Page 14 of If You Were Mine (After We Fall 3)
“Hi, Mom.”
“How was dinner with the girls?”
“Great.” I caught her up with Margot’s wedding plans, and she sighed.
“How fun to plan a wedding! Muffy must be in heaven,” she said wistfully.
Muffy was Margot’s mother. “Message received, Mom.”
“I’m not rushing you, honey. I just think it would be a fun thing to do, plan a wedding.”
“Well, maybe Giselle will announce another engagement soon. One that actually sticks.”
“Is she seeing someone new?” my mother asked, her voice full of hope.
“Not that I know of.” I’d talked to my sister last week and she’d told me about a threesome she’d just had, but I didn’t think my mom wanted to hear about that. “Anyway, did you call earlier?”
“Yes, I was just planning Christmas Eve dinner and I wonder if you’d make Grandma Flossie’s chocolate pudding.”
“Sure.” That pudding was a pain, but if I suggested making something easier, my mom would probably have a stroke. Christmas wasn’t Christmas without Grandma Flossie’s pudding! “What’s Giselle bringing?” I asked, although I knew the answer.
; “Well, she’s flying in that morning, so she can’t really make anything. And she’s such a disaster in the kitchen, I’m not sure I’d ask her to prepare a dish, anyway.”
“Right.” I tried not to resent all the chores Giselle had always gotten out of doing because she feigned incompetence so well. Being a good actress was really useful in life, not just on stage.
“OK, dear. Talk soon.” She made her customary two-air-kiss noise and ended the call, and I tossed my phone on the passenger seat, feeling vaguely annoyed with myself for not telling my mother I wanted to make a pie instead of the pudding, or that it bothered me that Giselle never had to help with family dinners.
And maybe my mother hadn’t meant to dig at me with that wedding comment, although she was skilled at dropping hints and pretending to be innocent. But she also made no secret of the fact that she wanted grandchildren and thought she’d have them by now. One by one, all her friends were marrying off their sons and daughters and becoming grandmothers. It had become somewhat of a competitive sport among them.
Since Giselle always claimed she didn’t want kids, that left me as the only player in my mother’s lineup. Sorry about your bad luck, Mom.
That night I lay awake in bed, trying to think of possible ways to be more adventuresome, break out of my shell. For inspiration, I pictured Margot throwing those scones, and it hit me—the lipstick.
Margot always wore bold red lipstick. Maybe it wasn’t the reason she was so confident, but it didn’t hurt. When I thought about it some more, I realized Giselle often wore bright red lip color too. Hell, even Taylor Swift started dating more interesting men when she adopted crimson lips.
That’s what I needed! Stage makeup! Something to make me feel like I fit the part of the confident, successful woman I wanted to be.
I brought my fingertips to my mouth and tried to picture myself with a candy apple pout like Giselle affected in all her selfies. It would definitely be something different for me. Since I had really full lips and generally didn’t like to call attention to them, I usually stuck to neutrals, soft beiges and pinks with names like Sweetie and Blush. But now I needed something more daring, something with a name like Brash or Brazen or Badass.
I laughed to myself…this could be fun.
Seven
Theo
* * *
Balancing two bags of groceries on each arm, I trudged through the snow up the front walk at my brother and sister-in-law’s small, one-story house. I’ll shovel while I’m here. And she needs salt for the driveway, too.
On the front porch, I set the bags on my right arm down and knocked on the door. Inside I could hear someone crying and someone else shrieking, “He’s here!” A moment later two little girls appeared in the front room window over to my right. They stood between the curtain and the glass, which was smudged with handprints, waving excitedly at me. “Hi, Uncle Theo!” shouted Ava, who was six. Her little sister Hailey grinned and jumped up and down like I was Santa Claus at their doorstep. It made my heart squeeze—would Josie be able to give the girls a good Christmas? I’d make sure of it.
Damn you, Aaron. Get clean and get the fuck home. My brother was an alcoholic like our dad had been, and even though he’d been on the wagon during the early years of his marriage, sobriety went out the window when he’d been laid off two years ago. He’d been on an almost constant bender since, and he hated himself for it, but he felt like he couldn’t change.
He wasn’t violent like our father was, and the only person he ever got mad at was himself, but when I tried to explain to him that he caused his family harm when he took off, he refused to listen. They’re better off without me, he’d say. I’m no good for them. He’d been gone for nearly two months this time, and even though he stuck an occasional envelope of cash through the mail slot, it wasn’t much. Josie worked the night shift as a waitress, but damn near her entire paycheck went to the sitter. And she was exhausted all the time.
I loved my brother, and I understood why he was the way he was, but I wanted to fucking punch him in the face until he realized what an idiot he was to throw all this away. Maybe this house wasn’t much, and hell yes life was tough when you were out of work and had a wife and three kids, but dammit—it was his house, and his wife, and his kids. They adored him. He had things worth fighting for, worth staying for. And the crazy thing was, I knew he loved them. It wasn’t like he didn’t care. So it scared the living fuck out of me that he could abandon them like he did. Like our mother had left us. Maybe he was wired to be that way. Maybe we both were.
