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Since we were the exact same size, why should I bother to do all the manual labor when I could just steal—I mean borrow—from my beloved sister?
“Hey, Mom.” I dropped my purse on the table. “Mmm, what are you cooking?”
“Hey, sweetie. Shrimp Creole. Dan is coming over tonight.”
“His favorite.” I grinned as I gave her a hug and kiss on the cheek.
She was wearing her loose-fitting linen pants and hippie shirt, her long, gray-streaked-auburn hair twisted up on her head. I loved being around my mom. Her relaxed demeanor and radiant love gave me instant comfort and eased my mind and spinning brain, no matter how stressed I was.
Dan was her boyfriend of two years and was a supervisor for Tractor Supply Company. I liked him, but more importantly, he made my mom happy.
“I’m making plenty. I didn’t know you were coming, but you’re welcome to eat with us. Emma is going out, of course.”
“This is just a drive-by, Mom. I need a dress.”
“What for? Finn taking you to the Heymann or something?”
The Heymann Theater in Lafayette often had musical performances that Finn and I went to together.
“Uh, no.” I leaned my hip against the counter. Though I’d rather not get my mother’s hopes up since it had been an eon or so since I’d gone on a date, I wanted to tell her. Even though this wasn’t anactualdate. “Not Finn.”
She stopped stirring. “Where are you going? And with whom?”
Unable to stifle the stupid smile from creasing my face, I told her. “Bennett Broussard.”
Mom had come with me to BPAL’s performance ofChicagolast year and had drooled while watching Bennett onstage. So had I. After the show, she wouldn’t shut up about howmagneticandhandsomeandfantastiche was.
“You’re lying,” she accused, blue-gray eyes round.
Laughing at her disbelief, I snapped back, “That hurts. What? You don’t think I could get a date with a guy like him?”
She narrowed her eyes and pointed her wooden spoon at me. “You told me he was an arrogant, entitled asshat who you would ignore even if you were the only two people on a deserted island together. I remember because you made such a big deal about how he was not your type, and you’d never go out with a guy like him in a million years.”
“Go out with who?”
Emma stood in the doorway, wearing Mountain Dew yoga pants and a matching green tank top. My sister was loud and wild and daring in every way. Even though I was the oldest, I always felt that I was the watered-down version of her.
Not in a bad way, just that she was a five-alarm fire waiting to happen. I was more like a simmering four. Granted, I’d been much like her back in college. But growing up had mellowed me just a tad. I didn’t pull all-nighters doing tequila body shots off strangers and waking up with the hot bartender in my bed anymore.
“You’re going running in that?” I tried to deflect, knowing it was useless.
Emma ran like a hundred miles a day. It was disgusting. I had to promise myself a high-carb meal afterward to get myself to the gym.
“Don’t even try to change the subject. What guy?” she demanded while twisting her strawberry blond hair into a ponytail.
“Bennett Broussard,” Mom said with an overdose of saccharine sweetness.
“You’re datinghim!”
“Would you stop yelling?” I strode past her, heading to her closet. “We’re doing the play together. We’re going on a business date. Or theater date. Or whatever.”
I’d told my mom and Emma that I’d gotten the lead the night I heard the news, but I’d failed to mention who my leading male partner would be.
Emma was hot on my ass back to her bedroom. “Didn’t you say he was anoverprivileged toolonce upon a time? The guy who maliciously glitter booby bombed you?”
“It wasn’t malicious.” I winced. “I might’ve been hasty in my judgment,” I said as I stepped into her walk-in closet and flipped through her rack of dresses.
“Shocker.”
