{142}✔️

**Wednesday, July 18th**

Dahlia's POV

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We couldn't start heading home until Wednesday because it took them a couple days to fix up the bus, but when Wednesday was finally here, we were all ecstatic!

I think I can speak for everybody when I say that getting onto that bus was a breath of fresh air. No more having to share a hotel room with fifteen other people. We were heading home, which meant finally getting to relax and get some good sleep.

This vacation had been really fun, but it was pretty tiring too. Being around other people constantly was exhausting, and nothing could prove that better than the sixth hour spent on the bus.

Like I said, getting onto the bus was a breath of fresh air, but that fresh air quickly turned into poison the longer we were sat there.

"How could you not know the name of my pet rabbit?! I've talked to you about her, like, twenty thousand times!" Ken shook her head as she turned away from Caden and slapped his hand away as he tried to touch her shoulder.

"I tune you out every time you mention the stupid thing because, baby, I love you, but I'm sorry I don't give a shit about a bunny rabbit you had when you were six years old!" He yelled. "You talk about the thing all the time, and it's just not that deep! Do I agree that it's sad that she got run over by the lawnmower? Yes! Do I care to hear the story every day of my life?! No!"

"Oh, like I don't get sick and tired of hearing about Leonard the opossum all the damn time?!" She scoffed. "You had that thing for, like, a day and it was a fucking opossum! You couldn't have been that attached, and yet I let you go on and on about how you guys were besties—"

"Thank you! This is exactly what I was talking about way back at the Sadie Hawkin's dance!" Cadence chimed in.

"Oh, shut up, you twerp, I don't even wanna talk to you after the wrong you've done to me!" Caden rolled his eyes at her.

"I said I was fucking sorry—"

"How does my own so-called twin sister not remember the day of which I lost my first ever baby tooth?!" He shouted. "You should care about me enough to remember that kind of stuff!"

"I do care about you. Most times. But it's fucking ridiculous of you to legitimately think that I'd remember that shit! You don't remember when I lost my first baby tooth!"

"January 21st, 2005, bitch!" He huffed. She gasped, her eyes widening. "What the fuck? Why—How—"

"I kept up with it! I wrote down and have now memorized all the dates in which you lost your baby teeth and not only that! I also kept up with when you got your first period, had your first kiss, broke your first ankle, and I even kept track of how long it took you to get your driver's license after getting your permit! Three tries and 452 days, by the fucking way!" He shouted.

"Okay, so, because you're a fucking weirdo I'm supposed to be one too? That shit is creepy, and I'm not about to keep apologizing for not keeping up with that weird-ass shit! Who the fuck does that?!"

"You! If I asked you how many times Gigi's sneezed since he's been here in America, you'd say he's sneezed 362 times—"

"Wrong!" Cadence growled. "It's been 367 times, you're way off!"

"Aha!" Caden pointed at her. "See?! You see?! You keep track of his stuff but not mine! I'm your brother! You should have enough decency to track my sneezes! It's not like I'm asking you to keep track of how many times I've cried in my lifetime—That's 1368 times for you, by the way—I'm just asking you to care a little!"

I squeezed my eyes shut and tapped my fingers on my nose as I tried to calm myself down and tune them out.

Cooper had suggested playing a game to help pass the time since we were once again on another long, long drive, and that was starting to get kinda old now. We all decided to listen to his suggestion and he told us it might be cool to play a trivia game. You know, see what all we know and remember about each other.

The first ten minutes of the game was fine and everything went to shit after that.

"I just think it's funny how you somehow managed to remember Billie's first curse word, but when it came time to answer the question of what my first ever word was, you just sat there looking stupid!" Cora grumbled.

"Billie told me what her first curse word was, like, last month or something, Cora! Your first-ever word was said fifteen years ago!" I defended myself.

"Yeah, don't act like your sister is any good at remembering anything about me, anyway," Billie muttered to herself. "I've told her fifty thousand times what my least favorite sex position is, and yet, she can't fucking remember!" She screamed.

"Oh my fucking god, you wanna know why I can't remember that?!" I yelled, raising my brows. "I can't remember that because I don't have to remember that because as soon as I go mentioning trying to switch positions, you wave me off! You wanna know what you are?!"

"Don't say it!"

"I'm gonna say it!"

"Don't say it!"

"Oh, you don't want me to say it?!"

"Do. Not. Say. It."

"V A N I L L A. There! I spelled it! You're v a n i l l a!" I smirked.

"I don't seem to remember you thinking I was vanilla when you were moaning my name from the inside of your brother's trunk—"

"Shut up!" My eyes widened.

"Denny's—You guys had sex in Denny's car?!" Cora gasped. "He's gonna kill you!"

"Trunk?" I heard Jules ask. "You was busting it open in a trunk?"

"He's not gonna kill me because he's not gonna find out!" I threatened. "Cause if he does then I'm gonna have to tell dad about the very concerning conversation I heard while you were on the phone with Liza at 2 am a few months ago—"

"You fucking eavesdropping bitch!" She screamed.

"How do you have sex in a trunk? Was the trunk closed or what? How you do that?" Bea mumbled.

"You told me nobody was gonna find out about that!" I hissed, turning back to Billie. "Since you're so shitty at keeping secrets, then how about I tell everybody your favorite thing to yell when you're coming, huh?!"

"Shut up, you hoe!" She growled lowly. "If you tell anyone I swear to god I'll tell everyone here what you told me Kai's biggest kink was!"

Kai gasped loudly from a few seats in front of us, quickly turning to look at us. "You told her about that?! That was just supposed to be between you and me!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, but I don't think that you get to be mad at me for spilling one of your secrets! At least I only told one person and not, oh, I don't know, the entire school!" I narrowed my eyes at her.

"Why can't we just let the past be in the past?!" She huffed.

"Wait, wait, wait, what the hell is your biggest kink supposed to be? Because you haven't talked to me about anything special since we've been fucking!" Jessica cut in.

"It's nothing—" Kai tried.

"You trusted her, some random girl that you were screwing just to screw, with some big kink secret, and yet you don't wanna tell me?! Your actual girlfriend?!" Jessica chuckled bitterly.

"Okay, I'd just like to say that whatever you heard was supposed to be strictly between Liza and I and I feel really violated—" Cora started to rant but I turned my attention to Jules and Madi who'd started arguing as well.

"I'm just saying that if you can memorize three different encyclopedias in one week's time, then you should be able to remember not to do the one thing that I've been begging you not to do with the toilet paper since the very first moment we moved in together, okay?! You should fold it to wipe, not crumple it up, and it should hang under, not over when you put it on the stupid toilet paper holder!" Jules yanked her hair in annoyance as she ranted.

Madi put his noise-canceling headphones on in the middle of her talking, grinning smugly in her direction as he saw how mad it made her. "I do not see how or why it matters to you how I decide to use the toilet paper to wipe my own asshole after I finish going number two."

"Because if you fold the paper instead of crumpling it then you don't need to use as much which saves a whole lot of money!" She huffed.

"You should stop being cheap and buy the angel soft and then I will have to use less of the toilet paper because it won't be so thin." He argued. "And you do things that annoy m-me too!"

"I do not! I'm the least annoying person, like, ever!" She stated defensively.

"I am going to have to disagree," He nodded to himself. "When you cook eggs you do not scramble them with a fork, you do it with a spoon which is very upsetting to me and to my stomach which is always upset after eating your eggs."

"Your stomach can't tell whether the eggs have been scrambled with a fork or a spoon, Madi." She sighed.

"Then maybe it gets upset not because of the fork or the spoon but because you simply cannot cook."

She gasped loudly and let out a surprised laugh. "I can too cook! You always stuff your face like some kind of wild animal every time I put something down to eat in front of you! You love my cooking! You wouldn't eat that quickly if you didn't!"

"I do...N-Not love your cooking! I eat quickly to get it over with." He mumbled. "You do other things too that are annoying. You do...You do not wear the right pairs of socks on the right days. On Wednesday you wore socks that said Tuesday, you were a day late and that was annoying."

"B-But—"

"And when you put dishes in the sink you do not put your plate first, you put your cup, and that makes the dishes make a lot of noise because eventually, they fall because you didn't put them in there correctly and so because of this and many other reasons you are not the least annoying person, like, ever." He grinned.

"I literally asked you the easiest question I could've possibly managed to ask and you still got it wrong! I mean, fuck! I'm not expecting you to know my whole life story, I'm just expecting you to be able to listen to me speak for literally two seconds and then come up with an answer that's at least slightly close!" Bea ranted.

Kit rubbed her forehead as she stared at Bea with lazy eyes. "My answer was slightly close." She mumbled.

"Canada?! Are you kidding me?! I'm from fucking Ireland you absolute—"

Kit cut her off by grabbing her jaw tightly and glaring into her eyes for a few seconds before pulling her down and connecting their lips.

They didn't argue for the rest of the bus ride.

"Orbison! My full first name is Orbison! How long have you known me now?!" Ori shook his head at Jessica who'd moved on from arguing with Kai to arguing with him. "Your name is Jessica Daniella Presley, how hard is that?! How hard is it to know your friend's name?!"

"I haven't called you by your full name since, like, the first time I met you!" Jessica threw her hands up in exasperation. "And my mind goes blank when I'm put on the spot, you know that!"

"You don't have any right to be mad at her after I asked you the easiest question in the world and you got it wrong." Hudson grumbled.

Ori rolled his eyes. "You cannot hold that against me! How was I supposed to know that your favorite eyeshadow color combos had changed from the Goldstone satin finish bronze and Tiger Eye matte finish light gold on brown to Hematite matte finish chestnut brown and Bronzite matte finish chocolate brown?!" He huffed.

I literally don't know what the fuck he even just said.

"How could you not know my least favorite Teletubby after all this time together? This is literally unacceptable and I just feel like I put so much more thought into this relationship than you do!" Billie shook her head angrily.

I rolled my eyes at her as she continued to mutter to herself.

"I do not understand why you didn't wanted to tell me the answer to my question! You should know my hometown name by now!" Gigi pouted.

"Honey, I'm sorry, but all those Italian words all sound the exact same to me; sexy! Every time you start saying anything that sounds even remotely Italian I just go blank and all of a sudden my panties? Dropped! Last week you said 'Pepperoni pizza' and I almost came right then and there!" Cadence defended herself.

"Wow, really glad I'm sitting right in front of you right now." Caden muttered sarcastically, not turning to look at her as he glared ahead, his arms crossed and a scowl on his face.

"You are using excuses because you do not listen to me!" Gigi told her.

She rolled her eyes and groaned. "You don't seem to mind my excuses when you want a blowie in the middle of having dinner with my parents, do you?" She spat.

My eyes widened. "Bitch, what? Y'all wilding!"

"Blowie? Who says blowie? That's so cute. I wish I had a dick so I could tell my friends 'Aye, bruh, I'll call you back! My bitch finna give me a blowie!' That'd be dope!" Billie grinned.

"You can't judge nobody, trunk girl." Bea shook her head. "I still wanna know how you do that shit."

"You already tell people 'My bitch about to give me sucky sucky' even when I'm not, so be happy." I told Billie.

"If we'd just all agreed to play the game that I suggested, none of this would be happening right now." Heidi piped up.

"Oh, shut up. Your ass knew damn well that nobody was about to play Marco Polo...On a bus." Bea said.

"No, you shut up! My idea was great, and you know what? I'm sick of you being mean to me ever since you and your new bitch got together!" Heidi snapped.

"Oh, you're sick of me being mean to you?" Bea mocked.

"Bitch, do you wanna fucking fight me?!"

"Nah, shorty, shut the fuck up, though. I'll stomp you like the lil roach you look like, quit acting up." Kit mumbled before closing her eyes. "Y'all calm the fuck down so I can get my zzz's."

"You know what your problem is? While you're calling me vanilla?" Billie narrowed her eyes at me. "You're way too uptight!"

"Uptight?! I am not uptight!" I defended myself. "Name one instance in which I have been so-called 'uptight'!"

"Back before school was officially out when you told me that you wanted to get Petrillo and Capone back but Mrs. East wouldn't let you. I told you we could set up a distraction and take the babies when she wasn't looking, but you said no to that!"

"Okay, well, bringing explosives to school and setting them off isn't a fucking distraction, it's a crime, so—"

"Okay, what about just yesterday when I asked you if we could play the lion king music—You know the fucking music—and hold the baby up in the air whenever we see it—"

"Remember our parenting class? The one we left with your baby looking like it'd been through war? Remember the huge dent in your baby's head? 'Bruises build character', bitch please! Bruises build good cases for CPS!" I shouted.

"All that aside, all I'm saying is, the Lion King is coming out and I just think It'd be festive." Billie shrugged.

"I--"

I was cut off by the sound of a loud ass horn. I cringed and covered my ears, as did everybody else. A few moments after the loud noise stopped, I uncovered my ears and looked around, trying to figure out where the noise had come from.

"You guys are just about the most annoying batch of kids I've ever had to drive anywhere in my life! And that includes the group of bratty little dancers I had to drive to and from Minnesota once. Do you have any idea how annoying little girls who've just lost a dance competition are?" Cooper drawled.

"You kids are about to be home in just an hour or so now, and you're about to see all your families and whatever damn friends you left behind, and Dahlia, you've got a little niece or nephew to look forward to! You guys should be happy, celebrating! Not arguing!" He preached.

I bit my lip and looked down, blushing. I guess we are all acting pretty stupid. Nothing new, I guess, but still. We should probably knock it off. We really do have way too much to be grateful for to be arguing like this. I mean, we had a safe and successful trip. A few things went wrong, but nothing too bad and nothing life-threatening. We should all be happy right now.

"You guys are lucky to have each other. Been a long time since I've seen such a big group of friends like this. Especially a big group of friends who actually care about each other the way you guys do. You're more like a family than anything. I'd kill to have a family. You know I told yall my wife and four of my kids died in a car crash some years ago--"

"But you said--"

"Nevermind what I said." He cut Billie off quickly.

I sighed as I grabbed her hand. "Sorry." I mumbled.

We all apologized to each other loudly and then quieted down again. I held onto Billie's hand tightly as I stared out the window, letting out a deep breath as I enjoyed the new sound of peace and quiet.

***

The peace didn't last for long. It never does.

"It's a fucking boy, I'm telling you! I asked my aunt, who happens to be incredibly gifted when it comes to talking to spirits, and she asked the baby what it was and it said it was a boy!" Heidi shouted over all the other bickering.

"Okay, even if your aunt is good at talking to spirits--which I doubt--The baby isn't a fucking spirit! It's a baby! Not the same thing!" I argued.

"It was a spirit when it was inside of Julia!" She huffed.

"It was a fetus when it was inside of Julia." Billie mumbled, rolling her eyes.

"It wasn't alive yet, that's the point!"

"That is not--"

"It's a girl! Julia said she wanted a girl first, so it's totally a girl!" Cora nodded.

"I don't think Julia gets to control what gender comes out of her ass first." Bea shook her head.

"She doesn't, but she prayed to like every god there is and maybe even the devil, and they can definitely control that shit." Cora tried to convince us.

"When I mentioned your name to my aunt, she said to me, 'Oh, that girl has lost a person very close to her recently! An old spirit! They loved each other very much!" Heidi said after tapping my shoulder again. "You're trying to tell me that isn't true?"

"Nobody close to me has died since, like, 2006." I rolled my eyes.

"Well, the spirits are a little late coming to her sometimes, but what's important is that she eventually gets to speak to them." She smiled.

"Oh my god, what if Nana's dead?!" Cora panicked.

"You know Nana told us she wasn't dying anytime soon because the devil wouldn't want her down there taking over his kingdom," I shook my head. "Plus, she said she wasn't leaving earth until sometime after she got to spit on Rosemary Harmon's grave and then fuck Mr. Harmon on top of it."

"Okay, so the devil may not want her down there with him, b-but what if she died and went to heaven?!" Cora cried.

"Ha!" Billie laughed. "I don't see that happening. Not after all the sinful stuff she was saying when I taught her what scissoring was."

Yikes.

"Yeah, plus she was telling me about how she cussed her pastor out during a sermon cause he stepped on her Balenciaga church shoes." I shrugged. "And see? That's another reason she won't be up there. She said it herself. If heaven doesn't have a Balenciaga store, you're not about to catch her up there."

"Then who died?!" Cora huffed.

"Your brain's dead if you actually believe anything Heidi's aunt has to say." I rolled my eyes.

"Back to the actual important discussion at hand; It's a fucking boy, no doubt. Denny sounded really excited on the phone and he told me he wanted a boy!" Ori smirked.

"He told me he wanted a girl." Billie shrugged.

"He couldn't seem to make up his mind about what he wanted when he was talking to me. He just wanted a healthy baby with all its limbs and preferably, no extra ones." I told them.

"Whoever thinks he's having a girl is a total bozo!" Hudson piped up. "It's definitely a dude baby."

"No, it's not!" Jessica huffed. "It's a girl!"

We all began bickering loudly again which resulted in Cooper blowing the horn loudly again. "What did I tell you about all that fighting?! I told you you're lucky to have each other right now! I can't be there at the hospital to argue with my wife who's fighting for her life because she tripped over a knife, and I'm stuck chauffering you--"

"Are your wife and kids dead or not?!" Billie screamed.

"Well, not that it's any of your business, but I'm actually missing their funeral right this second." The man sniffled.

I groaned and slumped down in my seat, closing my eyes for a few seconds before he spoke again."Well anyway, you guys are about to find out the sex of the baby in about two minutes! We're almost at your house, Dahlia!" He grinned.

My eyes widened as I looked out the window and noticed that we were in fact pretty damn close! Julia got home from the hospital earlier this morning and Denny's letting her stay with us for a couple of weeks. I can't wait to see them, the baby, the house, and my damn bed!

The closer we got, the more cars I noticed parked along the street. I furrowed my brows as the bus came to a screeching halt right outside Denny and I's house and I noticed all the cars parked in the yard.

"What the shit? Now seems like a bad time for him to be throwing a party...But I'm down!" Heidi clapped.

Who the hell do all these cars belong to?

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A/N: The next chapter is the last!!!! So excited for you to read it and I'm currently writing the first chapter of the sequel and I think the sequel is gonna be so fun!

Again, one last time, do you think it's a girl or a boy?