AllFreeNovel
Share Us
People hated when I talked like this. It got me labeled aggressive and strident and mouthy and too much. But I couldn’t turn it off. If you want polite dishonesty, don’t ask a woman who started an all-girl punk band that released an album called I’d Date You But I’d Rather Die.
Petra’s lips parted in surprise. Then her features relaxed into quiet humor. Something about what I’d said raised me in her estimation. “My favorite music is anything by Stevie Nicks,” she said. “Does that mean we can be friends?”
God damn it, Finn, I thought. You just had to be right, didn’t you?
The dinner broke up early. Alistair went home to the kids, Mom got in an Uber while calling last-minute instructions to all of us, Vicki and her friends milled around while husbands got their coats. Finn had disappeared.
I put on my own coat and slipped out of the restaurant. The hotel Finn and I were staying at was two blocks down the street, so I didn’t need to wait for a ride. I pulled up my hood, put my head down, and walked.
I had pushed through the heavy glass doors of the hotel lobby and was walking toward the elevators when I heard my name.
I turned. Vicki had come through the doors behind me, her hair windblown and her cheeks flushed. She’d been running.
“Where are you going?” she asked, the words coming out sharp on her exhale of breath.
I looked around. “Where does it look like I’m going?”
“You left.” This was an accusation. “You didn’t even say goodnight. You just left.”
I frowned, taken aback. “Vicki, what’s this about? The dinner was over, we were all leaving. So I left.”
“You could have said goodbye to everyone.” She held out her hands in exasperation. “You could have talked to us. You didn’t even try.”
“I didn’t try?” I pushed my hood back and turned to fully face my sister. Even flushed from running after me, Vicki looked pretty with no effort at all, just like Mom. “I came all the way from Portland for the weekend. How is that not trying?”
“You only did that because you have to.”
“You only invited me because you have to,” I shot back.
“These are my friends.” Her voice was rising. People were starting to look. “You didn’t even talk to them.”
Now I was mad, and I didn’t care that people were watching, eavesdropping with no shame. “I talked to Petra, which you would know if you hadn’t ignored me all fucking night.”
“I was busy. You could have talked to me. The world doesn’t revolve around you, Jules! People can’t pay attention to you all the time!”
“Believe me, I know,” I said, ignoring the stab of pain in my gut. “You haven’t paid attention to me in ten years.”
Vicki opened her mouth as if to say something, and then she stopped. We both stopped. We were on the edge of saying things we couldn’t take back, and we both knew it.
Ten years ago, we’d both said things we couldn’t take back. We were still paying for that.
We’d had a blowout argument, Vicki and me, after a painful Thanksgiving dinner. I remembered the two of us standing on Mom’s porch, yelling at each other, our breath puffing in the cold air, Vicki’s arms wrapped around herself in her sweater as her face went red with anger. I didn’t remember what had set us off, and it didn’t matter. Everything set us off.
But that night was different. Something nasty bubbled up in both of us, then boiled over, unstoppable. I told her she was boring, that she lived in a bubble and had never taken a risk in her life. That she was one of a million girls just like her, all the same.
You’re never going to make it big, Vicki had shouted back at me. You’re deluded. You’re a failure, and the only one who doesn’t know it is you.
Those words still fucking hurt, even now. Because part of me thought that Vicki was right.
“It’s fine,” I said shakily, swiping my hair from my face. The last thing I wanted was to relive that old fight. The thought of it made me suddenly tired. “Go back to your friends. I’ll see you at the fitting tomorrow.”
“You’ll be there?” she asked.
“I said I would be, didn’t I?”
The silence hung heavy again. This was about Dad, I realized. Dad, who had promised Vicki so many things in her life and had never fulfilled any of them. Dad, who was deluded about his music career, which was a failure. Dad, who I resembled, so Vicki would never trust me, no matter what I did.
As if our father hadn’t broken his promises to me, too.
