Page 35 of The Favorite Sister

Brett and me, rewatching the first season of the show in my bed, hands in the same bowl of Skinny Pop, marveling at what apple-cheeked babies we had been just three years ago, how soft-spoken we all were.We must have just been nervous, Brett theorized, and I had agreed, but now I think differently. I think we were all just softer then.

The timehop of our friendship has caused the saliva on my tongue to thin and sour. I feel ill. I feel as though I might cry. I am painfully aware that I am sitting here with a greasy face and fewer lashes than a four-month-old fetus, that the person I loved the most in my life turned out to be a stranger, and a cruel one at that, that people are starting to openly question how I live with the annoying man downstairs. I swallow and try, desperately, to sound jaded and impersonal. “So none of us would film with her and she knew she needed a storyline.” I nod. “Got it.”

Jen shrugs, flatly. What a shoddy imitation of a friend—of Brett—she turned out to be. “According to Yvette, it’s not staged. They’resoul mates.” Her voice is a gauzy impression of her mother’s.

“Right.” My laugh is rough. Brett wants to be married about as much as I want a child: which is a lot if a TV crew is willing to capture it. “I’m surprised I’m hearing it from you and not Page Six.”

“Yvette says she’s waiting until they tell Arch’s parents before they go public.”

“And yet,” I say, rottenly, “Yvette knows. And now you. And me.” I give Jen a long look, allowing the facts to speak for themselves. “How long have they even been together?”

“Long enough,” Jen says, folding her heel into her plaid crotch. I’m suddenly furious with her for what she’s chosen to wear to Lauren’s sleepover-themed party.That is the sexiest you could come up with?I want to jeer.No wonder there are cobwebs growing between your legs.

“Not really,” I say, lightly. I will not let Jen see that this news has gutted me. “Like three months.”

“More like six.”

“Jen,” I say, an edge to my voice I can no longer smooth out, “six months ago I was in Miami, trying to help her get over her breakup with Sarah.”

“Okay, so, three months. Whatever.” Jen shivers, like the details of Brett’s romantic life are icky. “I don’t care.”

There is a creak and we both look to the doorway. It’s Vince, ascending the stairs.

“So how long until she’s pitching a spinoff to the network,Brett Buys the Cow?”

Jen’s face tightens. “Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

It’s shameful, but hearing Jen disparage Brett for something as high school as her weight settles me ever so slightly.She’s still on your side. She still despises the same person who you despise.

“You two actually hate each other, huh?” Jason says, taking a step away from me and examining his work on my eyes. “I wasn’t sure if it was just for the show.”

I give him a sharp, stunned look. “You thought we made itup?”

“Who hates each other?” Vince wants to know, appearing in the doorway balancing three glasses of wine in his hands, mine with a straw because, lipstick. Vince is never more the doting husband than during filming season. Forget crotchless underwear or piping my nipples with whipped cream,filmingis the aphrodisiac of our marriage. Somewhere along the way, Vince decided that holding my handbag on the red carpet was still the red carpet, and that was good enough for him.

“Who else?” I say, as he sets my drink in front of me. I see that he chose the glasses that his friends bought us for our wedding, monogrammedVDS: Vince and Stephanie DeMarco, assuming, naturally, that I couldn’t wait to take my deadbeat husband’s last name.

“Aw, you guys,” Vince chastises, “give Brett a break.”

One nice thing I will say about the cad I married is that he stays out of our scraps. We’ve had significant others who try to get involved whenDiggersbutt heads, evangelizing the more forgiving politics of brotherhood, who are viciously edited into mansplaining donkeys when the time comes.Diggershave lost their places for less, and I’ve made it very clear to Vince, his opinion doesn’t matter but it counts, it could cost us everything.

“Then you can be the one to congratulate her on her engagement when you see her tonight,” Jen says, and I realize how artfully she’s buried the lede. Because Jen didn’t come here to tell me that Brett is getting married. She came here to tell me that Brett has been invited to Lauren’s event. That the alliance is off.

Vince fumbles the pass, slopping some of Jen’s wine onto the silk rug. “She’s engaged?” He sets the glass down on my vanity and goes in search of a towel. “No shit,” he says from the bathroom. “To that... that same woman? What’s her name?”

“Arch,” Jen says.

“Arch?” Vince repeats, rudely, appearing in the bathroom doorway with a roll of toilet paper in his hands.

“Use a hand towel,” I snap at him, and direct my chin at the glass he’s left on my vanity. “And put a coaster under that!”

“Welcome to New York, Vince,” Jen cracks, as he disappears into the bathroom again, “we have people from lots of different cultures here. And obviously the white savior of African girls wasn’t going to marry some corn-fed blonde from Ohio.”

“You should have told me she was coming sooner,” I say to Jen, waving off Jason’s attempt to apply mascara to the falsies he’s glued to my eyelids. “I just wasted a fifty-dollar strip of lashes.”

“You’re not coming now?” Jen spits, incredulous.

“Babe,” Vince implores of me, standing in the bathroom doorway with a hurt puppy-dog look on his face. He ordered a satin Hugh Hefner playsuit for this night weeks ago, monogrammed for seventy-five dollars extra.