Our "Friendly" Matrimony

11-Consequences

Sophia's POV

"Accident?! You call that an accident?! What were you kids thinking? Not only did you not do what you were sent to but you also incurred massive financial losses."

I opened my mouth to make an excuse but immediately closed it as Alex's father glared us down. Let me explain what had conspired in the previous 4 hours.

A cake testing match, a small cake eating contest among us and then... A cake fight.

It wasn't on purpose and we didn't plan on flinging cake about but we couldn't help it. Especially when Noah being a competitive person and a very very sour loser chucked cake into Julian's and I quote "Beautiful face!"

No one would willingly risk getting between the two of them and getting a face full of cake in return. So we stayed back for as long as we could till Leo and Vince tried to step in and one by one the cake flinging circle expanded.

To the point where we split into groups and messed each other up good. But since the workers present didn't stop us nor did they make an effort to intervene, one can only say they were planning on letting us waste away our finances.

The only thing that had interrupted us was the ringing of Alex's phone and the voice of his mother on the other side.

"Did you guys pick a cake yet?"

Before either of us could reply, a scream fest began between everyone.

"Yeah the Molten lava chocolate one!"

"No the Red velvet one!"

"No the vanilla biscuit layer one!"

"No the pineapple one!"

"Ew! No pineapple!"

"The yellow butter cake!"

"The chiffon cake!"

"The cheesecake!!"

By the time they stopped shouting their preferences an argument had begun between them about which flavor was best.

"Alright, settle on a few and get back to me in a bit, tell the manager to forward the receipt to your father."

"S-sure mum."

Alex cut the call and looked around with wide eyes. It was then that we realized what we had done! We were such a big disaster. Not a single cake was left standing and the mess that we were spoke tales of our encounter.

"A-Alex?"

He stood frozen in panic, looking around with an expression mirroring most of ours.

"Oh fudge."

"I'm 18, they can still ground me! Someone else pay for it!"

"Wait, let's decide which cakes are the best choice first, we'll pay for the rest and put the chosen ones on their tab."

They nodded to my suggestion before grabbing a few spoons and beginning a second taste testing round.

"Red velvet for sure."

"Without question."

Alex finalized seriously when the others went to argue, hence they had to resort to other means and chose to explain the redeeming qualities of their cakes. It looked a lot like the business meetings we often attended, I had to stifle my giggle when Alex threw me a look before he grinned as well and threw his arm over my shoulder.

I burst into laughter, unable to contain myself when willow held out a spoon lathered in cheesecake goodness towards Alex when he looked doubtfully towards it and he actually took it!

Rolling his eyes at me, he had to tug me along as I kept giggling at the messes that we were and the reactions we could possibly get if we were to be caught. But that wasn't happening.

Right? We had such an elaborate plan to avoid getting in trouble...

Wrong

We had resolved issues of the payment, picked three best flavors, cheesecake definite, Red velvet cake for sure and the molten chocolate lava cake. Alex was paying while we talked out the cleaning expenses with the staff and thought about hiring a mini clean up crew for help.

It was then that the bell on the door had rung, signifying that someone had entered and the gasp of horror that followed made us all turn slowly towards Mr.Jaxton and uncle Colton. This was totally not what we had prepared for.

Soon enough, we were cleaned off and piled into the cars to be driven home to receive a lecture, and thats where we were right now. They had taken over all the expenses from Alex and were now glaring down at us. All the grownups of our family looked pretty disappointed In us. But I was a 100% sure that it wouldn't be much longer before Aunt Jas, Uncle Arlo and Colton and Connor would burst into grins and high five us. After all, we all knew exactly how their wedding planning went.

Aunt Jas and Uncle Arlo checked the timing with their elders and would go beforehand to pick everything so when the time to do the actual visit came, they could pretend they clicked so well they didn't have to spend hours upon hours doing what we had. Literally every single one of them had done some sneaking behind their elders backs.

And the elders didn't condemn it per say, as long as it was within boundaries, there would be no trouble. But lord forbid if they decided to cross a boundary, literal hell would be raised on earth.

"And trying to cover it up?"

Mr.Jaxton paused as I lowered my head, ashamed of our immaturity.

"But then again, you're related to them, it'd be impossible for you to show absolutely none of their traits now wouldn't it?"

Our heads snapped up in unison and the man smiled at me in return. Reminding me of the time he had sat all of us young females, who were teenagers at the time, down and explained to us the reasons we didn't need to lower our heads. The man had garnered so much respect from us that literally all of us had cried while strangling him in a group hug that he had tried to reciprocate.

"And since my son had such an intricate plan to hide your doings, I will be confiscating his card."

Alex went to argue but was hushed by his father's quirked brow that very clearly dared him to challenge the man's decision.

"Hand it over Alex."

Grumbling under his breath, Alex stuck his tongue out at me before handing the card to his father and letting out a depressed sigh as I patted his head. Throwing each other under the bus wasn't an option since it was a major rule breaker in the friendship journal. Hence Alex had to stick it out for the sake of me- the actual mastermind.

I giggled at the thought and received a playful glare from my best friend. On a more serious nit though, I was waiting for one of the grownups to realize what a perfect plan we had cooked up and all the mess we had covered up in such a short amount of time. However, it seemed that messing up and having fun was only fair when they were doing it themselves.

"Hold on a minute now."

Uncle Colton stepped in like the hero all of us were expecting him to be.

"It's obvious that Alex doesn't have a disobedient bone in his body and the only one capable of diverting him from his usual innocence would be that one, grinning from ear to ear, how oblivious do you think we are?"

I gasped dramatically as his finger pointed towards me before pouting at him to look as harmless as possible.

"That doesn't work on me!"

He tried to look authoritative but the c***k in his voice reminded me just how good at mirroring my expressions I truly was.

"Not to mention, all of them went along with it."

Alex's Aunt Melody spoke up, her eyes narrowing on all of us as we chuckled nervously. It had clicked right then and there that I had double bookings today!!!

Not only was I supposed to pick out a cake or cakes- for all of us- I was also supposed to go dress shopping today. It was supposed to be the first of many days since both our aunts and some of our uncles would tag along.

Of course the cake fight and the clean up that followed had distracted me and they obviously felt like I had betrayed them. Well, they didn't exactly try to hide it. The narrowed eyes and looks of betrayal were very much visible, and I had just picked up on them.

Passing them a sheepish smile, I sighed as they turned their heads away in return. Well, just a few extra days of dress shopping would make up for this mishap. That is, if they can all clear up their schedule to match whatever date they set. Neither the women nor the men were free enough to take numerous days off without consequences especially since most of our group was taking off's and they had to manage our work too.

"Wait... what about dress shopping?"

Nova muttered under her breath but due to the silent stare down I was being subjected too, everyone in the room heard it and even those who didn't remember it before, turned on me.

"Blame the ones who started the fight not the ones who tried to clean up."

I pouted at them as Alex chuckled beside me and Leo tried to use the diverted attention to escape. Vince on the other hand, being the ever thoughtful one yanked him back to his spot by the back of his collar. Leo's resentful whine earned him numerous snickers from most of us.

"Right, so who were the ones that began the whole ordeal?"

We passed looks to each other, all of us probably thinking back to the times both Noah and Julian had ticked us off. We had to get back at them one way or another. I smirked at them as their confident expressions morphed into those of fear.

I was just doing it to see them crumble in fear but I had totally forgotten who our group had included in this escapade.

"Noah and Julian."

Oliver remarked in a bored tone and a silence thick enough to suffocate a mermaid descended upon the group. Did dear Oli give a damn though? Hell no!! He just calmly went back to flipping pages of his book. Not a care in the world.

It was then that his very presence in the cake shop became suspicious. Oliver hated getting out and did his best to stay inside his fricking awesome library of a penthouse but since he had willingly stepped out with us this time, there was definitely a catch and that was:

He was spying for them!!!

Of course!! They needed an informant on the inside to assure we didn't go out of our way and do something incredibly stupid. He had barely even grunted in response to being invited to the bachelor and bachelorette everyone was hosting for us. So why would he ever leave his safe place to head on over to a cake picking trip with us?!

My silent contemplating expression was very well known to everyone in the room so it wasn't that much of a surprise for me to snap back into my senses and find them looking to me for some sort of revelation. Boy, did I have one for them.

"You were spying on us!"

My accusation had a bunch of comically dramatic gasps ringing through out the room. It was then that the looks our grownups had been giving us faltered and they either looked away, cleared their throats or looked to my grandfather for backup.

If they thought pops would pick his own children over his grandchildren, they were proven wrong!!! Especially when he shrugged and leaned back in his chair casually while throwing me a wink.

I sent him a flying kiss in return, our little exchange was noticed by everyone in the room and seemed to fire up the grown ups. Ha!

"Dad! What? I mean, am I not even half as important as the result of my sperm for you?!"

Uncle Colton's exclamation made Alex's adorable Aunt Melody whack him on the back of his head as the others pretended to not have heard anything.

"Ew!! I have more importance than that!!!"

Zoe gagged at her fathers words and I stifled my laughter while Alex dug his head into my shoulder to avoid laughing out loud. Little Zoe's fury was not equally little. Hence all of us kept our belly clenching laughs and chortles inside.

"I'm not even proud of that!"

I let out a snort but quickly covered it up by coughing approximately ten times.

"I don't agree with the wording of his sentence but he is right, Sir."

Alex's uncle Hunter spoke up, while flashing a frown in the direction of my giddy uncle Colton. Who found his own sentence worth dying with laughter over.

"Yup! He is so fricking right!"

Alex's youngest uncle Connor chimed in making Liam cover his ears and shake his head repeatedly.

"Don't turn our victory into something so disgusting! You selfish oldies!"

Julian exclaimed, the word oldie earned him so many gasps that I had absolutely no doubt that these were indeed the people who raised us.

"You take that back!"

Connor spoke in the most offended tone ever but when Julian only huffed in return, he turned to his older brother Mr.Easton for help.

"Easton control your kid, his blindness is gonna kill me one day. No offense Mateo."

Mateo whose eyesight was the worst of us all did a double take before making the most heart broken expression, which caused all of us to go in an overprotective mode.

"Glasses are hot with messed up hair and a good dressing sense!"

Vincent went first.

"Yes! Glasses seriously can make girls drool, especially when you tip them down professor style!"

Leonard followed short, making me cover my mouth with my hands to not burst into laughter.

"First of all, how do you know that, second: glasses can make a person look smarter, hotter or cuter depending on who wears them and what they wear them with. And in Mateo's case it can literally be all three. So you take that back uncle Connor."

Alex went next, holding me close for support while complaining to his uncle. Every grownup besides Connor himself was stifling their laughter, even his dear wife Isabella- Isa in short- had turned over to our side.

"Okay okay, I'm sorry, Mateo you're a hot dude."

"That doesn't sound right."

"It feels weird."

"Does anyone else get pedophile vibes."

I smacked a hand over my mouth as the room erupted in laughter while Connor whined about us youngsters being impossible to deal with.