Messy by Choice

Mess 14 (Ally)

There's a wall shuddering scream from upstairs while Vee is in the midst of cooking fajitas with Aur and I to keep her silent company as I sketch.

"Oh my god! We're going to get murder," Aur says scrambling through the cutlery drawer and abandoning her research report prep.

"You're always so quick to think we're at the center of someone's murders plot," I say as I'm forced to close my freshly bought sketchbook.

"And when the murderers reveal themselves, I'll be the only one prepared."

"Are you kidding me?" I say back, and gesture to Aur's weapon of choice. "We are in a kitchen full of knives and cast-iron pans, and you just armed yourself with a fork!"

"Huh." Aur looks curiously at the fork in hand. "It's probably an unconscious sign that my will to live has been drained to its end by this research hellscape."

Vee frowns slightly. "I don't want to die before we eat fajitas."

Aur gets the rest of us armed with cutlery just as Sharon manically bounds down into the kitchen. She open mouth stares at us with a huge giddy smile. Obviously waiting for us to question the screaming. When she doesn't get what she wants, she screams out a curious and searching, "Awww?"

"Another romance book?" I ask rather tired of the cliche genre and it's loud provoking action it has on her.

Sharon swoons. "Enemies to lover is such god tier."

Sharon dances into her chair high of her book rush. "If someone can't help but love you even when they hate you, that's really something special."

My eyes dart down, and Vee's eyes dart to me as she bestows upon us unworthy sinners our heavenly dinner. I try to avoid her scrupulous gaze as I go for the first fajitas. "How's Lenox, Ally?"

She doesn't allow me the time to take a delaying first bite. "Fine," I brush aside. "I'm seeing him after this."

"Is that so?" Vee says with a light lift of a smile.

I eye it skeptically. She never asks about the guys I'm talking to. Even when I was in my last relationship that lasted nearly a year, she would just refer to him 'as the guy I was seeing.'

"Clit commander is coming back for round two?" Sharon asks in delights past a bite. "Yay! I can listen in again."

"Again!" I repeat, choking on my fajita. "You did what?"

Sharon just smiles shamelessly and dreamy in her obvious millings. I look to Aur and Vee for confirmation that she's insane, but they incline their guilty looking faces away.

"You all did not!"

"We couldn't agree on what movie to put on!" Aur says defensively but at least with the decency of a discernible parlor of guilt.

"But you all agreed to that?" I ask nearly shouting.

Sharon's shoulders shrug. "It was good TV. What can I say."

I laugh past the small amount of anger I feel, because I'd honestly do the same if they brought a new boy over. "Well, you'll have to find something else to entertain yourself with tonight because he's taking me somewhere."

"Aw!" Sharon frowns. "Party pooper! I'd let you listen in. Even join in if you so fancied too."

I laugh because she's insane and not joking. "Maybe after I'm done with Lenox, I'll take you up on the offer."

Vee lowers her cat eyes at me, and they're sharpened and ready to claw through me. "Don't speak so dismissively of him," she says, always quick to scold me when I need to be. "He's a person not a plaything."