All my step-relatives get up to hug me and kiss me on the cheek, an Italian custom I had to quickly get used to. Lots of hugging and kissing. Adrienne is at the end of the table with a boy I don’t recognize. She gives me a wide grin when we make eye contact and waves me over to her. Quite excited for someone who has spent the past three weeks avoiding me. Claire is at the kids table in the living room with Sofie, Vinnie, and some of our other younger cousins so I take my seat next to Adrienne and she introduces me to her supposed boyfriend, Paul.
“So nice to meet you, Paul. I feel like Adrienne is always up at Ivy Gate. I never even see her anymore. Like entire weekends, sometimes during the week. She must really like you.”
Paul laughs nervously, glancing at Adrienne with a look that I swear is confusion. He must not see her that often, then. Because she’s there seeing someone else.
“Well, I’m notalwayswith Paul,” she says. “I have class, and I work at that boutique downtown. Just busy.”
“Right, busy.”
Adrienne only shrugs and goes back to eating. But I hope she knows I’m onto her.
The dinner drags on, and I find myself stuck making small talk with the rest of the family until I can leave. I even get to use some of my rehearsed lines. When Claire leaves with her boyfriend to go to his family’s house, and Adrienne starts retelling about her summer in New York, I decide it’s time to go. I told our dad I would stop by his house before going back to school and I plan on making that visit even shorter than this one. We only ever see him on holidays with his new family, and usually Claire and I just sit in silence while his wife, Eve, talks about her kids’ accomplishments and our dad nods along, just as thrilled with these kids who aren’t even his. While his own are sitting right in front of him. Today I’ll endure it alone, since Claire is otherwise occupied, and it makes me wish I actually was dating Asher so I’d also have an excuse to go somewhere else.
Their white-picket-fence house smells like pumpkin pie and nutmeg when I walk in. Small kids I don’t recognize run around the foyer playing a game. Must be Eve’s side of the family.
“Hey, Sloane,” Hallie, my stepsister and Eve’s high-school-aged daughter, greets me from the kitchen counter as I make my way in. I like Hallie; she reminds me of myself when I was her age. Her younger brother, Cameron, sits on the kitchen stool across from her eating dessert. He looks over at me with whipped cream smeared in the corners of his mouth and gives me a nod.
“Hey, guys,” I say.
“Your dad is in the living room,” Hallie says, setting up her phone for a TikTok.
I walk over to the counter where bottles of wine sit half full and pour myself a hefty glass before going into the living room with the other adults. My dad smiles and stands to hug me when I walk in. He’s tall and thin and has always looked young for his age. Once when I was in high school someone mistook him for my boyfriend at a carnival. We were both mortified, though I think he secretly liked that someone thought he was that young.
“Where’s your sister?” he asks.
“Oh, she’s with her boyfriend. She told me to tell you she’s sorry that she couldn’t make it.”
He gives me a confused look. “Boyfriend? Since when?”
“Since like almost a year now.” I say it with an edge in my voice because he would know that if he bothered to show up. “They were homecoming king and queen this year.”
“Oh, right, yes, I texted her congratulations.”
I turn to go to the couch, mumbling under my breath, “An in-person one would’ve been better.”
I go to sit, but not before Eve comes from around the corner, rushing toward me. “Oh no, sweetie, no red wine on the couch, please!” I pause mid-sit and look around at her relatives who are sitting on the white couch with red wine. I almost think she’s joking, but she continues, “That’s just such a full glass is all.” I blink at her as I lower myself onto the hardwood floor and take a long sip.
“You guys remember my daughter Sloane?” my dad says to the company on the couch. I know that they’re Eve’s family andI definitely saw them at their wedding and maybe a time or two after that, but I can’t name a single one of them.
“Oh yes, of course,” a lady who looks a lot like Eve says. “You’re the one that goes to Pembroke, right?”
I stop sipping to reply. “Yep.”
“Do you like it there? That’s where my son wants to go in the fall.”
Next fall I will no longer be a student there, and that’s another kind of sadness I’m not ready for. “Yes, I like it.”
“A lot of partying,” Eve says to the other woman with a hand covering her mouth from me, like I wasn’t supposed to hear it, even though she said it loud enough for even Hallie to hear in the kitchen.
“I’ve heard that,” says an older man standing by the fireplace.
“Poor Sloane had an incident with it last spring, called us in the middle of night because she got arrested.” Eve frowns and the others gasp.
I give her an incredulous look. “Actually, I called my dad, not you.” The room falls quiet. And it’s true, I called him first. I thought maybe, just maybe, he might care enough to help me. But he only sighed, the long pause on the line dragging on and on, before telling me to call my mom. I wonder what he’d do if Hallie called him from jail. Would he drop everything to go and get her?
“I don’t think this is an appropriate time to really discuss it, Sloane,” my dad tries to cut in.
“Your wife brought it up!”
