Page 28 of The Favorite Sister

“I promise to tell you where it is after you shower.”

In the bathroom, I turn on the water and plunk down on the toilet while it does the slow work of warming, unsure of what to do with my hands without a screen to manhandle. I flush and step under the spray, even though it’s the temperature of forgotten tea. I wouldn’t put it past Arch to try to surprise me in here, and I am so not in the mood.

I lather my hair with conditioner—the secret to my great hair is that I hardly ever wash it—and reach for my razor. Something small and shiny pings the tile floor, and I go very still, feeling each of the showerhead’s individual strikes. With my big toe, I nudge the thing Arch sent me in here to find, as though afraid it may produce fangs and bite. Compared to my Standing Sisters ring, Arch’s choice is thicker, sturdier, something my father would have worn. I realize Arch doesn’t know what I want at all—this dyke would have welcomed a diamond. The sadness feels like a paper cut. Quick, non–life threatening, brutal.

I spin the faucet left without shaving. If I shave Arch will know I found the ring without... what? Shrieking? Crying?Instagramming?Maybe she thought she was going to come in here, pull her tank topover her head, and finally get some use out of this spa shower the size of a smart car... I shut off the water and practically staple my towel to my body.

“B?” Arch calls when she hears the door to the bathroom open.

“One second!” I call back, hurrying into the bedroom. I open my underwear drawer and rummage around inside.

Arch says something else, but I can’t make it out.

“One second!” I repeat. My knuckles bump against the velvet box.

In the living room, Arch is on her knees on the couch, looking like a meerkat surveying her surroundings for predators, right down to the dark, fearful eyes. My skin is warm from the shower and cold with sweat, thundering with nerves.

“What are you doing?” Arch asks, nervously, when she notices my arm behind my back.

I inhale through my nose and exhale through my mouth, just like we remind riders to do in class.Let it go. Whatever you’re holding on to that’s holding you back, let it go. I present my hand for Arch. “I thought you would never ask. So I was going to.”

Arch gasps when she sees the diamond eternity band, purchased last week from 1stdibs after I sent Yvette the link and she wrote back with her approval.It’s lovely. So SO happy for you, darling one.

Arch jumps off the couch and makes her way over to me. She brushes my wet hair away from my face and lowers her lips to mine. Dread coils around my ribs when I close my eyes and return her kiss, when I think about how thin Stephanie’s smile will be when she hears about this.

I am trying to focus on what our head engineer is saying, but Kelly has ripped off Lauren’s crown braid from the other day and her single white femaleness is distracting. When we first walked in, Sharon Sonhorn, who Kelly has flown in from Alabama—business class—exclaimed in that accent so honeyed and Southern it sounds completely put on, “How precious areyou?!”

Our advisory board is eight members strong, five men and three women, ranging in age from thirty-five to seventy-two. They live in New York, Texas, Alabama, Boston, Los Angeles, and London. We have one black person, one Asian person, and one gay person. Two have zero experience in the wellness industry and three have none in the B-corp world. Kelly put the whole thing together based on an article she read onForbes.comthat said advisory boards should represent diversity in its truest sense. You don’t want to be paying a bunch ofyesmen and women for their time. You want people who challenge you, who offer a different perspective, who are constantly asking you to reexamine your vision.This is money well spent, she’s always reminding me, when I see how much it costs to fly someone into New York business class just to hear that my ideas suck.

“Listen,” Seth, my head engineer, says, flicking a switch on the e-bike. He had the model covered in a beige tarp when the board first walked in, allowing him the opportunity to rip it off as though we were at a magic show. He even saidta-da!Despite how mad I am at Kelly—for meeting up with Jen behind my back, for getting herself invited to Lauren’s party, for that fucking braid—we exchanged a look. Seth is the nicest and most annoying person we know.

All kidding aside, my new bike does deserve an unveiling, a middle-aged man’s dorkyta-da! Bloody gorgeous, our London guy said.I’d quite like one for myself. And everyone had laughed, because picturing stiff John Tellmun riding around Notting Hill Gate on this glossy red cruiser with the blush leather seat and plump pink handlebars is pure comedy gold.

“I don’t hear anything,” Layla says, her ear aimed at the ground. Girls as young as nine will be riding these bikes, so Kelly thought it would be a nice touch for the board to see that a twelve-year-old can easily and safely operate the machinery.

Seth points his finger at Layla,ding-ding-dinging. “The little lady wins a 2016 Toyota Camry!” Layla looks confused, and Seth clears his throat, embarrassed the joke didn’t land. “The electronic modelssound like they are off even when they’re on, so always make sure that you check the switch before you get on, okay, Layla?”

Kelly reaches up to tighten the chinstrap on Layla’s helmet. Layla shot past me this year, which is not anything to write home about, but she’s almost the same height as Kelly, who has a few inches on me. I don’t remember Fad being especially tall, but maybe he had tall parents, tall sisters. We will never know.

“Mom,” Layla groans, but she lifts her chin and lets Kelly fuss with the strap.

Sharon makes a sound that expresses how precious she thinks this is: Kelly’s braid, Kelly’s overprotectiveness, Layla’s indulging of Kelly’s overprotectiveness, all of it. Like Kelly, Sharon has a preteen daughter. Unlike Kelly, Sharon is practically fifty.

Layla swings her leg over the pink seat.

“Look at those stems,” Sharon says, lowly, to Kelly, and Kelly beams. “Andthat skin. Like a latte. She could be inVogue.”

Kelly’s smile fails like an old engine. “Not too fast!” she warns Layla.

“It goes, like, forty miles an hour.” Layla directs her eye roll at me, the only other person in the room who could possibly comprehend the extent of Kelly’s lameness.

“You kill someone if you hit them at forty miles an hour,” Kelly says, matching Layla’s sulky tone to make her point that this is nothing to be flip about.

We watch Layla pedal the SPOKElectric prototype deeper into the warehouse, the bike emitting a mild hum that’s amplified by the concrete floors. I could crawl faster.

“Mine would have torn out the door going as fast as she could just to spite me,” Sharon says to Kelly. “Top-notch mothering, honey.” I used to think it was such a throwaway, whenever someone complimented a woman on her mothering skills. I didn’t think it took talent to be a good mother—just don’t beat them and take them to the dentist occasionally, and voilà!, you’re a good mother.Lovingthem doesn’t even take much work. Even the moms who beattheir kids love them. Then Kelly had Layla, and I realized just how mistaken I was. Because Kelly’s mothering skills were shaky at best that first year with Layla, neglectful at worst.

Do you know my father made two appointments for Kelly to skulk past the four angry men pumping posters of mutilated fetuses into the air at Kelly’s behest? I flexed my biceps and spoke like Tony Soprano on our way out the door,both times, offering my services as bodyguard. I was trying to get her to laugh. Really, I just didn’t know how to appropriately express to Kelly that it wasn’t the end of the world. It wasn’t the end of the world that she went a little nuts out from under Mom’s watchful eye and it wasn’t the end of the world that she hadn’t had responsible sex and it wasn’t the end of the world to undergo a safe, legal medical procedure that has been a part of the human experience for thousands of years in every sort of society imaginable.