Vol. 7, Chapter VII — New Year, New Opportunities

I was staring at a wide-eyed Violet after waking up with her sitting on me with a startled squeak. Not exactly how I thought the first day of the New Year would start, but seeing her cheeks turning red told me that this was going to be funny.

“Well, what happened?” I asked, placing my chin on a hand as I kept looking at her embarrassed, bewildered face.

She told me she wasn’t quite sure herself. She had gotten up to go to the bathroom, and she was guessing she must have tripped on the bed when she was returning to it, which resulted in her falling butt first on top of me and almost hit her head on the wall. I joked that at least now she was fully awake as I helped her roll around and join me back under the covers, Violet grumbling about the thousand different ways she’d have preferred to be woken up as she reached out to her phone. Since she was on her stomach, I moved a leg over and settled my head on her shoulder, Violet tugging me so that I’d have a bit more of my weight on her belly, prompting me to ask how she’s doing today. She told me that she was fine, just a small thrumming and pressure in her lower stomach, her voice distant as she was more focused on typing. Looking at her screen, I saw that she was writing a text wishing a happy new year to Mathilda on behalf of us both.

“Want me to do some of those?” I asked. “You wrote all of the Christmas ones.”

“No, it’s fine,” she told me. “Besides, people know me. If we send them from your phone, they might think it was you who wrote them.”

“I could also send them from your phone.”

She stopped typing to kiss my forehead before telling me that I can take care of this next year. I laughed and told her that I’d remember this as I pulled away from her. Now it was my turn to go to the bathroom. It was a quick trip, and when I returned, I saw Violet sat up on the bed, staring at her phone with her eyes wide open again.

“What’s up?” I asked her as I hopped closer.

She pulled me in, cradling my body between her legs as she told me that she just got an offer for modelling from one of Josephine’s classmates.

“Hey, Vi! Thanks, a happy new year for you two too!” Josephine’s text read. “Sorry for replying only now about the modelling stuff. I think those terms are reasonable, and so does a classmate of mine. He asks if you could model for him next weekend and what would you charge him for a session.”

“Look at you, already getting offers!” I laughed, Violet joining me nervously. “So, what do you wanna do?”

She had no idea as she was overwhelmed with questions: where would the photoshoot happen, how long would it take, what did she need to take with her, if I could tag along, if Josephine would be there, and so on.

I told her to just go with those as they were good questions that needed answering. A short while later, interrupting our cuddling and talking about what we’d be doing today, we got our answers.

Josephine would try to be there because she too has some things she’d like to see Violet trying on. The photoshoot would likely happen on Sunday with Saturday being for him to do the fitting. She explained that she can provide him with Violet’s measurements and the sewing patters she has, but since his favoured kind of fashion was different from Jo’s, there’d need to be so correcting. They were also hoping that Violet would travel to them since their university had rooms designed for this type of thing and because it’d be hard to find an adequate place and carry all the stuff needed for the shoot. The travel expenses would be covered by them, of course, and they’d take care of the meals too. Finally, she recommended Violet to just wear practical clothes, and maybe to also get some pasties just in case.

“Pasties?” Violet echoed. “Did she mean pastries? In case I need some sugar from standing around so much?”

“No babe, pasties are like little skin-coloured stickers you place over your nipples,” I explained her as I pantomimed the action of putting them on. “It avoids their shape showing under the clothes. I used those with that dress Mum made me wear, so I might still have some lying around somewhere.”

“Ooh… Actually, that sounds like something I could use during the summer with my dress. Wish I knew about those sooner. It… It won’t hurt pealing them off, will it?”

I assured her they wouldn’t as the adhesive is quite mild and gentle, not to mention, if she sweated a bit, the ones I might still have will likely come right off together with whatever clothes she might be changing out of.

She reclined her head and set her phone over my lap, staring at the ceiling a bit lost in thought. She asked herself out loud how much she should charge and said that she’d have preferred for the guy to just have said that he’d paid an X amount instead of leaving it to her to decide.

“You could do like you do with Josephine. What she pays you depends on if you bring anything back that you like and what it is.”

“True,” she hummed. “And he already had the work of making the clothes fit me, either by making them from the ground up, or by adjusting store-bought ones, so… hmm, but still, what should be my base rate? He is also paying up our travel costs and the food too, and he is a university student… Also, it’s for next week, so I need to be fast in giving an answer, don’t I?”

I tapped her thigh to call her back to Earth and told her that she needed to be fast, but not immediate, so she could take her time talking it over with Josephine for today. Right now, though, it was time to start taking care of breakfast as Violet’s idle caresses to my stomach further worked up the appetite I previously already had.

“Wait, is it already past nine-thirty?” she asked, squinting at her phone.

“Yup,” I confirmed as I placed her glasses on her face. “Maybe because we had a bit of alcohol yesterday?”

“Almost a whole bottle, you mean,” she grumbled as I lead her by the hand out of our bedroom.

“It barely had any alcohol in it,” I laughed.

“It was also a two-litre bottle.”

“That we drunk over the course of three hours,” I snickered, lowering my voice and signalling Violet to do the same. Our Dads were both still passed out, one on the couch, the other, on the spare mattress. Oliver wasn’t there though, as we couldn’t hear his high-pitched snoring, so that meant he was likely with Sophie.

Violet moved closer and lowered her head to whisper into my ear a very important question: what would we do for breakfast?

I was thinking of pancakes, but then I remembered the waffle machine Papa Stan gave us. We hadn’t used it yet, and I wanted to see just how much of the shape the waffles retained, so I asked Violet if we could do that. She agreed, we just had to find a recipe, that made very easy since there was one that came with the user manual.

We were in the middle of reading it when we heard the sound of the toilet flushing. Dad and Papa were still out cold, so it could only be sis, and sure enough, she appeared soon after, hugging Oliver in her arms, our fur ball looking a very happy, very cozy, and definitely very lazy, cat, purring loudly and proudly. Sis on the other hand…

“What? Sleeping on Papa Stan’s bed proved to be too heart-thumping?” I asked her after we all greeted each other.

“Honestly, yeah,” she sighed, too tired to argue or even attempt to deny it.

“It was the scent, wasn’t it?” I asked next. “Like being completely immersed in his essence, right?”

“…Can we not talk about this in front of Violet?”

“Hmm? Sorry, I zoned out”, Violet told her, having been far too immersed in getting everything ready to start making the dough to be able to pay any attention to what Sophie and I were talking about. Violet can only operate one thing at a time in the morning, after all. “What were you asking me about? Actually, before that, did you not sleep well tonight?”

I told Violet that it was because of her Dad’s scent in the bedsheets, my sister hissing at me to be quiet, but Violet just said that she could see that happening rather nonchalantly as she began cracking eggs. It was such a non-bothered response that I asked if she had really heard me. She repeated what I had told her with the same tone before her cheeks turned a bit rosy as she explained that she still remembers that kind of feeling… and that it still happens from time to time when I’m not around.

“So… it’s normal?” Sophie asked as she shifted her weight.

“Yup, completely normal,” I told sis, now being serious. “In our experience at least. Calm, reassuring, but it also gets your heart beating a bit faster, right?”

“…Yeah,” Sophie muttered, glancing behind her towards the two shapes still sleeping. “Erm, should I wake them up?”

We decided to leave them be. They are working all the time and giving their best, so what was wrong with letting them laze around just for a bit longer, right?

Our little furry man though, he was awake and hungry, so he started squirming in Sophie’s hold to be put down. Sophie did while telling him to calm down, and he immediately stationed himself in front of his empty bowl, letting out an authoritative meow, demanding to be fed post haste. Sophie took care of that, filling his bowl while crouched by him. Oliver, however, didn’t jump at the food right away despite his demands. He instead kept looking at Sophie and at his food, his tail pressed firmly around her shin.

“Does he want me to fill it more?”

“Nope, he is waiting for you to pet him.”

“To pet him?” my sister repeated, sounding a bit incredulous. She did give his head a few rubs, and he got to eating after that, his tail still around her, sis letting out a delighted giggle as she called him silly. It was another one of his quirks that no one taught. We watched him for a bit, the crunch of his dry kibble, besides Violet’s prepping, being the only sound to be heard in that little space.

“Oliver, stop shaking your head as you eat!” my sister scolded, or at least attempted to, as she was laughing. That was another one of his quirks. My guess is, he eats with such excitement that he inevitably bumps his nose into the food, gets a bit of it stuck to his nose, and so he shakes his head to get it loose. In any case, that resulted in little bits of his food being tossed around. That was the one single mess we could complain about him, but really, that was a non-issue as the clean-up was done in just a few seconds. One of our classmates has a cat that apparently likes to pee everywhere despite having a designated place like ours, who hadn’t needed be taught at all. It was so funny and cute to see such a small, cute little thing rushing to the tray to relive himself with the tail high in the air like an antenna.

“And speaking of cute,” Violet said, interrupting my narration of those events to my sister. “These waffles will turn out quite cute, won’t they?”

I fully agreed. Best way to describe the shape is by saying that it’s like a five-leaf clover with heart-shaped petals displayed in a circle. I wondered if we could make them red, or at least pink, if we added some food colouring to them. That’d be a fun thing to do for Valentine’s Day. To this, Violet suggested adding some strawberries to the side, maybe with a bit of chocolate and whipped cream to complete the decoration. My sister kinda spoiled the mood, asking how was it that we were already thinking about Valentine’s Day when we were still in the first day of January. I asked her what was wrong with that, but Violet had the best answer: before any of us realised it, it’d already be the 14th of February, so might as well do some thinking about it.

“Something smells nice,” a coarse voice sounded from the living room, interrupting our hushed conversation. It was so coarse in fact that I couldn’t tell whether it came from my Dad or from Violet’s. “Is it breakfast-time already?”

“It’d have been breakfast-time for two hours already if we were at Mrs Fletcher’s,” my sister answered. “You two really must have been tired.”

A head popped over the couch, this one belonging to Papa Stan. His hair was a mess that he seemed to be trying to tame, his eyes still heavy with sleep. He greeted us with a yawn before asking my Dad if he was awake. He got a groan as an answer, and my Dad too joined the world of the living, looking as dishevelled as his friend.

“Like a log,” he told us after Sophie asked if he managed to sleep at all. “I can’t remember the last time I slept this well.”

“Maybe you should start sleeping here in the living room and on that mattress,” Stan joked as he stretched, his joints popping in a manner very familiar to how Violet’s do when she does the same.

“Don’t tempt me, Stan, or I just might do that and move in with you.”

Things got livelier after that, even if still quiet, but there was a certain “homey” mood amongst us, you know?

Me and Violet stayed in the kitchen, me helping her out and wondering how life would be with the six of us under the same roof of this small house. Sophie began setting the table with Stan in silence, although she still looked happy with that arrangement, while my Dad used the bathroom, and then the two men switched, our Dad seemingly enjoying doing such a trivial thing with his eldest daughter.

Once we were all sat and served with the vanilla-scented golden goodness and warm drinks, Violet began by giving them the news about the offer she had gotten. Everyone was very surprised, of course, not just because she had already gotten an offer, but also because she hadn’t told them about her plans to maybe do some modelling on the side. She clarified that it really was just a side thing done very occasionally, but as long as people agreed to her conditions, she thought that it’d be a nice way to get a bit extra cash to help out here and there. They asked for details, which she provided as best as she could, but since things were still up in the air, she couldn’t give complete answers. Still, they seemed supportive, and since it was done with Josephine’s involvement, they didn’t see much of a problem with how things seemed to be headed. They just asked her twice if she was absolutely sure about it, which Violet said she was. That conversation ended with them asking for Violet to keep them informed.

Then…

“Was my bed uncomfortable?” Papa Stan asked Sophie.

“N-no, it was!” she said, turning as red as her sweater. “Sorry, for looking like this… I just couldn’t get my mind to settle last night.”

“That’s unexpected,” he hummed. “I didn’t have you figured as someone who gets excited about the New Year.”

“Pfft, hehe!”

“Abby, I swear!” Sophie hissed.

“Haah, can you two not bicker as if you were little kids just for once,” my Dad spiritlessly asked. “Stan and I literally just woke up.”

I was going to say something, but Violet moved my face to face hers as she told me I had some honey on my cheek. That was just an excuse as she was silently asking me to reel it in a bit with her eyes. Since it was now her asking too, I guess I’d comply… for now at least. I had all the intention in the world of making this year, the last one as a kid and as a high schooler, as fun as possible with her and the rest of the people I love.