Page 81 of The Favorite Sister

CHAPTER 20

Stephanie

Ithought I would lie awake all night, charged with loathing and second-guessing, but my sleep was straight out of a fairy tale, replete with a wake-up call from chirping birds and soft sunlight on my inarguably lovely face. Perhaps I slept so well thanks to the memory foam mattress in the downstairs guest bedroom—Brett’s room, which I claimed from her like a birthright when we got home. I punch my fists into the air with a gratifying yawn, the kind that distorts your face with pleasure, like sex. Good sex. Not Vince sex. Vince. Why am I thinking about Vince on this morning ofallmornings? I swing upright and then go very still, listening. It’s after eight and the house is already smug with doing things, and that is Vince I hear in the living room.

I get up and follow his voice without washing my face or brushing my teeth, which is not how the day was supposed to start. The day was supposed to start with Jason and my team here at the crack of dawn (where are they?), my Starbucks order hot and my hair in rollers. I wasn’t to leave my bedroom until I was spit and polished, my wits properly caffeinated. Leave it to a man to fuck upthisday, the day I plan to cement my legacy.

In the living room, Kelly and Lauren are sitting on the couch, drinking coffee across from Vince, who sits in one of the hairy whitechairs, a plastic Duane Reade bag at his feet. Outside, Jen is holding a warrior pose in the shade. The puddles on the porch are evaporating and the sky is a tragic, September 11 blue. What a beautiful day to ruin these bitches.

Lauren raises her mug in greeting. Her hair (what’s left) is stiff and her face is red and shiny, like she just had surgery.I’m not even hungover, I realize. It’s like a clear seventy-degree day—the temperature so optimal for the human condition that you don’t even notice the air around you. I feel alive and fresh and happy, but not so alive and fresh and happy that I’m thinking about taking up yoga and cutting out caffeine and spending less time on social media or whatever it is people do when they decide to self-improve.

“How wasTalk house?” Kelly says the name of the bar as if it were two distinct words. Like Burger King. Or Nordstrom Rack, which is probably where she got that dreadful cold-shoulder maxi dress she is wearing at the moment. God, she is embarrassing.

I ignore her and address Vince. “Why are you here?”

“I mean, Steph. Everyone is calling me. My mom is a mess.”

“A mess about what?”

“You seriously don’t know?” Lauren asks, her voice froggy and hungover. She must have knocked herself out last night through some combination of booze and pills, because she did not stir when Brett and I got home. No one did. God bless all these highly functioning addicts.

“Someone tell me what the fuck is going on before I lose it.” I hear myself and smile, demurely, softening my tone. “I mean—please?”

Kelly reaches for her phone. She calls up something and tosses it my way. I have to wait a second for the screen to right itself, but when it does, I realize I’m looking at a video post fromTMZ:Drunken Stephanie Simmons does not hold back on her soon to be ex-husband. I hit play. In case it isn’t clear what I’m saying, they’ve taken the helpful liberty of adding subtitles:They’re going to try to make it look like Vince fucks Brett’s sister this season. But that’s not who he—boom.Brett plows into me, her huge hips eclipsing the frame. The video cuts off right before I jump offstage. Thank God. I already had monsoon hair. I didn’t need everyone to see me land like an American gymnast with weak ankles.

I face my firing squad. “That’s all?”

Vince folds his hands behind his head and tilts his face to the ceiling. “Great.” He laughs, sarcastically. “There was more?”

“I’m keeping your name alive in the press, babe,” I say to him, sweet as candy. Vince turns away from me, his jaw clenched. Across from him, Kelly is gripping her mug of coffee so hard I’m waiting for it to shatter. She knew. She had to have known from the beginning. That’s why Vince found any opportunity he could to corner her. He wasn’t trying to fuck her; he was trying to get information out of her.

“What are you all so upset about?” I say. “I said Vincedidn’tfuck you, Kelly. I did you a favor for when they try to make it look like he did. Which they will do.”

“Steph,” Vince says evenly. He clears his throat, glancing at Lauren and Kelly for their little nods of confidence—You can do this, Vince!“I think we should head back to the city together. I called Jason and the whole glam team and told them not to come.”

I feel like a troubled teen who has come downstairs to find two former Navy SEALs in her living room, about to be shipped off to one of those Wilderness Therapy Camps where they sodomize you with a flashlight for cursing. Icannotgo with Vince.

I head into the kitchen to pour myself some coffee while I land on a strategy:Be agreeable. “I wouldn’t mind heading back with you after brunch.” I stir steamed almond milk—my only option—into my mug. It immediately clots, forming a puke-textured scum on the surface. I don’t care who or what has had to suffer to provide real milk for my coffee all these years, their sacrifice has been worth it. “Beat the afternoon crush.”

Vince skims a hand through his hair, slowly,sensuallyexposing the belly of his bicep and a few underarm sprigs that have escaped the sleeve of his thin white tee.Ugh, it truly is a sight to behold, that hairmove, something every girl needs to see before she dies. It makes Vince seem so troubled, so brooding. It makes women willing to do anything to make him smile. Isn’t that the secret sauce of seduction? First the snare of mystery, then the distinctly female instinct to rehabilitate.

“Stephanie,” Vince says, more patiently than he would if not for Lauren and Kelly’s presence, “I think you should head back now. Just quit while you’re ahead.”

I curl up in the armchair next to him, bringing my mug to my mouth. Panic is streaking through me—No, no, no, don’t make me go—but I have to remain calm. “We have a scene at Jesse’s today,” I remind him in a forgiving tone, like it is perfectly understandable that he could have forgotten given everything else that’s going on in our world.

“For Brett’s bachelorette, though, and Brett left.” Lauren rubs out the leftover mascara from underneath one eye. Her dark nails have chipped between last night and this morning.

“Brettleft?” I say, with pretend surprise and genuine disappointment. The surprise is for Lauren, Vince, and Kelly’s benefit. They have no idea how the night ended, of course. But the disappointment is actually real. The plan had always been for Brett to be at Jesse’s house today, but, well, plans change. Successful people are the people who find a way to roll with life’s inevitable setbacks.

Kelly passes me her phone. Before the sun rose, Brett had texted her,Called a car to take me back to the city. Over this shit. I thought I had smashed the screen of her phone hard enough to destroy it, but turns out, it was still possible to send a text. Kelly wrote back early this morning, asking if she was okay. Thus far, there has been no response.

“I feel like I saw Brett last night,” Lauren says, not to us, but to herself. As though she is just remembering this herself. She visors her eyes against the sun spilling through the skylight and squints at me for a long moment. “Did you... were you with us?”

I arch an eyebrow at Vince as if to say—I’m the one who needs to quit while I’m ahead?“I think you maybe dreamt that, Laur,” I say.

Lauren’s gaze drifts over my shoulder. I turn to see what she’s looking at: Jen, balanced on one leg with a foot tucked into her crotch. “I guess so.” Thank goodness for pillheads, and their easy suggestibility.

Vince gets up abruptly and starts down the hallway, taking that Duane Reade bag with him.