A Month In Sin

I nervously tapped my fingers on the cold marble island as we waited for our parents to come downstairs. We had all gotten a chance to change—Luke and Niall could wear Elys’ clothes relatively well—and we were waiting on them to talk over this situation and do the same.

Elys was in the room as well, but only because he was searching through the fridge for something to eat. He had eaten at the reception, but like me—like everyone in the room besides Ori—he believed life was better with loads and loads of food.

I sighed and leaned back against the cushioned barstool I sat in, with Luke on one side of me and Niall on the other. Ori hadn’t stopped pacing since our parents asked us to wait for them downstairs.

“Anything to snack on?”

Elys glanced back at me and gave me a smirk. “Hmm. Considering the company, I could make this entire bag of pizza rolls.”

My eyebrows rose. “Please do. Cheese or pepperoni?”

Elys pulled the bag out and placed it on the island in front of me, making a face. “Cheese. Damn you, Eris.”

Luke laughed and looked over at me. “How boring.”

I stood from my barstool and walked around to the oven, where I pulled out a pan large enough for the bag. “Stick around long enough, and you’ll find that’s not the only boring thing about me.”

Elys snorted. “Right. You keep telling yourself that, sis.”

“Sometimes, I wish you were boring,” Ori said, and she stopped pacing so she could glare at me. “Everything would be under control if you were.”

I raised one eyebrow in her direction. “What gives you that idea?”

“If you were so boring, Luke never would’ve been fascinated with you to begin with, thus you two never would’ve introduced me to Niall, which would, in turn, mean the four of us didn’t end up hitched!”

Niall’s eyes tightened while Luke seemed rather nonchalant about it.

“Well, she’s not wrong.”

“So this is my fault now?” I asked, and I cocked an eyebrow at him. “And here I thought you delighted in making it their fault.”

Luke smirked. “I like the idea of it being your fault more, I think.”

“No matter whose fault it is, this is a situation the four of you are now in,” I heard my mother’s voice say from the stairs. They led to a small room right outside of the kitchen, so I figured they were on their way down now.

I made a face and ripped open the bag of pizza rolls. Elys was laughing as he turned and preheated the oven, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, since I was about to be busy, he took over making pizza rolls for us all.

I went over to sit back down between Luke and Niall, and to no one’s surprise, Ori didn’t sit down with us. She remained standing with her arms folded over her chest, nervously waiting for some kind of reaction from our mom.

Mom was very calm about it, and Dad was equally calm as he came in behind her. He wasn’t happy about this per say, and I don’t think Mom was either. But neither looked angry.

“So it’s too late for an annulment,” Dad said. “There are really only two options now.”

“Two?” Ori asked, stepping closer to the island now that she knew they weren’t angry with us. “I only see one.”

Mom shook her head. “There are two. You’ve just lost control on the situation and can’t see the other one. Ori, sweetheart, you have got to relax, okay? What’s done is done. You can’t take it back now, and even if you could, I don’t think you should.”

“You don’t understand,” Ori whispered. “I wanted a huge celebration. I wanted lights, and three hundred people. I wanted a beautiful gown, flowers—”

My eyes lit up as I cut her off. “Wait, does this mean I don’t have to live through that nightmare now?” I looked over at Luke and then Niall. “You guys are awesome.”

Ori glared at me. “Thanks.”

I gave her a rather innocent smile before looking back to our parents. “Okay, so, two options. I can see them. You really think we should stay married?”

Mom shrugged. “Honestly, it’s not a crazy idea.”

“Mom, that’s completely and utterly insane!” Ori exclaimed. “We barely know one another! We can’t stay married to someone we don’t even know!”

“There’s a reason all of this happened,” Mom insisted. “Ori, honey, your father believes as you do. He thinks the four of you should get a divorce and go your separate ways, and if that’s what you decide to do, that is your decision to make. Please, just hear me out. Wait thirty days.”

My eyebrows rose. “Thirty days? You think that’s enough time for crazy over there to calm her tits about it all? Thirty years might be more accurate.”

“Sorry for actually being the logical one,” Ori scoffed. “While you may have no problem with this madness, it shouldn’t have happened! I can’t believe I let you talk me into this!”

I held my hands up. “Hey, I just said you needed to let loose and have fun for once. You were the one that said all that stuff about waiting until you were married to have sex.”

“That’s something we both vowed a long time ago,” Ori said, and her voice was lethal. “Guess it was just me.”

“On the contrary, Luke’s the only person I ever had sex with, so take the high and mighty attitude somewhere else.”

I felt as Luke cowered back a bit, and I guess I understood why. Dad wasn’t angry with us for making this mistake, but hearing that the last of his little girls had lost their innocence . . . it wasn’t going over too well. He had spent all of our lives protecting us, and to hear that he was no longer protecting his angels anymore was making him angry.

“Can we talk about anything else?” Luke muttered next to my ear. “Your dad is going to murder me soon, I think.”

I looked over at Luke. “He’d probably get away with it, too. If that makes you feel any better.”

Luke’s eyes widened. “How is that supposed to make me feel better?”

I shrugged. “Just thought I’d let you know.” I looked back to our mother. “Okay, so, thirty days. Why? What’s the point?”

“Divorce is hard,” Mom said. “It’s going to take months to go through and finalize . . . honestly, you could go and speak to lawyers first thing Monday morning, and it’d take about thirty days for them to get anything together anyways.”

“Doesn’t mean we have to spend those thirty days together,” Ori said. “They have lives, Mom. Luke’s on tour, and I’m sure Niall would like to go see his family before he has to go back on tour himself.”

Mom sighed. “Ori, honey, you’ve doomed this from the beginning. Just listen to me. Thirty days can’t hurt anything. At least you’ll know, without a shadow of a doubt, that this was just what happened after a night of heavy drinking. Niall, Luke, is this the first time the two of you have been out drinking?”

Niall’s eyebrow knit together. “I’m Irish. Of course it isn’t.”

Luke shook his head. “I’m not a huge partier, but no. This isn’t the first time.”

“And whether it’s the first time you’ve brought a girl home or not doesn’t matter either,” Mom said. “Something about my daughters got the four of you out of that bar and into that chapel.”

“We’re in Vegas, Mom,” Ori snorted. “There are chapels everywhere. I’m pretty sure there was one right across the street.”

“It’s not the first time we’ve partied in Vegas either,” Luke disagreed, and his eyes left my sister to grab ahold of mine again. “You’re the first girl I’ve ever met that I actually had a desire to bring home.”

I gave him a playful smirk. “You’re not really helping your case to stay alive.”

Luke’s eyes widened, and he didn’t say another word. He kept his eyes away from my dad, who was now giving Luke a death glare that looked like it came straight from the pits of hell, and kept his lips pressed together.

Mom hit Dad’s arm, though his glare barely softened at all. “That’s my point. You can’t tell me this didn’t happen for a reason. Eris, you’re greatest fear is growing up alone, and Niall, I see the same thing in you. Luke, to me, you seem like the type who had to grow up fast and has already learned there’s more to life than partying and having lots of sex, so to me, it seems like you know there’s more to life than what you’re living. Ori, you don’t fear being alone because you’re comfortable with who you are, but you fear losing control. It’s why you’re such a mess right now, but honey, you’re going to have to realize that you can’t control life, no matter how much you want to. I think this is the best thing that could’ve happened to you, to all of you. I may be wrong about you two, but I know my daughters needed something like this.”

I leaned back against the barstool and looked over at Luke. “You know what? I’m in. You wanna try this?”

Luke’s eyes caught mine, and a hint of a smile started to form on his lips. “I am. Like she said, what could thirty days really hurt?”

“I’m in.”

I was completely caught off guard by Niall’s quick decision to do this as well; he had seemed almost as angry about the situation as Ori was, yet he wanted to do this?

Ori’s mouth fell open as she looked at her husband in shock. “What? You agreed with me just thirty minutes ago!”

“She’s right, Ori,” Niall said, and he shrugged. “It’s not the first time I’ve gotten drunk, and it’s not the first time I left the bar with a girl in Vegas. So why did I decide to marry you? I’d like to think there was a reason, and maybe, if you’ll calm down and stop freaking out about it all, I can find out.”

Ori glared at him. “But I’m not in. I think this is absolutely insane!”

When Niall smirked at her, it was all I could do not to laugh. I loved my sister. I really did, but she was acting like a child who wasn’t getting her way. She was too angry to realize she did need to try something wild and spontaneous, or she was in for a miserable life.

“That’s fine, but you think getting a divorce is going to be hard? Imagine what it’ll be like if I don’t agree to it.”

I had never seen Ori look at someone the way she looked at Niall, but her glare was the epitome of rage. She wasn’t one to hate anyone, and she hated being so angry that she lost the ability to speak, but she seemed to be breaking both of those typical rules.

It was hard to say for sure if she hated Niall, but she was definitely too angry to find words.

Mom gave us all a smile. “Great! And I think it would be a good idea to document each day somehow. Maybe write the progress in a journal or something? I don’t know. Just something for you to look back on, if this does work, so you can see how you change each day.”

Hmm. A daily video?

Notes

The lyrics are from Try by Pink. :)

I hope you guys enjoy this chapter. :) She's working on the next one, and I have most of mine done, so updates shouldn't be too far apart. :D

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