Page 40 of The Favorite Sister

“Steph,” I said, giving in to the urge to laugh, “you’re aNew York Timesbestselling author with a major Hollywood studio paying you a lot of money to turn your books into movies. You’re on a TV show with two million viewers. You havestairsin your New York City apartment and three Chanel bags—”

“And bae is ridiculously good-looking,” Vince said, appearing tableside with a fresh bottle of rosé, so chilled his thumbs left translucent prints on the fogged bottle.

I made a gesture of support toward Vince. “Who also talks very cool! How much better can you do?”

“I can’t do any better—that’s the point!” She slid a coaster under the rosé bottle and with her Japanese linens mopped its wet ring from the oiled oak table. Vince respondedSorry, as though a verbal exchange had taken place. “I’ve already peaked. Thirty-four is a nothing year. It’s your done year. I’m not getting asked back for next season. No one has survived the show past thirty-four.”

Vince and I shared an incredulous look across the table. But then I actually thought about it. “That’s not true, is it?”

Stephanie readied her fingers to be counted. “Let’s examine the evidence, shall we?” Tapping finger number one, “Allison Greene, season one, thirty-two.” Tapping her middle finger she continued, “Carolyn Ebelbaum, seasons two and three, aged thirty-two. Hayley Peterson, seasons one, two, and three, aged thirty-three.” She set all her counted fingers on the table, as if to rest her case.

I shook my head, refusing to believe any of this was purposeful. “It’s a coincidence. It’s not, like, a height cutoff at an amusement park ride. You don’t have to get off this ride at thirty-four.”

“Well maybe I don’t want to take that chance,” Steph said, folding her dinner napkin into a prim square. “I need to make sure I’m asked back for season four. The last book came and went with a whimper. I can’t go out like that.”

Oh, god. The desperation on her face. It will never not break my heart to remember it.

“Get ready,” Vince said, back in the kitchen now, exfoliating a soaked pan with a Brillo Pad, the sound of steel on iron making my teeth ache.

Her voice smaller than I’d ever heard it, Steph said to me, “Don’t say no until I’m finished, okay?”

Across the room, Vince worked his finger around his ear, as though he were spinning cotton candy onto a yarn, mouthing,Crazy. In that moment, I hated him.

During those weeks I lived with Steph and Vince, my empathy was like a transferable property right, something I leased out, depending on who was shitting harder on whom. I had heard the rumors about Vince before I moved in, of course—everyone had—but I chose to believe Stephanie when she said they were just that, rumors, and that she and Vince were still madly in love. I’ve thought a lot about the difference between believing her and in choosing to believe her, and why I was so gung ho to participate in such an obvious sham, and it must have been because I idolized her. I couldn’t reconcile my fangirl image of her with the clichéd reality that she was just another little wife at home, waiting up for her husband past midnight.

I was fifteen and Stephanie twenty-three when she published the first book in her fiction trilogy. I remember stealing my mother’s copy from her nightstand while she was out of the house, memorizing the page number after each reading because if I folded a corner, Mom would know I had been reading a book with a lot of sex in it andew, ew, ew. Stephanie’s author picture was a stunningly perfect glamour shot, with lipstick, honking diamond studs in her ears, and a dazzling smile. Her bio was terrifically cosmopolitan:Stephanie Simmons lives on the Upper East Side(Not in New York! Not in Manhattan!Onthe Upper East Side.)with her dearly beloved collection of Jimmy Choos. The wit of her! The beauty!Stephanie Simmons is when I found my vagina, I once joked to a reporter who asked me how it felt to have her take me under her wing. Stephanie tweeted a link to the interview twice. She loved how much I adored her, and that turned out to be the root of all our problems.

Living with Steph and Vince, I couldn’t help but notice I played a role for Stephanie not unlike the one Vince had taken on. She had a tendency to gravitate toward people who were below her station in life, to build you up to a certain point but never too high. She did not react well as I started to close the gap between us. She became needy, suffocating, jealous. Why couldn’t she host the fourth hour of theTodayshow with me? Why couldn’t I bring her as my date to theGlamourWomen of the Year Awards? She could keep Vince under her thumb to a certain extent, but she didn’t have the same jurisdiction over me, and she started to resent me for it.

Steph clings to the fact that Vincechoseher before the show was even a twinkle in Jesse’s eye, but she had two books published before she got married, and one moviebased on the novel by Stephanie Simmonsalready made. She may not have been movie-star recognizable when she met Vince, but clearly, he took in her clothes, her jewelry, and her doorman apartmentonthe Upper East Side and fell in love with her lifestyle. I do believe he fell in love with her next. But marrying someone who falls for what you have first and who you are after does not a healthy marriage make.

So, yeah, Vince is sort of scummy for that. But Stephanie isn’t off the hook either. She knew what she was getting herself into when she married a guy like Vince, and she still registered for all the crystal stemware from Scully & Scully anyway, because she liked the idea of a trophy husband. And Vince is thequintessentialtrophy husband—a little skinny-fat—but this is New York, not L.A., and it is nothing those eyes won’t make you forget. Had he been too ripped, a certain grassroots rumor might have picked up more steam, which is that Vince and Stephanie are covering for each other in a Will and Jada Pinkett Smith–esque arrangement, if you know what I mean.

It’s hard to feel bad for either one of them and it’s hard not to feel bad for both of them. It depends on the day. Throughoutthatday, leading up to Stephanie’s birthday dinner, I had been firmly in Vince’s camp. He had waited on us hand and foot from the moment we woke up, starting with a heavenly batch of homemade blueberry ricotta pancakes served to us in bed, but nothing could lift Stephanie’s spirits. Stephanie suffers from a sort of dysmorphia when it comes to her success, and good luck to anyone who attempts to convince her that her talent and tenacity have been recognized. Clearly, Vince sensed my exasperation with her, and that’s why he felt emboldened to make that gesture, to break the cardinal rule ofGoal Diggersby mouthingCrazy. I crossed party lines again in that moment, over to Stephanie’s side, as I watched Vince wash his white Le Creuset pans that his wife bought him in the beautiful kitchen his wife paid for. I may be engaged to a woman but I know this much to be true about hetero relationships, and that is that men who call womencrazyare always the men who have first pushed them to the brink.

“I’m listening,” I told Steph, and the gratitude in her smile made me look away in secondhand embarrassment. The worst part about getting old has to be asking people younger than you for their help. God, I pray that will never be me.

“Do you know the highest-rated episode of reality TV of all time?”

I thought about it for a moment. “Talk shows don’t count, right?”

“Don’t count.”

“What about that WWE shit?”

“This tied WWE Raw.”

“Holy shit.” I laughed, genuinely intrigued. “What was it?”

“The Hills. Season three premiere. ‘You Know What You Did.’ ”

I instantly saw Lauren Conrad in my mind, cast red by West Hollywood lights, berating Heidi Montag,You know why I’m mad at you. You know what you did!“I remember it,” I said.

“Of course you do. Show me a woman under the age of thirty-five who doesn’t remember the Lauren and Heidi feud. The Lauren and Heidi feud was a thing of beauty. So was the rivalry between Katy Perry and Taylor Swift, Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Female aggression is curtailed, and therefore taboo, and therefore ratings gold. Did you know that toddler girls are just as inclined to roughhouse as boys, but we teach them to blunt those instincts?” She sees the recognition on my face and says, “Yeah.” I was thinking about Kelly and me: biting, scratching, strands of her hair in my hand, from root to split end.

“We learn to channel our aggression passively from a young age,” she shrugged, as though this were old news, “and that’s why woman-to-woman combat is spectator sport. Women have to get creative when we fight. We’re professionals. No wonder people line up to see us do our thing.”

“Jen and I fight,” I point out.