.”

“Am I dying soon?” A burst of heat shot through Celene, painful and immediate. “Are you privy to some diagnosis?”

“I’m here ’cause I honor tradition. I could be pregnant, and as a maybe-pregnant woman, I’m considering what I’ll leave my child.”

“Your maybe-child. Not even a child. An embryo.”

“Yes, my maybe-embryo. All the new additions to the family deserve memories there as vibrant and wonderful as ours. We should keep it.”

Celene rose, trying not to grind her teeth. “You begged me to share, well, here it is. Elise, you’renotresponsible. If it has to do with a show or a production, you shine. Thinking of others, keeping up with dates, managing HOA—those are adult obligations, and you sorely lack the range.”

Elise’s lashes fanned out on stretched eyes. “You don’t mean that.”