Page 62 of Bossy Grump's Secret

"Please, for the love of God, tell me you're joking." I pat myself on the head. I just finished a big meal of cereal and steak. Awkward combination, I know, but that was what the baby was craving. I can't possibly deny my baby its stomach desires, even if Lily makes me feel like an alien for the abominable mix.

Now, she tells me she loves the smell of gasoline during our awkward cravings discussion.

"Sometimes, I feel you're the pregnant person between us two," I huff to jab at her ego.

"Please! Sometimes what? Girl, you only just found out that you were pregnant when...yesterday?" she laughs at my failed attempt while I wallow in disappointment at my lost taunt.

She's getting wittier.

"Come on, let's end this," she says. "Let's conduct a Google search. “Does gasoline smell good or bad?” I'm sure Google agrees with me," she shrugs.

Despite my bite back and continued argument over the system, the internet settled the friendly tiff in favor of my friend. Upon seeing these results, I still feel the reverse of what most people think. The earth has twelve billion abnormalities, and I'm the only relatively sane person. No one can tell me otherwise.

"Well, you can tell me cooking gas smells good then..." I give an exasperated roll of my eyes.

She winces. Lily actually winces at that obvious question!

"Actually, this might be just my thing, but..." she says and cringes.

Just as I am about to render her a sacrifice, probably to the God of pregnancy, we hear a knock on the door and pause. Lily hops to her feet when the knock returns and moves to get it. Her petite frame keeps her nimble... completely unlike mine. The pregnancy tops I have to wear make me feel like an overfed sow.

When she opens the door, we get the shock of our lives. There, standing on the threshold, is Mrs. Belfrost. The power and the unwavering essence of glory she carries around make her look much taller than she actually is. I'm sure my five foot eleven could dwarf her completely, but now, that didn't seem to matter. I swear that as I stand up to welcome her, I still have to look up despite her being much smaller.

"G...good evening, Mrs. Belfrost." I stutter. Lily stays at the door, transfixed. Good for her. When nervous, that girl talks more nonsense than an old drunk pirate.

Mrs. Belfrost responds to my greeting with a nod, not that I expected anything more... or less.

“Both of you aren’t at work?” she asks and enters the room.

"Uh…no…we uh…we were given a week's rest when we returned from the hospital," I reply. I should have taken a bigger breath.

“Hm, I thought as much.” Mrs. Belfrost nods with condescension. She need not tell me she doesn’t believe me. I can see it in her gaze.

"And after that, we were done with our work time. We go back to college at the end of the week,” Lily pipes up, ironically smoother than when I was talking. She isn't under the most pressure, but I'll still commend her later for the added layer of backing.

“Yeah…there’s that too,” I chuckle.

“May I?” She lowers herself onto Lily's bed before I answer, but I answer anyway.

“Oh, yeah, sure. Where are my manners?”

“You’re not expected to have them…don’t worry. I’m not offended,” she scoffs.

Dylan, I send a telepathic message that I hope catches him. I'm doing this…I'm tolerating this because of my love for you and my natural respect for the Belfrost family. Your father was also really kind, so I'm doing this for him too.

If it weren’t for these circumstances, words would have been traded…words I wouldn’t be proud to speak of later.

“So, what brings you here? I know I’m not the highest person on your priority list, so…” I shrug, trying it out as a joke, but she can take it as whatever she wants. I don’t really mind.

“Oh, you are at the top of my priority list, Ariana. Whatever concerns my son is of utmost importance to me.” I know she did the wrong name thing on purpose. My name is only two syllables and three letters. You couldn’t forget it even if you wanted to.

Her talk makes my name sound like it's on a wanted list rather than a priority list. I wait for her to get to it. She takes an awfully long time to do so, p clearly another sign that she has no regard for the people in the room. Lily comes to my bed and hops on, clearly tired of the wait. Every ticking second increases my blood pressure by a unit of two.

She keeps scrolling and then typing on her phone. When she finally looks up, she says, “Well, I would have loved to stay a little more, but I have a lot of things to get to…might as well take that time to conduct an impromptu inspection on the place.”

No, ma’am, you don’t need to love to stay and torture me. Just get on with it.

She opens her bag that screams, “You can’t get this in a normal shop”, and shuffles around for a while before pulling out a document. My heartbeat pulses with aggressive fury. What is happening? I'm not sure…but that paper gives me a light-headed feeling.

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