Page 27 of The Favorite Sister

CHAPTER 7

Brett

How do you feel about your sister taking Jen Greenberg on a girl date?

Lisa’s text stops me bone-cold. I read it again with a flu-like shiver.Takingimplies that thisgirl datewith Jen has already occurred. I was with Kelly yesterday, and I’m due to meet her at our warehouse on Long Island for our quarterly advisory board meeting in one hour. Was she planning on telling me?

“Please,” Arch says, disappearing behind the door of the refrigerator, “no phones this morning. We promised.” She reappears with a container of milk. Real milk. Milk that will grow a third arm out of your forehead, with hormones and fat and BPA leached from the plastic jug Arch got at the corner deli for $2.99, along with a loaf of Pepperidge Farm bread and some precut cantaloupe. Cantaloupe! She might as well eat jelly beans for breakfast. You don’t understand; women like Arch are an endangered species in a city where a packet of powder and nut milk passes as a big breakfast on aGrub Streetfood diary. It’s one reason I keep holding on.

My phone buzzes with another text from Lisa.Jen invited her to Lauren’s sexy slumber party party

Then another.See if Kelly can swing an invite for you lollololol

I’m actually being serious BRETT

Need to get you in the same room with the others

No one wants to watch you peddling a stationary bike by yourself all fucking season long. BORING.

NOT EVEN JESSE

I raise a thumb to respond, but Arch plucks my phone out of my hand.

“Plates,” she orders lovingly, when I start to protest, “to the left of the stove.”

It’s been nine days since Kelly and Layla moved into my old apartment downtown and I moved into Arch’s one-bedroom on the Upper West Side, and, as Arch reminded me last night, nine days since we’ve had sex.The place is a mess. My shit is everywhere. I’m stressed about Morocco.(Don’t think I’m giving up that easily.) Every night, we are on StreetEasy, searching for two-bedrooms in an elevator building by Arch’s office on the west side, between $6,500K and $7,500K a month. I’ve raised $23.4 million in capital, and I still can’t afford to buy in this town.

I set the plates on the counter and Arch drops a piece of toast on each, sucking a finger that’s gotten scalded. We look at breakfast and then at each other with wrinkled noses. The toast is the color of Jen Greenberg’s heart. Black, in case that wasn’t clear.

“I have an hour before I have to reunite an incarcerated father with his newborn baby for the first time,” Arch says.

“I have fifty-five minutes before I test-drive an electronic bike that will help twelve-year-old girls outrun rapists.” This is our favorite game. Who will do more for the state of humanity today?

Arch slams a jar of Smucker’s on the countertop with stoic resolve. “Charbroiled carbs it is then. Breakfast of champions.”

We carry our plates over to the couch and settle in. Arch unfolds her disproportionately long legs—her thighs are normal, but her shin bones belong in the Museum of Natural History—and props her feet in my lap. Arch has skinny, knobby toes, like crab legs without any meat, and her nails are the same shade of red as the SPOKE logo. This was done to woo me, but it managed the opposite effect.You’re too much for me, I thought, guiltily, when she came home withthe tissue still between her toes.

“Did you know Kelly and Jen Greenberg hung out?” I ask Arch.

Arch flicks a crumb off her top lip with the inside of a knuckle, unaware that she has left dark grit in the corners of her mouth. “Are you asking me or telling me?”

“Asking.” Arch and Kelly are friends, which should make me happy. That the person you love meshes well with your family is all most people hope for in life. Instead, it makes me nervous, paranoid even.What did you talk about?I ask, my tone light, my heart racing, whenever Arch comes home from an outing with Kelly. Maybe I’m afraid of these two pairing off against me, the way Layla and I sometimes do to Kelly. Maybe I’m afraid that if Arch spends enough time with Kelly, she’ll realize how little of an intellectual connection we actually have. Maybe. Maybe.

“I would have told you if I knew that,” Arch says, to my relief. Now I get to just complain.

“How fucked-up is that?” I ask.

Arch mounts her long hair on top of her head, a ponytail holder in her teeth. I notice our age difference when she puts her hair up. Nine years. It’s nothing sometimes, and then it’s everything. “She’s trying to get to know her new colleague at work,” she says, the black elastic in her mouth bobbing. “She knows you don’t like Jen, and she probably felt funny telling you about it.” Arch lifts a shoulder, failing to see the criminal activity. “Give her a break, Brett. She feels like an outlier. She just wants to fit in.”

“Well, she went and got herself invited to Lauren’s party. She’s fitting infine.” The group events are where it all goes down—the drama, the tears, the reconciliations. You are dead in the water if you don’t attend the group events. Lisa is a monster but Lisa is right. No one wants to watch me pedal a stationary bike by myself all season long. NOT EVEN JESSE. A dizzying premonition suddenly kicks me in the head: My sister is in the opening credits for next season, but not me.I’m raising the next generation ofGoal Diggers wouldprobably be her tagline. I set my burned toast on the coffee table after just one bite.

Arch pokes my thigh with her bony toe. “Hey. You’re going out to Yvette’s to make peace with Jen today. Maybe she’ll invite you once you smooth things over.”

After we test-drive the bikes for the advisory board members, I’m headed out to Yvette’s. There, butthole vehemently clenched, I will extend an olive branch to the Green Menace. Olives are vegan, right?

Arch checks the time on the cable display box. “You want to shower first?”

“You can,” I say, removing her feet from my lap and going in search of my phone in the kitchen. It quickly becomes apparent that Arch has hidden it. I drill my fists into my hips and Arch laughs.