Page 7 of The Favorite Sister

“I’ll set something on the calendar soon,” I promise.

“Does big sister approve of bae?” Jesse asks Kelly.

Kelly tilts her head, confused.

“ ‘Bae,’ Kel.” I laugh at her. “It means, like, significant other.” To Jesse, I explain, “She doesn’t get out much.”

“I know what ‘bae’ means.” Kelly tosses her hair. She got highlights for this meeting. They made her too blond.

“Youlie!”

Kelly turns to Jesse with an expression that makes my heart thump like a sneaker in the dryer. Shit. I shouldn’t have antagonized her like that in front of Jesse. “You want to know what I think ofbae?” Kelly asks, pausing long enough to make me squirm. “We adore her,” she finally says, much too glowingly.

“So your daughter has met her,” Jesse infers.

Kelly looks mortified to have reminded Jesse she is a mom for the third time in ten minutes. “Yes. Um. My daughter. Layla.”

“Pretty name,” Jesse says, hollowly. She turns to me. “Brett, I’m assuming none of the other women have met her?”

“No. No one. Yet.”

“Not even Stephanie?”

“We met after Stephanie and I... you know...” I trail off and Jesse smiles at me like she does know but she still wants to hear me say it. “Come on,” I groan. “You know what happened.”

“Could I hear it from you and notTMZ?” She bats her eyelashes.

I sigh, using my hand to deepen the part in my hair. Massaging the truth for Jesse is dangerous, but Stephanie has left me no other choice. “She started to get funny after I got my book deal. Like... I could tell she wasn’t happy for me. There was no congratulations. It was just right off the bat, how much was my advance and this immediate assumption that I would ghost it. And when I started talking about moving out, it was like she wanted to scare me into staying.” I have lived with Stephanie (and Vince, the Husband) on and off for the last few years. The first time, we were filming season two, which made for a darling storyline. Then I met my ex-girlfriend and movedin with her. When the ex and I broke up last year, Sarah got the apartment until the lease ran out and in the meantime, I returned to chez Simmons. My stay was notably less darling the second time around.

“Steph just got very scoldy,” I continue, scrunching up my face remembering what it was like as things started to sour for us. “She kept reminding me that book advances are paid in installments and five hundred K actually isn’t as much money as I think it is because it’s doled out over the course of a few years and taxes and blah blah. I read the payment schedule in my contract. I got it. I wasn’t trying to buy a brownstone on the Upper East Side. I’m twenty-seven years old. I’m just looking to get my ownplace. It was very much the big guy wagging his finger at the little guy to keep me in my place.”

“And this was all before her memoir came out?” Jesse clarifies, resting her pink cheek in her small palm.

I nod. “And I thought what you’re probably thinking. She’s stressed. She’s only ever written fiction and now here she is, making these major and incredibly painful revelations about her life. I was willing to let it pass. But then...” I sigh. Up until now, nothing has been a lie. There is no turning back after this. “She wanted me to pass an advance copy of the new book to Rihanna. She wanted her to share it on her social, and she also thought Rihanna should play her if the book came out and was a big hit and they wanted to make it into a movie.”

“It would be a great part for Rihanna,” Jesse says.

“If Rihanna were five years older and straightened her hair to within an inch of its life and dressed like a local newswoman, then yes, maybe.”

“Come on now,” Jesse teases, thinking I’m just jealous.

“I can admit when someone has hit a home run. Stephanie is so brave for coming forward about what she went through when she was younger. She’s helping so many women find their voices. But that doesn’t give her a free pass to place unfair demands on our friendship. Rihanna attended one class and I didn’t feel comfortable emailing her out of the blue to push my castmate’s book on her. That’s a grimymove. I thought that as my friend, Stephanie would understand that. But that’s not how she saw it. She thinks my ego is out of control and that I’m holding out on her. That after everything she’s done for me, I owe her. Meanwhile, she was the one who insisted I move in with her.Both times. I’m obviously grateful”—I cradle my heart to prove how much her hospitality meant to me—“but I never asked. It’s like she only helped me so she gets to say I owe her.”

“It wouldn’t have been appropriate,” Kelly adds, coming to my defense with cool common sense. “We support Stephanie, but we are trying to cultivate a relationship between Rihanna’s team and SPOKE, and we don’t want to look like we’re taking advantage of her generosity. Class bookings went up two hundred percent the day after those pictures of her surfaced onPeopleand any asks we make of her must be strategic.”

“And can I just add,” I say, raising a hand like all other points are moot due to this one, “that the book has come out and been a smash hit and Stephanie’s got the Oscar-Nominated Female Director attached to direct. She’sfine.”

“Have you reached out to congratulate her?” Jesse asks.

“Has she reached out to congratulate me on the expansion?”

“Good woman,” Jesse says. “Don’t do anything yet. Let’s get the first confrontation on camera.”

Hank appears, balancing a blond plank holding appetizers on the palm of his hand. He sets it in the center of the table and remains stooped to say into Kelly’s ear, privately but not quietly, “Your daughter is asking if you have a charger in your purse.”

Jesse pauses, a coin of sausage halfway to her mouth. “Your daughter?”

“Uh, yeah,” Kelly says, fumbling through the impossible-to-pronounce purse my girlfriend also lent her for this occasion. “My childcare fell through, unfortunately. I have her waiting in the car—she’s fine.”