I smiled at his grumpy expression and shook my head. Usually, I was the one who refused to get up, and it was a little funny being on the other side of the fence.
“I always make a big breakfast,” I explained, peeling his fingers off my hip so I could climb out of bed. I stumbled a little as my feet touched the floor. God, I hated mornings. “Eggs, bacon, hash browns—the whole enchilada.”
“Shit, Grams wanted to make us breakfast. I gotta call her.”
I reached down and pulled his phone from his jeans and tossed it onto the bed as he pushed his face into the pillow, groaning.
* * *
“I like mine fried,” Tommy said.
“Scrambled,” Rose and Lily said at the same time.
“Over-easy,” Leo mumbled, bent over his coffee cup. My baby brother hated mornings as much as I did—I guess it was a family thing.
“She’s not your fuckin’ waitress,” Cam snapped as he finally made his way into the kitchen. I’d already finished making the hash browns and sausage and was trying to figure out how to cook the eggs before everything else got cold. “Scramble ’em, Bea.”
“Movie night was way better before you started comin’,” Tommy mumbled, earning him a smack on the back of the head from Mick.
“Yeah, cause you got to walk all over her,” Cam shot back.
“They’re fine,” I cut in, laughing. “Scrambled for the littles, fried for Tommy and Mick, Over-easy for Leo and none for Cecilia. I got it.”
“Why aren’t you eating?” Cam asked Cecilia as she came up beside me to help with the rest of the food.
“I am, I just don’t like eggs,” she replied, her eyes still a bit dazed from sleep.
“Since when?” Cam demanded.
“Since we got some farm eggs from one of Gram’s friends and I cracked it open to find a chick inside,” she mumbled back, wrinkling her nose.
“Ew!” Rose squealed as the rest of the kids groaned in disgust.
“No eggs!”
“None for me!”
“That’s fuckin’ disgusting.”
“Wonder what it looked like.”
“No eggs,” Cam ordered, stepping over to take the spatula out of my hands. “We got enough food without ’em?”
“Yeah, if I make toast.”
“I’ll make it.” He kissed me, then tapped me on the ass. “Go eat.”
The girls sat with me at the table while the boys stood at the counter with their plates, inhaling their food like they were starving.
“Gram’s birthday is next week!” Lily announced, around a mouth full of food. “We’re having a party.”
“Oh, yeah? What are you going to get her?” I asked, pushing my full plate of food away from me. Something tasted weird, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. No one else seemed to be having an issue, though, so maybe it was just me.
“I made her a scarf,” Lily answered proudly.
“It’s summer,” Cecilia scoffed, her tone surprising me.
“So! She’ll love it! She said she wanted a scarf!”
“For Christmas, maybe.”
“Shut up, Cecilia. Stop tryin’ to show off in front of your boyfriend.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Cecilia hissed, her face turning beet red in embarrassment.
“I saw you kissin’ Leo!”
“Jesus Christ, Leo,” Mick said furiously.
My eyes widened as I heard Cam make a noise in the back of his throat, but before I could even turn to look at him, my brother was pulling my ponytail as he passed and practically running out the front door.
“Are you outta your fuckin’ mind?” Cam yelled as the front door shut. “That boy’s probably got the clap, he fucks around so much!”
“Hey!” I yelled, my chair scraping against the linoleum as I stood. “Knock it off.”
“Hell, no.”
“It’s none of your business, Cam,” Cecilia said forcefully.
“Fuck that.”
“I don’t need your approval!”
“You sure as hell do!”
Cecilia’s fists clenched at her sides as she looked around the room at the stunned faces watching the scene unfold. “Get your stuff, Lil,” she said quietly to her little sister, who was on the verge of tears.
“I’m sorry,” Lily said guiltily, her gaze shooting back and forth from Cam to Cecilia.
“Not your fault, baby girl,” Cam said kindly. “You should say somethin’ when your sister is makin’ bad decisions.”
The entire room went silent for a long moment.
“Oh, shut the fuck up, Cameron.” Cecilia finally hissed, standing from the table and pulling Lily with her down the hall to the spare room.
The veins in Cam’s neck pulsed as he glared in the direction Cecilia had gone, and I watched him get his shit together second by second as the Hawthorne kids sat in uncomfortable silence around us.
“We should probably get going, too,” Mick said quietly, glancing from Cam to me. “Thanks for havin’ us, Trix.”
“No problem,” I smiled at him, making him blush. He was such a little cutie. “We’ll do this again soon.”
Tommy, Mick and Rose left the table and went to the living room to roll up their sleeping bags and clean up their garbage from the night before. I loved that they did that. I never had to worry that my house would be a disaster after everyone left. Leo was a pain in the ass and rarely cleaned up after himself, but the rest of them always made sure they left everything as it had been when they’d arrived. Their parents must have been doing something right, no doubt about that.