"Lost," she repeated. "Lost hope," she added, putting his fists together.
"But now I found her," he declared, slipping his fingers between hers.
"What part of 'princess' is so hard to understand?" Fallon asked, shoving the back of Dezi's head as he walked past.
"Hey, you can't fight fate," Dezi declared dramatically, all charm, even if it was superficial.
"Try harder," Hope said.
"Ouch," Dezi hissed, pressing a hand to his heart. "So, can we crack open a bottle now, or do we have to wait until after the others get here?" he asked, hopping off the couch.
"This place is going to be getting interesting," Hope said, unfolding from the sofa. "Someone might want to keep that puppy on a leash," she added, waving toward Dezi as she made her way toward the door. "He seems like trouble," she added before heading out.
"She seems prickly," Dezi announced.
"If by 'prickly' you mean 'will stab you in the eye if you get within five feet of her,'" Fallon said, smirking, "then yes. I don't want to have to tell you again to stay away from her with anything other than friendly intentions."
"Stay away from who?" Billie asked, making Fallon let out a groan. "Me?"
"For fuck's sake. You all know tonight is church," Fallon grumbled.
"Oh, yes, I better not interrupt your super-secret boys-only meeting. Which is totally fine and not at all misogynistic," Billie said, tilting her head at her club-cousin. "What are you going to do? Tell on me," she added, rolling her eyes.
"Christ. Is every beautiful woman in this town a princess because that is not fair," Dezi grumbled, placing a hand over his heart, drawing Billie's attention over toward him.
"Oh, you look fun."
"No," Fallon said.
"No what?" she shot back, acting innocent, pressing a manicured hand to her heart.
"What? Drooling over Rowe isn't enough for you?" Fallon asked, and he seemed to miss the way Billie's face hardened. For all his talk about not fucking with the girls, he was the one who tended to get into trouble with them the most. What with him refusing to have a filter and all. "Is that why you're here? To moon-eye at him again?"
"For your information," Billie said, tone deceptively bright. See, I spent more time with the girls than the rest of our club-cousins did, so I knew that tone better than they did. And when Billie was using it, she was about to make someone very uncomfortable. "When we were here last for our sleepover, I somehow managed to leave my yoni eggs up in the glass room."
"Your what? You left eggs here?" Fallon asked, brows drawing together.
"Yoni eggs," she clarified.
"What the fuck is that?" he asked as Dezi let out a chuckle that said he knew exactly what they were.
"They're little egg-shaped gemstones. You shove them up your pussy to learn to tighten the muscles—"
"Oh, Jesus Christ," Fallon grumbled, raking a hand through his hair.
"They have this little string attached to pull them back out, so they don't get stu—"
"I get it," Fallon cut her off, looking massively uncomfortable with the turn of conversation.
"It's very important to exercise your pelvic floor, you know," she went on, enjoying herself.
"I don't want to hear about your pelvic floor, Billie," Fallon insisted. "And no one has seen your eggs."
"Has anyone looked, though? I had to have left them here."
"Left what here?" Rowe asked, coming in from cleaning up the prospect quarters.
"Oh, Christ," Fallon mumbled under his breath.
"This place is better than the movies," Dezi declared, grinning from his position perched on top of the bar with a bottle of whiskey.
"My pussy eggs," Billie declared, making Rowe actually jerk back at her bluntness. "I was demonstrating how important—"
"You were demonstrating?" Fallon grumbled, looking a little green.
"Well, not demonstrating. I mean, I totally would have. But not everyone is as—"
"Shameless?" Fallon supplied.
"I prefer liberated," Billie said. "But you're right, I have no shame about my body."
"Nothing to be ashamed of there," Dezi mumbled under his breath, just low enough that he saved himself a look from Fallon.
"But have you seen them?" Billie asked, looking at Rowe.
"Your pussy eggs?" Rowe repeated, sounding a bit choked at the words. "Would they be the pink things in the padded box?" he asked.
"Rose quartz. For love. Self-love, in this case. But yes. That's them. Can I have them back?"
"For the love of God, give them back to her, so she leaves," Fallon said, looking exhausted from the interaction with her.
"Interesting family you've got here," Cary said, drawing my attention back to him. "Figure you all will keep me on my toes."
"Oh, my," Billie said, gaze landing on Cary. "Well, now. Wouldn't you be just my type if I had some daddy issues? You're smoking hot," she told him in the kind of matter-of-fact, throwaway way that Billie could compliment men. With no actual attraction attached to it, just a stating of what she thought was fact.
"And he's going to be a brother soon, so stop hitting on him," Fallon insisted.
"That wasn't hitting on him. Believe me, if I was hitting on him, you would know it," Billie said.
"Hitting on who?" Cash, our uncle and my club brother, asked, walking in from the garage. I'd been so distracted by Billie that I hadn't even heard his bike roll up.
"Hot daddy over there," Billie declared. "But I wasn't hitting on him."
"Good. Because I'd hate to have to kill him," Cash declared, pressing a kiss to the side of Billie's head as he moved past. "Is no one else here yet?"
"Dad said he's running late," Fallon declared.
"Here," Rowe said, coming back from fetching Billie's box.
"Do not ask what is in the box," Fallon demanded to his uncle.
Cash's gaze moved around the club before shrugging. "Yeah, probably good advice for anything that has a Phallus-ophy sticker on the side of it," Cash declared, naming the local adult toy store which was owned by Billie's aunt.
"Thanks," Billie said, surprising me by avoiding eye contact with Rowe, someone she usually tried to get the attention of whenever possible. "Alright. I will leave you to your super secret boys club meeting. Uncle Cash," she called. "Tell Chris we would love to see her at girls night sometime. She works too much."
"I've tried to convince her to model herself after my slacker example, but she's all her mother in that department," Cash declared. "But I'll tell her."
"You," she said, stopping in front of Fallon, reaching up to straighten his cut. "You need to loosen up. Are you not getting laid enough? It's important to al—"
"Yeah, not talking about my sex life with you, Billie," Fallon said, opening the door to her in a none too subtle move.
"Or complete lack thereof," Billie shot back before moving outside.