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“I can’t believe he’s married. I say this with all the love in my heart, but I swear I would not survive the dating scene. I don’t know how you do it.” Autumn shakes her head with a shudder.
“Thanks,” I mutter followed by my fakest smile.
“Listen, I’ve offered several times to hook you up with Eric’s friends,” she says, referencing her fiancé.
“I’m good,” I say, not because I don’t like Eric. I do. He would do literally anything in the world for my sister, which he proved when he turned down going to Stanford Law School—his number one choice of school—because my sister got into Yale which was her number one choice.
Yes, they’re both lawyers and both fucking insufferable at times.
Eric is okay, but the company he keeps? Fucking awful.
It makes me want to keep one eye on Eric at all times because don’t assholes usually travel in packs?
“Fine, but let me know if you change your mind?” She points her chopsticks at me. “I know you’re still young, and maybe not thinking about marriage but your mid-twenties will sneak up on you before you know it!”
“Okay, and?”
“And don’t you want to be married by thirty?” she asks, her eyes wide. We look almost identical except her hair is lighter and straighter with bangs and her eyes are a lighter brown. But we are the same height and build and bone structure; people oftentimes think we’re twins.
“I’m twenty-one, Autumn,” I reply, sardonically.
“Just sayin’.” She shrugs before taking a long sip of her drink.
“You’re twenty-six and you’re not married.”
“And mom does not let me forget it.” She groans. “I am trying to spare you the drama. I even have it easier because I’ve been with Eric for forever, but if I’d been single? Jesus, I can hear her now.”
I’m the youngest of three with an older brother, Shane, who’s a neurosurgeon married to a psychologist with two children. Then my lawyer sister is engaged to another lawyer. And then there’s me: single, still living at home, and working in sales. In a family of overachievers, care to play which of these things is not like the other?
“Then again,” she adds, “you are the favorite. Mom and Dad don’t put half as much pressure on you.”
Here we go.
According to both Shane and Autumn, I have somehow become the favorite because I have the least amount of pressure on me about anything. I got to pursue whatever I wanted whereas they were only given the choices my parents approved of. My sister wanted to be an art major in undergrad before my parents swiftly nixed that and my brother wanted to study philosophy before my parents told him, “We think the fuck not.”
I’ll give my parents that one because what exactly does someone do with a philosophy degree?
I wince at her words. “I don’t think that’s the flex you think it is. It means they don’t expect me to amount to anything.” I tuck some hair behind my ear and try to ignore the gnawing feeling in my gut that my parents think I’m a lost cause.
“No, it means they expect you to amount to whatever you want and in your own time,” she corrects. “But that’s the beauty of being the baby of the family.”
I feel the prickle of annoyance in my nose and scrunch it. “You act like they coddle me.”
“You’re the only one still on their credit cards.”
“I’ve been out of college for three months!”
“You’re also the only one that got a car at sixteen,” she combats and I already know she’s got a list of these arguments waiting.
“Dad had just become the chairman at his company! Also, he had just finished helping Shane with med school and you with your first year of law school. You and Shane ran Mom and Dad way more bills than I ever did. They already told me they’d help but weren’t paying off my student loans.”
“Probably because you live at home.” She takes a healthy sip of her drink. “But here’s another one, you’re the only one who got to study in Paris for the summer in high school.” I purse my lips together because, okay I’ll give her that. Autumn begged our parents to let her go and they told her no. “Face it, you’re the favorite. Also, it means they’re living with you when the time comes.”
I snort. “Good one. Dad is going to live with Shane and Mom will go anywhere Dad goes.”
“Fair point,” she says with a giggle. “So, what’s going to happen with you two?” she says changing the subject.
“With who?”
