Baking and Babies (Chocoholics #3)(74)

Dad and Uncle Carter, on either end of the couch, hold their arms high while mom and Aunt Claire, squished in between them, tilt their heads together and raise their own glasses.

Gavin stops pacing behind the couch and shifts Molly Marco Ellis, his five-month-old sleeping daughter, to his other shoulder to grab the shot Charlotte hands him. When he takes it, Charlotte softly rubs Molly’s back, places a kiss on her daughter’s head and holds up her own shot.

“Hey, Marco, I forgot to tell you Ava and I tried out chapter twelve of Baking and Babies when we were watching little Molly Marco the other day,” Tyler tells him, throwing his arm around Ava’s shoulders as they lean against the side of the coffee table on the floor. “Bouncy Seat Brownies and Blowjobs was a hit, man. Well done!”

Tyler points his shot glass in Marco’s direction and smiles. He catches Charlotte glaring at him from across the room and shrugs.

“You had sex while you were babysitting our child?” Gavin scolds.

“She was safely strapped into her bouncy seat facing the wall, just like the cookbook instructed,” Tyler tells them with a roll of his eyes.

“Remind me again why we let him watch our daughter?” Gavin asks Charlotte.

“Because you wanted to practice chapter nine—Naptime Noodles and Nipples, to make sure we could really do it in thirty minutes or less,” Charlotte whispers.

Marco’s second cookbook took off bigger and better than the first one and he managed to save enough money to buy his own home. Since I decided it wasn’t right to take any of Charlotte and Gavin’s wedding money even though I earned it, I stayed with my parents until Marco closed on the house and asked me to move in with him.

By baking me a soufflé, that I’m happy to say he was able to get up, and keep up.

Mom leans forward on the couch and glances around the room with a confused look on her face.

“What’s up, slut? I thought we were doing T-Time?” Aunt Claire asks her.

“I just feel like we’re missing a few people,” mom mutters.

“Well, we did have a shit ton of kids, it’s hard to keep track of them all,” Dad tells her.

“It’s easy to forget what’s-their-names since we hardly ever mention them. Wait, isn’t one of them our daughter?” Uncle Carter asks.

“Shit, Sophia! That’s her name!” Aunt Claire shouts. “I think she’s away at college, right?”

Everyone shrugs and mumbles in agreement.

“Don’t forget Billy and Veronica, our two precious spawns of Satan,” Uncle Drew adds. “I haven’t heard from them since they joined the circus. I’m sure they’re fine.”

We all share a moment of silence for the three people we’ve mentioned once or twice before but never heard from again. Mom finally raises her glass, waiting for everyone else to do the same.

“Here’s to you, here’s to me, f*ck you, here’s to me,” she states.

We all toss back our shots and dad grabs the remote from the arm of the couch next to him and aims it at the flat screen TV above the fireplace.

“Alright, you dirty f*ckers, let’s see what Dicky Daren was nice enough to put together for us,” he says, pressing play on the DVD player.

My parents received a package in the mail yesterday with an apology letter from the production company about our documentary not airing on TV and enclosed a DVD that Dicky Daren put together just for us. We all sit back and quiet down as the DVD starts to play, opening up on an interview with mom and Aunt Claire.

“So, yeah, I guess it all started when I got drunk at a frat party one night and gave my virginity to a random guy and then found out I was pregnant,” Aunt Claire says into the camera. “I became a single mom, found the guy four years later and then Liz and I opened the first Seduction and Snacks. It took off like crazy and here we are now with stores and bakeries all over the country. That’s about it.”

The camera pans to mom laughing, sitting next to Aunt Claire.

“Yeah, there’s a lot more to the story than that, slut bag. I think you left out a few things.”

Mom reaches down next to her chair and pulls five photo albums onto her lap, opening the cover of the first one and sliding a picture out of the page to hold up for the camera. It zooms in to a picture of Mom and Aunt Claire in college with their arms wrapped around each other, holding up red Solo cups. As the camera rolls, she begins going through all the pictures in the albums. There are photos for every event in our lives, quotes that go with every photo and the two of them share the stories for each one. They laugh on camera, they cry on camera, they punch each other several times on camera, and they curse so much it’s pretty obvious why no networks wanted to air this thing. Their bleep button would have broken in the first ten seconds.

“Your tits are like Bounty. The quicker dick picker upper.”

“Well, f*ck me gently with a chainsaw.”

“Aaarrrggg, ahoy me matey, thar’s a great grand vagina over yonder.” Penises talk like pirates when I’m drunk.

“Papa says your friends Johnny, Jack and Jose maded you sick. Friends shouldn’t do stuff like that, Mommy. If Luke maded me sick, I’d punch him in the nuts!”

“I wanna eat her Snickers finger but my arm teeth won’t feel.”

“There is no way you were even remotely as surprised as me. If I woke up tomorrow with my tits sewn to the curtains, I wouldn’t be this much in shock.”