Page 111 of It's Always Sonny

“Sonny, if you’re messing with me.”

“Patience, young grasshopper,” PJ says with a smirk that could stop traffic.

I pull the thermal over my head and Ash gasps and covers her mouth. “I’m going to faint.”

PJ elbows her friend. “Too soon.”

Ash climbs up on the table to touch them when PJ slaps her hand away. “No touching.”

“But—but—tummy waffles! They’re right there, and they’re edible.”

“You guys are freaking us out,” Sienna says from two tables away. “They’re not that special.”

“You only say that because you’ve never run an abs page.”

Lauren, Amber, and a few of my cousins light up. “Wait, you ran Tummy Waffles? My friends were obsessed with that!” Lauren says.

And suddenly, half of the women in the room run over to surround Ash, peppering her with questions and laughing fiendishly.

Fiendishly.

PJ tosses me one of the yet unmarked t-shirts so I can throw it over my head, but not before she grabs a napkin and wipes the cocoa from my chest.

If I weren’t already covered in goosebumps, I would be now. She dabs slowly, methodically, and every press is like that first touch of an ice cube, both burning and freezing at the same time. It’s too much sensation for the body to process at once. There’s not a speck of moisture left, but she just keeps pressing.

“I think you got it all,” I say in a low voice.

“Better to be safe than sorry,” she says. She’s not meeting my eyes, and I get the sense that my torso has her transfixed.

Thank you, body, for doing a job I never intended you to do but one I appreciate more than ever.

“Are we meeting in the hot tub tonight?” I ask.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Parker

When dinner winds down, the family shenanigans wind up. The kids all want to play life-size Hungry Hungry Hippos, so I arrange for one of the workers to bring everything out. I ask Ash to keep an eye on the family for me.

“My pleasure. Have fun with Sonny,” she says.

Beyond the obvious, I’m excited for the hot tub for therapeutic reasons. My back and arms are sore from the axe and archery and constant activity, and all the manual labor today has only added to it. At my little cottage, I change into my workout gear: high waisted yoga shorts and a longline sports bra that hits just above my bellybutton, giving a sporty tankini effect that shows how toned my shoulders are and makes my waist look tiny. My phone rings as I’m throwing on a pair of joggers. It’s my parents.

Again.

Uncertainty stops me in my tracks. My dad has cancer. This is the kind of thing I should talk to him about.

But our relationship is toxic, and it took seeing Sonny’s crazy, amazing family for me to realize that the way my parents treat me is their fault, not mine.

I don’t want to open the door to more self-doubt. I can’t let them in, not right now.

And honestly?

I’m mad.

I stab the green answer button.

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